An inside-baseball look at the business of TV sports through the eyes of a veteran, sometimes controversial presence.
The well-known sportscaster delivers a warts-and-all self-portrait of himself and the business.
Smith—“ ‘Stephen A.’ these days, no last name necessary”—doesn’t expect to be liked, and for good reason: His off-the-cuff commentary on ESPN and other venues has sometimes been ill considered, though perhaps for understandable reasons. “On a show like First Take, or any live debate show,” he writes, “something that causes an uproar happens almost every day. The objective of these shows is to have opposite points of view. To be candid: we capitalize on the kind of polarization people supposedly abhor.” That said, Smith has sometimes pushed things beyond the bounds of good sense, and he’s paid the price for it, though he’s still on the air. Some of his prejudices are well founded. For example, he despises the Dallas Cowboys, not for the team’s players or management but because “I believe they have the most disgusting, nauseating fan base in the annals of sports.” Other of his remarks have smacked of bigotry, though, as when he complained that Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani “is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he’s saying,” an especially ill-considered remark in a time of anti-Asian sentiment. To his credit, Smith owns his words and doesn’t try to explain his mistakes away. The best part of the book is his nuanced portrait of how the sports journalism world works, with its almost nonstop personality clashes and sometimes unlikely alliances—and the constant scheming of executives to shake things up for better ratings and bigger money. Of his being paired with Skip Bayless on that ESPN debate show, for instance, he comments, “We didn’t give a shit what anyone thought about it. In the end, we knew we were feeding the audience, and the bottom line.”
An inside-baseball look at the business of TV sports through the eyes of a veteran, sometimes controversial presence.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-982189-49-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: 13A/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intimate, stirring chronicle.
A daughter’s memories.
Booker Prize–winning Indian novelist Roy recounts a life of poverty and upheaval, defiance and triumph in an emotionally raw memoir, centered on her complicated relationship with her mother. Mary Roy, who raised her two children alone after divorcing her ne’er-do-well husband, was a volatile, willful woman, angry and abusive. In a patriarchal society that oppressed women socially, economically, and legally, she fought to make a life for herself and her family, working tirelessly to become “the owner, headmistress, and wild spirit” of an astoundingly successful school. The schoolchildren respectfully called her Mrs. Roy, and so did Arundhati and her brother. To escape her mother’s demands and tantrums, Arundhati, at age 18, decided to move permanently to Delhi, where she was studying architecture. After a brief marriage to a fellow student, she embarked on a long relationship with a filmmaker, which ignited her career as a writer: screenplays, essays, and at last the novel she titled The God of Small Things. The book became a sensation, earning her money and fame, as well as notoriety: She faced charges of “obscenity and corrupting public morality.” Arundhati sets her life in the context of India’s roiling politics, of which she became an outspoken critic. For many years, she writes, “I wandered through forests and river valleys, villages and border towns, to try to better understand my country. As I traveled, I wrote. That was the beginning of my restless, unruly life as a seditious, traitor-warrior.” Throughout, Mrs. Roy loomed large in her daughter’s life, and her death, in 2022, left the author overcome with grief. “I had grown into the peculiar shape that I am to accommodate her.” Without her, “I didn’t make sense to myself anymore.” Her candid memoir revives both an extraordinary woman and the tangled complexities of filial love.
An intimate, stirring chronicle.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781668094716
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
