by George Vecsey ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 13, 2014
Timed to appear before the 2014 tournament in Brazil, the book provides a readable personal story and a history of America’s...
One man’s perspective on more than three decades of international soccer.
New York Times columnist Vecsey (Stan Musial: An American Life, 2011, etc.) was among the earliest major sports journalists in the United States to embrace wholeheartedly the world’s most beloved game. “Maybe because I discovered soccer relatively late in life, I saw it with fresh eyes, a fresh heart,” he writes. “I loved the difficulty of it, the kaleidoscopic surprises, with a growing appreciation for the history and the strategy.” He experienced his first World Cup in Spain in 1982 and has attended the global showcase every four years ever since, as well as witnessing the emergence of the women’s World Cup as a significant sporting event. Here, the author serves as an idiosyncratic tour guide through the recent history of the beautiful game and the politics surrounding it. His periodization, if solipsistic and occasionally self-indulgent, is also apt, as it begins when the United States was a true backwater in the sport and ends as the Americans have established a presence as a solid second-tier power (this is not an insult) on the world’s stage. Vecsey’s tone is conversational, which usually works but may at times prove grating for some readers. His intended audience is the increasingly sophisticated and educated American soccer supporter and may well not resonate outside of the U.S. The author also admirably engages with the rise of the women’s game, though by the end of the book, he seems to have forgotten about the distaff side. Vecsey also confronts some of the seamier aspects of the politics of soccer’s global governing bodies and some of its more corrupt leaders.
Timed to appear before the 2014 tournament in Brazil, the book provides a readable personal story and a history of America’s coming-of-age on the pitch.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9848-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
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