A welcome assessment of the reality of the epidemic that has changed our lives.
An authoritative analysis of the Covid-19 pandemic, from its beginning to its hoped-for end.
Sociologist and physician Christakis, who directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale, offers a cogent, deeply informative overview of the coronavirus pandemic, taking into consideration the biology of the pathogen and the social, economic, psychological, and political impacts of the virus on society. Drawing on scientific, medical, and sociological research, he assesses the transmission of the virus, responses worldwide, and prognosis for the pandemic’s end. In addition, he places Covid-19 in the context of past epidemics: plague in ancient Athens, the Black Death in medieval Europe, polio epidemics in 1916 and the 1950s, influenza in 1918, and HIV in the 1980s. “It’s very important to emphasize that, as bad as COVID-19 is,” writes the author, “it’s not remotely as bad as epidemics of bubonic plague, cholera, or smallpox that have killed much larger fractions of the population and that have had much larger and longer-lasting effects.” Nevertheless, he underscores the disastrous effect of inadequate responses, especially from the Trump administration: a “botched” rollout of early tests, lack of coherent national strategy, and repeated “denial and lies.” It’s inarguable, he writes, that “the lack of scientific literacy, capacity for nuance, and honest leadership hurt us.” Christakis emphasizes the importance of wearing masks and enforcing social distancing, two interventions that slow the spread of the virus, which is essential while treatments and vaccines are being developed. While acknowledging “colossal uncertainty” about the future of the pandemic, he predicts that at least until 2022, Americans will live in a changed world. It will be necessary to wear masks, abstain from shaking hands, avoid crowds, and receive medical care online rather than in person. Hopefully, he writes, “one of the unexpected impacts…may be that a society that feels besieged by the threat of the virus will increasingly treat scientific information, and not just scientists, seriously.”
A welcome assessment of the reality of the epidemic that has changed our lives.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-62821-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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