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WARMING UP

HOW CLIMATE CHANGE IS CHANGING SPORT

Prudent advice for all members of the sports industry.

An examination of climate change’s effect on the sporting world.

Orr is the founder and co-director of the Sport Ecology Group, “an international consortium of academics aimed at studying the impacts of climate change on sport, the many ways the sport world can reduce its environmental footprint, and how sport can increase its influence on environmental policy and public opinion.” According to the author, “the question isn’t whether climate change will impact sports. It already is. The question is: how fast can the sports world adapt?” If conditions worsen and the sports sector does not adapt, it risks “falling apart completely.” In a text based on scholarly research and interviews with members of the sports industry, Orr discusses the ways climate change continues to affect sports, including details about specific athletes, teams, and events and the impact of increasing temperatures, wildfires, floods, and declining snowfall. Orr also shines light on a particular concern with respect to sports and climate change: deferring to the coaches. As she cautions, “If you have an athlete who can’t or won’t speak up for themselves [regarding discomfort or injury], that athlete could be at risk.” Orr occasionally digresses from her primary focus, commenting on what she describes as the “elephants in the room” with respect to the world of snow sports, which include a discussion of “ski conglomerates” that haven taken over resorts, “too many” skiers being white, and alcoholism and drug use problems in ski towns. However, as she moves back on topic, Orr addresses the ways the unpredictability in the seasons is affecting communities that depend on sports for their livelihood. On a positive note, the author ends by offering an “ambitious” list of adaptations she feels can mitigate the impacts of climate change on sports.

Prudent advice for all members of the sports industry.

Pub Date: May 7, 2024

ISBN: 9781399404525

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Bloomsbury Sigma

Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024

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ELON MUSK

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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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UNGUARDED

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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