A welcome collective portrait of one of America’s best-known, if not much-loved, athletes.
Thirty-seven top-notch pieces about notorious heavyweight boxing sensation Tyson.
Moody, boyish, generous, monstrous, violent, misogynistic, Tyson has been a psychological riddle since adolescence, when veteran boxing trainer Cus D’Amato plucked him from an upstate New York reform school. Beginning his career in 1985, Tyson became, at age 20, the youngest person ever to win the Heavyweight Championship; he’s lost only 3 of his 53 professional fights. His life and career, however, have lurched consistently toward the worst kind of notoriety, especially after D’Amato died and Tyson’s management was taken over by flamboyant boxing impresario Don King. The fighter’s divorce from actress Robin Givens amid charges of domestic violence, his trial and conviction in Indiana for raping a beauty pageant contestant (he served three years of a six-year prison sentence), and his assault on boxer Evander Holyfield’s ear have all left Tyson with a reputation as a powerful brute who lacks control of his explosive and destructive impulses. But he remains a hero to many, especially black youth, and his box-office staying power speaks for itself. Friends give numerous examples of his sentimentality, generosity, and grace; journalists commend his obvious love for boxing and encyclopedic knowledge of its history, developed by watching old fight films. Among the first-class contributors here are Joyce Carol Oates, George Plimpton, David Remnick, Jack Newfield, Harry Crews, and Robert Lipstye, although one of the most revealing accounts comes from non-journalist Rudy Gonzales, Tyson’s erstwhile chauffeur and occasional confidante. Generally, the authors see Tyson as a gifted bad boy whose background as a mugger and street punk gave him little preparation for the immense fame and fortune he encountered as a young man. While there’s more than enough ammo to satisfy Tyson-haters, the collection tends to read as an appreciation of Iron Mike as a cultural icon and likely the greatest boxer of our age.
A welcome collective portrait of one of America’s best-known, if not much-loved, athletes.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-56025-356-8
Page Count: 353
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
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
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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