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
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
SEEN & HEARD
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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