A timely, levelheaded analysis of America’s most polarizing political issues.
An engineer surveys America’s political landscape in this debut nonfiction book.
“We are in a time when people take positions on subjects and defend them as part of their ‘tribe,’” writes Taggart, who argues that hyper-partisanship not only excludes more than one-third of Americans who consider themselves independents, but also threatens democracy itself, as the election denialism of 2020 demonstrates. With more than three decades of experience as an engineer for corporate industries, the author hopes to offer a nonpartisan, “factual, data-driven approach” to America’s pressing political issues, from education and the economy to prescription drugs and energy. While admitting that “hard data” can be misinterpreted, he contends that ultimately “hard data won’t lie to you.” For instance, no amount of political spin can change the quantitative link between poverty and gun violence, a correlation that, to Taggart, offers alternative strategies to combat this phenomenon that don’t involve unattainable policies such as “disarming America.” Similarly, according to the book, the undeniable statistical data that African American men are more likely “to be killed by law enforcement, even when unarmed,” points to the continued legacy of systemic racism. Given the volume’s expressed “hope for moderation,” its centrist solutions to hot-button issues may not satisfy those on the two ideological poles. On dealing with systemic racism, for instance, the author rejects the possibility of reparations as unfeasible, and instead offers more tepid alternatives, such as a national database that shares information about police employment history and incidents. Alternately, the author’s belief that America needs “solutions to be simple” may not satisfy the more revolutionary aspirations of the left or the right. But those looking for evidence-based, centrist positions on polarizing issues will find a well-argued book that eschews ad hominem attacks and hot takes generated to maximize emotional engagement. Even if readers disagree with all of the author's conclusions, he provides more than a dozen tables and charts as well as over 100 endnotes for the audience to explore the evidence. For full transparency, the work’s data is provided to readers via the author’s website in the form of Excel spreadsheets.
A timely, levelheaded analysis of America’s most polarizing political issues.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781954779877
Page Count: 412
Publisher: Emerald Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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
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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