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A review by lauuwz
Concussion by Jeanne Marie Laskas
3.0
Concussion is a good book, but it wasn't the book I wanted it to be.
It doesn't touch what I think is the defining cultural question its story presents: what has to happen to reform or eliminate football as we know it? I realized near the end of the book that what I wanted most was both more prescriptive and predictive than Laskas meant it to be. I wanted to hear more from the NCAA, whose feet, rather than being held to, should probably just be engulfed by the fire re: their treatment of so-called "student athletes". I wanted a history of the decline and fall of boxing as a mainstream sport. Basically, I wanted Concussion to be a story about institutional struggles rather than the biography of a forensic pathologist. It isn't that book. It's a good book, but it isn't that book.
More than a minor quibble: Laskas is an evocative storyteller, and this biography of Bennet Omalu paints a beautiful (if well-trodden) picture of the complicated realities of the American Dream. In my opinion, Omalu's story suffers in juxtaposition to that of his erstwhile boss, Cyril Wecht, whose outsized personality (and mingling of a lucrative private practice with his public duties as Allegheny County Coroner) made him a political target. Laskas' thesis--that only an outsider like Omalu, oblivious to the consequences of his actions, would have the nerve to stand up to the NFL--is undermined by Wecht's spotlight-seeking behavior (dude is straight up being a contrarian all over the news all of the time, and he's not an outsider). Why make the Wecht trial the dramatic lynchpin of this story? Narratively, it makes very little sense to me.
All of that said, I think everyone should read it.
It doesn't touch what I think is the defining cultural question its story presents: what has to happen to reform or eliminate football as we know it? I realized near the end of the book that what I wanted most was both more prescriptive and predictive than Laskas meant it to be. I wanted to hear more from the NCAA, whose feet, rather than being held to, should probably just be engulfed by the fire re: their treatment of so-called "student athletes". I wanted a history of the decline and fall of boxing as a mainstream sport. Basically, I wanted Concussion to be a story about institutional struggles rather than the biography of a forensic pathologist. It isn't that book. It's a good book, but it isn't that book.
More than a minor quibble: Laskas is an evocative storyteller, and this biography of Bennet Omalu paints a beautiful (if well-trodden) picture of the complicated realities of the American Dream. In my opinion, Omalu's story suffers in juxtaposition to that of his erstwhile boss, Cyril Wecht, whose outsized personality (and mingling of a lucrative private practice with his public duties as Allegheny County Coroner) made him a political target. Laskas' thesis--that only an outsider like Omalu, oblivious to the consequences of his actions, would have the nerve to stand up to the NFL--is undermined by Wecht's spotlight-seeking behavior (dude is straight up being a contrarian all over the news all of the time, and he's not an outsider). Why make the Wecht trial the dramatic lynchpin of this story? Narratively, it makes very little sense to me.
All of that said, I think everyone should read it.