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THE REAL MCKAY

MY WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS

Broadcaster McKay tells his story in a voice grown familiar from 30 years of ABC’s Wide World of Sports and 11 Olympic Games: unfailingly charming, friendly, noncombative. McKay grew up in Philadelphia and began his career as a police reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun, doing the odd radio or television spot. His 11-year stint with CBS in New York covering sports events—from roller derbies to horse races—wasn—t altogether happy; indeed, the period culminated with a —good old-fashioned nervous breakdown— in 1960. While covering the 1961 Masters Tournament, he got a call from ABC’s Roone Arledge asking if he would be interested in hosting —a summer replacement show— covering —a number of sports not normally seen on TV.— The show became the Wide World of Sports, still going strong. McKay decries the fact that the show would eventually become dominated by boxing—a sport he detests—and by the likes of daredevil Evel Knievel. But it is for his hosting of 11 summer and winter Olympic Games that McKay is best remembered, especially for his extraordinary coverage of the 1972 games at Munich when the Black September terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes. —They—re all gone,— he intoned wearily, creating one of the saddest, most memorable moments in broadcast history. McKay devotes space to each of the Olympics he reported, from the 1960 Rome Olympics to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. There are few surprises among the —heroes— he chooses to remember: Peggy Fleming, Bob Beamon, Bill Toomey, Franz Klammer, Bruce Jenner, Nadia Comaneci, Eric Heiden, Bill Johnson, etc. And his —McKay Rating— for the Best Golf Pro (Jack Nicklaus), Best Jockey (Bill Shoemaker), Best Race Car Driver (Jackie Stewart), and so on, won—t raise many arguments. But it’s nice to read his thoughts on them. A pleasant walk down memory lane with a genuinely decent man. (16 pages photos, not seen)

Pub Date: May 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-525-94418-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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