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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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
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