A well-crafted life of a man who, though now largely out of the spotlight, enjoyed a storied career.
Thoughtful portrait of the 1977 Heisman Trophy Winner and 1991 inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Earl Campbell (b. 1955), writes Austin American-Statesman reporter Price (Year of the Dunk: A Modest Defiance of Gravity, 2015, etc.), was a force of nature on the field, “a modern John Henry, the heroic and tragic figure of a hard-working, plow-straight-ahead man who worked himself into a broken-down condition by giving it his all—his body an atlas of the brutality of the game.” Born in small-town Texas, Campbell always had “country manners” that led some to think of him as a bumpkin, which he answered with a stiff arm and phenomenal moves on the field that led many students of the game to consider him one of the greatest players ever. Campbell was a fearsome player who graced the campus of the University of Texas, once a bastion of segregation, at a time when Austin was emerging as a perhaps unlikely capital of hippiedom. Price’s portrait of a town where “on game days in the parking lot of Mother Earth, a club not far from campus, you could barter football tickets for weed” is nicely detailed, and it’s telling that as part of his rookie hazing on the roster of the Houston Oilers, Campbell sang “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up To Be Cowboys.” Price knows his sports, and he writes well about such things as the Landry Shift—“a beat after taking their stance…the offensive linemen, in unison, would stand and reset”—and Campbell’s considerable skills as a running back. More than that, he discusses Campbell’s college and pro careers against the backdrop of racism that accompanied the “shift from crew cuts to Afros” of which he was a part, considering himself to be a champion of racial reconciliation who had the outward demeanor of a “smiling athlete" but was altogether serious.
A well-crafted life of a man who, though now largely out of the spotlight, enjoyed a storied career.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4773-1649-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Univ. of Texas
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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