Caesar’s winning prose will keep even armchair readers turning pages, perhaps tuning in to watch the next marathon.
A wide-ranging and compelling account of marathons and the very fastest men who run them.
Caesar, a British journalist with many American credits (New York Times Magazine, Outside, the Atlantic, etc.), explores the world of high-speed long-distance running. The dream of running the 26.2-mile race in less than two hours has not yet been achieved, and the author shows us the pursuit of that dream. Besides giving a capsule history of the race, from its mythical beginnings in Greece through its 20th-century ups and downs in popularity to its present dominance by East Africans, Caesar reveals its personalities and delves into its economics, science, and psychology. While the author depicts a host of runners, both well-known and otherwise, at the center of the story is Geoffrey Kiprono Mutai, a Kenyan runner whose personal best is 2:03:02. Caesar spent time with Mutai, observing the lives of Kenyan runners and how and why they run. Their mastery of marathon running has been variously attributed to geography (altitude, terrain), lifestyle (diet, arduous training), biology (genetic makeup, physique), and to an overwhelming desire to escape a difficult life. Caesar, whose admiration for his subjects is palpable, examines all of these, including the question of possible drug use. He also looks into the role of the runners' managers, the efforts of shoe companies to create the perfect running shoe, the varying design of marathon courses in different cities, and the outside factors affecting speed, such as wind and temperature. Readers should not skip the endnotes: this usually dry addendum is unexpectedly entertaining and informative. “Whatever science or common sense one uses to rebut the possibility of a two-hour marathon,” writes the author, “we still cannot resist its lure.”
Caesar’s winning prose will keep even armchair readers turning pages, perhaps tuning in to watch the next marathon.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-8584-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
At this rate, Tyson may write a multivolume memoir as he continues to struggle and survive.
An exhaustive—and exhausting—chronicle of the champ's boxing career and disastrous life.
Tyson was dealt an unforgiving hand as a child, raised in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in a "horrific, tough and gruesome" environment populated by "loud, aggressive" people who "smelled like raw sewage.” A first-grade dropout with several break-ins under his belt by age 7, his formal education resumed when he was placed in juvenile detention at age 11, but the lesson he learned at home was to do absolutely anything to survive. Two years later, his career path was set when he met legendary boxing trainer Cus D'Amato. However, Tyson’s temperament never changed; if anything, it hardened when he took on the persona of Iron Mike, a merciless and savage fighter who became undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. By his own admission, he was an "arrogant sociopath" in and out of the ring, and he never reconciled his thuggish childhood with his adult self—nor did he try. He still partied with pimps, drug addicts and hustlers, and he was determined to feed all of his vices and fuel several drug addictions at the cost of his freedom (he recounts his well-documented incarcerations), sanity and children. Yet throughout this time, he remained a voracious reader, and he compares himself to Clovis and Charlemagne and references Camus, Sartre, Mao Zedong and Nietzsche's "Overman" in casual conversation. Tyson is a slumdog philosopher whose insatiable appetites have ruined his life many times over. He remains self-loathing and pitiable, and his tone throughout the book is sardonic, exasperated and indignant, his language consistently crude. The book, co-authored by Sloman (co-author: Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss, 2012, etc.), reads like his journal; he updated it after reading the galleys and added "A Postscript to the Epilogue" as well.
At this rate, Tyson may write a multivolume memoir as he continues to struggle and survive.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16128-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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