A polemical exhortation that will appeal to readers interested in the criminalization and protection of abortion rights.
A thorough, alarmed delineation of threats to abortion rights around the world.
“My central claim—that the far right sees abortion bans as a way to reverse the so-called Great Replacement—is no longer confined to creepy natalist Telegram channels,” writes Norris. “It is spoken out loud by anti-abortion political leaders.” A British writer and reporter, she presents “an account of how the attacks on abortion rights in the Global North [are] part of a larger misogynist and white supremacist project of the far right.” The author codifies her arguments cleanly, beginning with a chapter titled “The Ideology: The Place of Women in Fascist Thought” and closing with “The Tipping Point: Which Future Do We Choose?” Due to the author’s direct-address approach, her first nonfiction book reads much like a lecture, e.g., “In the following pages, I will share with you…”; and “Think back to….” After a considered explication of how fascist theories, such as those fueling QAnon, endanger sexual and reproductive rights, Norris covers mainstream extremist politics, how the legal status of abortion is being threatened, and the far right’s attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. Regarding White women, specifically, the author writes, “the reality of being a revered body is that you are nothing more than a body—a reproductive vessel to exploit.” Norris makes the convincing case that politicians, including Trump, Orbán, and Putin, evoke “the fascist mythic past in order to attract a right-wing populist base.” Additionally, “the pressure pushing the elite towards the fascists is that same crisis facing capitalism: the demographic changes caused by aging populations threaten the economic stability of nations.” Throughout the text, the author’s position and call to action are urgent and unwavering.
A polemical exhortation that will appeal to readers interested in the criminalization and protection of abortion rights.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781839764738
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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