Illuminating, informative, and inspiring.
A multidisciplinary study proving the capability of women as runners.
Falsehoods about women runners have persisted for centuries. From the myth of Atalanta to the story of Jasmin Paris (the first woman to win the U.K.’s 268-mile Spine Race), journalist Mertens tells a host of fascinating stories about women running greats who have disproved the naysayers. These women, whether legendary or long forgotten, confronted a range of stereotypes and paternalistic reasoning from professionals who focused only on their fertility and femininity, misrepresented or belittled their accomplishments, questioned their mental health and toughness, and even debated their identities as women. Chronicling these women’s relentless pursuit of inclusion in competitive running events, Mertens regains control of the narrative of female runners—and female athletes more broadly. Combining science with sociology and history, the author applies journalistic investigation to training regimes, racism in sports, evolution-based calls for gender segregation, and debates about gender identity. She strikes an almost bitingly bemused tone to temper her outrage, taking steady aim at the maddeningly intentional attitudes and policies of medical and sports authorities who have chased research to support their claims. In a field where even Mertens has to consciously correct the temptation to make reductive assumptions, she reveals the harm caused by female runners’ detractors, who have been lazy at best. Dismantling inaccuracies about women and their bodies, the author demonstrates what we can learn about all humans, and she suggests how that has repercussions not only in sports, but elsewhere in society. “Women are speaking out about themselves, saying we don’t have to look or act a certain way in order to be accepted in society,” she writes. “Nor do we need to be defined in opposition to men. We can define ourselves, thank you very much. And, yes, we can beat men.”
Illuminating, informative, and inspiring.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781643753355
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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
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