A sports book that will motivate readers to live a purposeful, authentic life.
An unlikely inspirational book by the trainer for the NBA's biggest stars.
Ravin became an athletic trainer without the seemingly requisite formal education or experience. Yet, solely through word of mouth from the league's biggest stars, he has built a career training elite athletes in their shared quest to improve their games and achieve their highest goals. Ravin didn't stay at his previous boring and soul-killing job; he created one based on the game he loved. Always an outsider, he remained mistrustful of organizations that would make him "sacrifice [his] identity or authenticity to try to blend into the environment." In devising his innovative training philosophy, the author figured if players could consistently handle "the complexity, intensity and pace of the workouts I dreamt up, then practice and games would feel like Oreos soaked in milk." Pampered NBA superstars fly him across the country and pay for the privilege of working out in empty practice gyms with no amenities, having their weaknesses exposed, and competing "under strenuous circumstances designed to fatigue, test and build." He earns their trust by creating an environment of collaboration and mutual respect based on accountability, honesty and positive reinforcement. Ravin's writing mimics the quick, staccato rhythms of the game. He shares his experiences in short, free-standing chapters that create a constant flow of his observations and beliefs. With characteristic modesty, the author might reject the idea he has written not only an insightful look at what motivates NBA players, but also an uplifting life guide. (Indeed, the words he repeats throughout are “intuition,” “love” and “faith.”) Ravin doesn't reinterpret such familiar aphorisms as "Do what you love" and "Follow your bliss"; rather, this book uniquely overlaps the genres of memoir, self-help, organizational psychology and philosophy.
A sports book that will motivate readers to live a purposeful, authentic life.Pub Date: May 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59240-891-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
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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