"Walz only seemed like a football coach to voters with no preexisting relationship to football. His image embodied the liberal conception of nontoxic masculinity, a reverse Margaret Thatcher."

Writes Chuck Klosterman in his new book "Football," reviewed in "Is Football Doomed? Chuck Klosterman Thinks So. In his new book, the writer goes deep on a sport that dominates American cultural life — but possibly not for long." The review is by Dwight Garner in the NYT.

Garner says: "I like reading Klosterman. He’s a dorm-room philosopher and, on pop topics, the overthinker’s overthinker." Despite the headline for the review, Garner is less interested in the prediction of doom — which "takes up a relatively small portion of his book, mostly at the beginning and at the end" — and more interested in what else is in there: "The 'football is doomed' material is like a pancake that arrives alongside an order of Peking duck. The tastiest stuff is mostly tucked inside." Like that Walz material.

I've read a few Chuck Klosterman books. Click my Chuck Klosterman tag. I like the writing style. Here's an example from the NYT review: "[Football] will never completely disappear, in the same way you can still hear jazz on NPR and you can still smoke Lucky Strikes inside a casino."