Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
A fascinating and funny look at the life of a famous actor who found further fulfillment through giving back.
The actor discusses his career on the stage and in film, and his life focusing on the value of art and public service.
Now 66, Stern, perhaps best known for his roles in Home Alone and City Slickers, is no longer "the precocious teenager who moved to New York as a seventeen-year-old, at least ten years younger than all of my friends, the youngest dad at all my kids’ school events.” As he discusses his childhood in Maryland, his introduction to the theater, and writing a musical version of Lord of the Flies, the author's love of the work shows through on every page—as does his family’s legacy of a strong work ethic (his mother told him, “I don’t care what you do but you are out of this house when you turn eighteen”). Realizing that “academics were not going to get me anywhere,” he committed to acting. After some early stage work, he began working in films, appearing in a number of critically successful projects in the late 1970s and early ’80s, including Breaking Away and Diner. Stern analyzes key moments in the development of his craft, as well as the twists and turns of a very public life, which included work with the USO and the experience of being sued for $25 million over a TV show. Although readers may pick up the book to learn more about Hollywood, his focus on his work-life balance brings some of the most memorable passages, from his narration and directing work in the TV series The Wonder Years (which included no on-screen billing), which helped him overcome his childhood dyslexia, to his experience working with the Boys & Girls Club and his lifelong focus on public service.
A fascinating and funny look at the life of a famous actor who found further fulfillment through giving back.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781632280930
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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