A mildly intriguing look at a global icon that would have been more effective as a long-form magazine article or continuing...
LeBron James the businessman.
ESPN NBA reporter Windhorst (co-author: Return of the King: LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Greatest Comeback in NBA History, 2017, etc.) probably knows more about James than any other sportswriter, especially after covering him as the Cavaliers beat writer for the Akron Beacon Journal and Cleveland Plain Dealer before moving to ESPN. In his latest book on the King, the author chronicles his business deals both on and off the court, most of which have been successful, largely due to one main quality that Windhorst highlights throughout: his awareness of everything going on around him, which has not only guided his legendary basketball career, but also “has been vital for the expansion of his business empire.” The author straightforwardly lays out James’ various ventures, beginning with the orchestration of a fierce bidding war for his first shoe contract. Though Reebok made a significant offer, James ultimately went with Nike, signing a seven-year contract that, with the $10 million signing bonus, came to $87 million—before he was even drafted in the NBA. From there, James would go on to astronomical financial and athletic success in the NBA as well as in the film, restaurant, real estate, and other industries. Windhorst dutifully chronicles all of his deals, often comparing them to other business ventures by megastar athletes including Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Kobe Bryant. Though James is not yet a billionaire, the author notes that “he may be getting close,” and while he has made a couple poor business choices, he’s known for being relatively frugal (at least for a near billionaire), his “business is still very much unfolding.” For LeBron devotees and readers interested in the mechanics of off-the-court business dealings, this is a good choice, but the prose is merely serviceable and the narrative flow, workmanlike.
A mildly intriguing look at a global icon that would have been more effective as a long-form magazine article or continuing series.Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-3087-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2019
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
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
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