Basketball fans will enjoy Oakley’s stories about the game’s biggest stars and his opinions about them.
The hard-nosed former professional basketball star shares his bold outlook on life as well as wild tales on and off the court.
Oakley, who plied his trade in the NBA from 1985 to 2004, wants readers to remember three things: He’s loyal, he’s honest, and if you wrong him, he will never forget. Also, he’s good friends with his former teammate Michael Jordan. Still close today, they have always bonded over their no-nonsense attitudes and approaches toward the game. The same cannot be said for Oakley’s relationships with many other players of the era. The book is packed with Oakley’s plainspoken disdain for former players, most notably Charles Barkley, who gets a whole chapter: “Barkley and his Big Mouth.” Among the other players and coaches on the receiving end of Oakley’s unforgiving eye include Lamar Odom, Dennis Rodman, Lenny Wilkins, and Tyrone Hill. LeBron James is one of the few exceptions, a genuine star whom Oakley befriended when James was just 17. Whether the author is recounting how he tricked an opposing player into drinking too much the night before a playoff game or bemoaning the lack of physicality in today’s NBA, he walks readers through his career with unvarnished honesty. Many of Oakley’s entertaining stories go beyond basketball; the strongest sections involve amusing run-ins with a wide range of celebrities, from Judge Mathis to Spike Lee. Oakley also has a serious side, on display when he discusses his friendship with George Floyd. “As a Black man in the United States I, too, have experienced police brutality and harassment before, but never to this extreme,” he writes. “To watch the video and hear George desperately calling out to his mother for help was horrific.” Throughout, Oakley emphasizes his role as a staunch defender of his teammates and doing what he thinks is right, never passing up the opportunity to vilify those who don’t live up to his code.
Basketball fans will enjoy Oakley’s stories about the game’s biggest stars and his opinions about them.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982175-64-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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