Rybczynski has some great stories to tell, and his love for his subject shines through on every page.
A design specialist looks under the hood of some of the most iconic and beautiful cars ever to hit the road.
Rybczynski, an architect by profession, has written many fascinating books about design, looking at buildings, furniture, and tools. The author is particularly interested in the intersection among functionality, aesthetics, and economics, so turning his attention to cars was a natural step. He has owned numerous cars through his life, and he uses their stories to frame the narrative. He also delves into early automotive history. It was a long road to a working vehicle, and there was a lengthy debate about the best power source. Gasoline eventually won and became the model for the following decades. In the postwar years in the U.S., the popularity of cars exploded, and they got bigger and more ornate. In an exhausted Europe, where taxes made gas expensive, the trend was toward small, cheaper cars, although later BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Fiat produced some design classics. Rybczynski has respect for Japanese cars, although the emphasis on efficiency has led to a global homogenization of automotive design. He devotes a section to high-end sports cars, which at their best can look like streamlined sculptures on wheels. In the past decade, minivans and large SUVs have taken over the roads, although the author cannot really bring himself to like them. He understands the reasons for greater safety and energy efficiency, but he laments that digital tech in cars has taken much of the enjoyment out of driving. “Cars are machines,” he writes, “but like buildings they are also cultural artifacts.” Throughout, the author presents a breezy, entertaining package that will be a fun read for a wide audience—not just car enthusiasts.
Rybczynski has some great stories to tell, and his love for his subject shines through on every page.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781324075288
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
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