A lively, consistently entertaining sports biography.
Historian and travel writer Klein (Discovering the Boston Harbor Islands: A Guide to the City's Hidden Shores, 2008, etc.) delivers a well-researched, enjoyable biography of boxing’s first heavyweight superstar, John L. Sullivan (1858–1918).
In the late 1800s, boxing matches were little more than “savage human cockfights.” Though prizefighting had rules, few participants followed them; moreover, the sport itself was mired in corruption and always on the run from the law. All that began to change when “Boston Strong Boy” Sullivan stepped into the ring in the late 1870s. A wondrous “ ‘engine of destruction’ manifest in flesh in blood,” Sullivan drifted into boxing at age 19 after demonstrating his prowess in impromptu brawls that caused him to lose jobs as a day laborer. He began his career by taking part in local matches around his native Boston. In 1880, Sullivan met his first two championship-level opponents and demolished them both. He traveled all over the country to take part in exhibition fights, and he earned a reputation as a fearsome opponent who never lost a match. Two years later, Sullivan finally had his much-desired shot at the heavyweight title in a bare-knuckle, illegal brawl. He defeated the reigning champion and then began another successful fight, outside the ring, to require that prizefights be conducted under Marquess of Queensberry rules, under which contestants had to wear gloves and put an end to such practices as head butting and wrestling. Attentive as he is to historical details, Klein’s storytelling gift is most evident in how he depicts “John L.” as a beloved hero who was eventually undone by ego and who had a legendary appetite for food and drink. Though largely forgotten, Sullivan was the great “American Hercules” who ruled the late-19th-century boxing world and helped usher it into the modern sporting age.
A lively, consistently entertaining sports biography.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7627-8152-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
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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