An intellectually scrupulous study that brings a complex political issue into sharp relief.
Verrier presents a critique of the two-party system in American politics.
Most citizens of the United States are frustrated with the endless hyper-partisanship that plagues their country’s government, observes the author, and they’re equally disenchanted with the representation provided by the two-party system. In fact, he asserts,many interpret the past 168 years of “Democratic-GOP domination” as a “chronic, debilitating disease.” Republicans and Democrats have never been farther apart, he says; the ideological distance between them has grown so vast that the expression of “obvious acrimony, if not outright hatred” has become the norm. However, overturning this arrangement is nearly impossible, as the entire electoral system is designed to enshrine it; even the Federal Election Commission favors the two-party setup. Also, Verrier says, even independent voters generally neglect alternative candidates in favor of the those offered by traditional parties, according to a Pew Research report. In this tightly argued, empirically rigorous study, the author paints a bleak picture of what he calls the “fracturing of American society,” and the ways in which the ideological gap between the parties is encouraged by the American electoral system. Verrier vividly compares the major parties to professional sports teams: “Those two teams destined for the showdown—year after year after year—may overlook the other ‘competition’ and spend the whole regular season trash-talking each other,” he says, but the pair do agree on at least one thing: that no other teams should play the game. The author’s command of the material is impressive, as when he details the condition of independent candidates in every single state for the 2018 general election. However, some readers may find his granular presentation of it to be overwhelming, and he also makes no attempt to furnish a “specific blueprint for change.” Instead, he presents a forlorn “big picture” without hope. Nevertheless, Verrier’s survey is a remarkably exacting one, and brings great clarity to an important topic.
An intellectually scrupulous study that brings a complex political issue into sharp relief.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1476689456
Page Count: 231
Publisher: McFarland
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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