An intriguing window into Republican primary politics.
Spurlino shares lessons learned from an unsuccessful congressional bid in this debut political memoir.
As the old adage goes, failure is a better teacher than success. That’s the premise of this memoir by a businessman who ran for Congress in 2016. “I lost,” writes Spurlino in his introduction. “I didn’t lose in the general election. I lost in the Republican primary. I finished fourth, receiving only 7 percent of the vote. That’s not the typical profile of someone who writes a book about politics.” Even so, his frontline perspective offers insight into the modern American political campaign: who runs for office, how and why they run, how they win, and—more often—how they lose. The author decided to throw his hat into the ring after learning that his congressman, Speaker of the House John Boehner, had announced his retirement. He then began the strange, sometimes comical process of hiring a campaign team, staking out official positions on major issues (many of them more conservative than his actual beliefs), paying someone to perform opposition research on himself, filming an announcement video, and drumming up political support. Spurlino’s insider’s view convinced him that the American campaign system needs profound changes, both in laws governing elections and in the culture of party politics. Spurlino’s prose is conversational and direct, and his persona is often that of a naïve Everyman learning about politics in real time, which sometimes makes for amusing reading: “I was a little surprised that Israel would be a campaign issue,” he writes; but later he found out that the other candidates likely wouldn’t be attending an upcoming event organized by pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and that his presence there could win him some votes: “And with that, I officially became a supporter of AIPAC and Israel.” Spurlino’s after-the-fact suggestions for improving the political system—including ranked-choice voting—will likely divide his readership. The book’s greatest value is the way in which it charts the Trump-ification of the Republican Party over the course of 2016.
An intriguing window into Republican primary politics.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63755-236-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: RealClear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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