A mix of autobiography, cautionary tale and football-geek analysis that will provide die-hards with some insight into one of...
NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Carter (co-author: Born to Believe, 2000) offers his take on the position’s growing importance to professional football and why it attracts and creates some of the game’s biggest personalities.
The evolution of the NFL has seen massive changes in the way the game is played, from old-time smash-mouth, running-based football to the modern, passing-oriented spectacle we see today. Along with these changes, cultural and financial shifts have changed the lives of players off the field as well. NFL stars, like most professional athletes these days, are often in the news, not always for their game-day accomplishments. Many of the larger-than-life football stars of this new era seem to be wide receivers, and Carter, who has become a well-known TV commentator in his post-playing days, sets out to explore why. What might seem to be a flimsy topic for a full-length book is filled out with Carter’s outspoken thoughts on his career and the careers, and controversies, of others who played, and still play, the position, including Jerry Rice, Michael Irvin, Terrell Owens and Randy Moss. Though Carter’s analysis offers nothing groundbreaking, and he occasionally has to stretch a bit to make his point, his candid style and insider knowledge will keep most readers entertained. The author does not hold back from expressing his opinions on the mistakes made by other players, but he applies the same lens to himself, speaking openly of his own problems with drugs and alcohol early in his career and offering advice to others on how to make the most of their talent.
A mix of autobiography, cautionary tale and football-geek analysis that will provide die-hards with some insight into one of the sport’s most prominent positions.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4013-2485-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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