Nonfiction Archive
Review: Circus Maximus by Andrew Zimbalist
Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup Andrew Zimbalist Brookings Institution Press, 2015 175 pages Buy: book | ebook In a way, everything about Andrew Zimbalist’s Circus Maximus is great. The book is thoroughly researched, thoroughly argued—hard to find a hole in its logic. And
10 Inspiring Books on Women’s Lives
I never tire of learning about other women’s lives and how they were forged. How does one construct a passionate life? Or articulate the way one survives the throes of it? What art can be made from mess? My first two books circled these questions in different ways, and
Reading as Intoxicant, Part I: Neurochemical Qualities of the Modern Manic Page Peeler
Richard Wright once wrote that reading is like a drug. Countless other authors have written some variation of that same assertion. If you’ve ever found yourself crushed in a corner weeping like a crazy person because the end of your latest literary fixation was fast coming to a close,
Rehabbing the Southern Way of Life: On “The World’s Largest Man”
At a cultural moment when it seems the Southern Way of Life needs some image rehab, the timing of Harrison Scott Key’s memoir of his Mississippi childhood is impeccable. The World’s Largest Man takes on the Southern masculine ideal, violence, race and more, all under the guise of amiable
Review: WHAT COMES NEXT AND HOW TO LIKE IT by Abigail Thomas
What Comes Next and How to Like It Abigail Thomas Scribner, March 2015 240 pages Buy: book | ebook I was first introduced to Abigail Thomas’s work in grad school when I read Safekeeping: Some True Stories From a Life. Initially, I was startled by its economy of words,
Review: CHAMIQUE by Chamique Holdsclaw
Chamique: On Family, Focus, and Basketball Chamique Holdsclaw with Jennifer Frey Scribner, 2000 189 pages Buy: ebook Much like Brittney Griner’s In My Skin, Chamique is a slapped-together memoir by a college basketball wunderkind, Chamique Holdsclaw, following the player’s uneven rookie year in the pros. Where In My Skin charmed with Griner’s honesty
THE NEUTRAL CORNER: Nicholas Fox Weber’s “The Bauhaus Group”
The neutral corner is one of the two corners of the ring not used by boxers between rounds. It is also the corner a boxer must retreat to after he has floored his opponent. The Neutral Corner was also a bar in Saratoga Springs, New York, that I
Review: IN MY SKIN by Brittney Griner
In My Skin Brittney Griner with Sue Hovey itbooks, 2014 216 pages Buy: book | ebook No matter how un-invested an athlete is in the production of their own book—no matter how transparently the ghostwriter has sat down with their subject for as few hours as possible, then hurriedly
REVIEW: Belief is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe by Lori Jakiela
Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe Lori Jakiela August 4, 2015 Atticus Books 290 pages Preorder Halfway through her new memoir, Belief is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, Lori Jakiela comes across a mall kiosk selling Russian nesting dolls. “The doll in the woman’s hand looks
Review: THROWN by Kerry Howley
Thrown Kerry Howley Sarabande Books, 2014 282 pages Buy: book | ebook Being intimate with some sports is far from a guarantee that one is even acquainted with all of them. Personally I’ve never wanted to watch a single mixed-martial arts fight until reading Kerry Howley’s Thrown, a page-turner