A treat for Thompson’s many fans, though guaranteed not to earn him many admirers among the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld believers.
War and football have this in common, quoth the ascended master of gonzo journalism: “They are both profoundly violent and cruel and utterly unforgiving, and they both require public brutality by people wearing elaborate uniforms.”
Football has been much on the mind of the good Dr. Thompson (Kingdom of Fear, 2003, etc.) for decades, and especially now that he’s reassumed his erstwhile role as sportswriter, this time for ESPN’s Web site. ESPN is to be commended for bravery, even if its editors take pains in this collection of columns to distance themselves from Thompson’s views—for, aside from his trademark championing of the use of adult beverages and pharmaceutical treats, he has also had war on his mind since the ascendancy of George W. Bush, whom Thompson calls “a baffled little creep” and worse. This is about sports in the same way Lolita is about sex: which is to say, not much and not often, and then mostly as an obsessive undercurrent in a discourse given over to other things. Sports fans should take interest nonetheless in Thompson’s rants about the decline of the NFL (“There are too many teams and not enough quality players”), sportswriters (“a rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks”), pitchers (“pampered little swine with too much money and no real effect on the game except to drag it out and interrupt the action”), and sundry other athletic topics. Thompson’s real constituency, which may care little for events on the playing field, will revel in the same intemperance directed to matters set on a larger stage, ranging from war and its consequences (“American troops are killing journalists in a profoundly foreign country, for savage, greed-crazed reasons that most of them couldn’t explain or understand”) to the surreal consequences of drug-fueled conversations with film celebrities, as with Thompson’s weird fugue involving Sean Penn, a Saudi princess, and Homeland Security—a piece worth the price of admission all by itself.
A treat for Thompson’s many fans, though guaranteed not to earn him many admirers among the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld believers.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2004
ISBN: 0-684-87319-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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
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