Reviews for Cancel me if you can
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
The controversial Barstool Sports founder speaks his mind. Love him or loathe him, Barstool Sports founder Portnoy has built one of the most influential—and polarizing—sports media brands of the digital age. Readers will likely approach his memoir with opinions already firmly in place. Fans will relish his blunt unapologetic voice; detractors may at least come away respecting the relentless drive behind his success. Although framed around Portnoy’s many public controversies, ultimately, this is less a grievance narrative than an entrepreneurial memoir in which nearly every business triumph is accompanied by another public feud that only amplifies his brand. He casts himself as perpetually at war with journalists, business rivals, and critics determined to cancel him. His fiercest attacks are reserved for agents and reporters. The strongest chapters chronicle Barstool’s unlikely beginnings as a free, Boston sports-gambling newspaper he launched in 2003. Beneath his swagger, Portnoy delivers a surprisingly grounded, even inspiring, account of building a business from scratch: cold-calling advertisers before the paper existed, writing nearly every article himself, delivering copies throughout Boston, inventing marketing schemes on the fly, and refusing to quit despite repeated setbacks. He vividly captures the obsessive work ethic and improvisational instincts that transformed a one-man operation into a multimedia empire spanning sports media, gambling, podcasts, merchandising, and internet personalities. Portnoy’s guiding principle is simple: trust in his instincts, no matter the backlash. That certainty fuels both his greatest successes and his most divisive moments, including his unwavering political opinions and repeated clashes with the press. Refreshingly free of the ghostwritten slickness that flattens so many celebrity memoirs, he proves a natural storyteller. His prose is unfiltered, profane, combative, and consistently entertaining. Even readers at odds with his worldview may better appreciate how the same unshakable convictions that repeatedly landed him in controversy also powered Barstool’s remarkable rise. A brash entrepreneurial memoir driven by ambition and resilience if sometimes sidetracked by repeated score-settling. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
