Irreverent analysis and fresh ideas from a baseball writer dismayed by the state of the modern game.
Overhauling the national pastime.
Leavy captures the frustrations of fans everywhere in this charming, resourceful plea to reinvigorate a sport that “forgot how to be fun.” Current Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he’ll leave his post in 2029, prompting the accomplished baseball biographer to launch this arch campaign for the job. Her diagnosis of the sport’s plight, sharpened by reporting trips to spring-training complexes, amateur tournaments, data-in-sports confabs, and numerous games, is boldly stated: “Analytics fucked baseball.” The game has been transformed by high-tech data collection systems in ballparks, MLB front offices run by quants, and specialized player-development centers. Today’s pitchers are instructed to put “max effort” into each delivery. Hitters are increasingly aware that teams “don’t pay for singles,” as a player tells Leavy. It’s no coincidence that strikeouts and injuries to young pitchers have spiked. The open-minded, comically profane ex–Baltimore Orioles beat writer is an ideal guide to this exasperating era, one that some of her sources trace to Rotisserie baseball, a fantasy sports forerunner invented by Daniel Okrent, an accomplished writer and Leavy’s friend. She travels the country, bouncing ideas off historians, managers, players, and executives. Her many common-sense proposals include higher outfield walls, which would reduce homers and increase basepath action, and “designated signer[s]” at MLB games—players who’d fulfill postgame autograph requests. Unlike fusty defenders of the sport’s traditions, she’s willing to reassess all aspects of the sport, from roster sizes to rules discouraging fastballs over 95 mph. Though some of her reporting is fruitless—she accomplishes little with a chapter about an independent pro team known for mediocre baseball and wacky promotions—Leavy’s blend of enthusiasm, knowledge, and iconoclasm prevails.
Irreverent analysis and fresh ideas from a baseball writer dismayed by the state of the modern game.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780306834660
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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