No backboard-shattering revelations but a candid look at what it takes to remain at the top of the college basketball heap.
With the assistance of Sokolove (Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater, 2013, etc.), University of Kentucky basketball coach Calipari (Bounce Back, 2009, etc.) lays out his coaching philosophy as it applies to his current position as head of college basketball’s most storied program.
As it becomes increasingly common for basketball players to join the NBA if not straight out of high school, then after only a year or two of college, coaches at elite universities, under pressure to sign top prospects and make deep runs in the NCAA tournament, are facing new challenges. Landing in Kentucky in 2009 after making the Final Four as head coach at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Memphis, and briefly coaching the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, Calipari has found success with an NCAA championship in 2012 and with 17 of his Kentucky players drafted by the NBA, including No. 1 overall picks John Wall and Anthony Davis. At the forefront of the author’s narrative is the problem of having to compete under the microscope that is Kentucky basketball with a virtually new team every year. The coach is not concerned here with X’s and O’s but with helping his players succeed, as a team and individually, both on and off the court. Much of this “players first” philosophy comes across as obvious common sense, though the frequent discussion of specific players will be of interest to followers of the team. Where Calipari, known throughout his career as outspoken and whose teams have been cited for NCAA violations, really gains steam is in his discussion of proposed reforms to the embattled organization, which has come under increasing criticism over its handling of the student athletes who bring billions of dollars in revenue to the NCAA and its schools.
No backboard-shattering revelations but a candid look at what it takes to remain at the top of the college basketball heap.Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59420-573-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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