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TAKING TO THE AIR

THE RISE OF MICHAEL JORDAN

Besides offering a solid chronological biography and record of Michael Jordan's basketball career, here Naughton (My Brother Stealing Second, 1989) also gives an astute assessment of this superstar's impact on society and of ``the conflict between self and symbol'' for an American icon. The ``most successfully marketed athlete in the history of team sports,'' ``Air'' Jordan's popularity transcends the basketball court and, according to Naughton, the racial boundaries encountered by other black athletes and celebrities. Examining Jordan's development from his youth through his emotional catharsis after the 1991 NBA championship, the author finds a man possessed by the need to compete and excel—but one also steeped in the values of family and charity. A member of the 1984 Olympic team following his illustrious career at the Univ. of North Carolina, Jordan's impact on the NBA was felt almost immediately, both on and off the court. His incredible acrobatics and scoring sprees, combined with his unprecedented $2.5 million, five-year contract with Nike and his persistent confrontation with the Chicago Bulls' front office over personnel decisions, marked him as a man apart, one who would become ``bigger than the game he played.'' Jordan's phenomenal appeal is grounded in part, Naughton argues, ``in the public's perception that fame has not spoiled him.'' Handsome, soft-spoken, and seemingly approachable, Jordan is the black embodiment of a Horatio Alger character. Naughton perceptively notes that other black superstars find that their success ``has not been taken as a sign of racial worthiness, but as a sign of genetic peculiarity.'' Despite Jordan's success, however, Naughton says that the player thus far ``has neither encountered the circumstances nor taken the risks that would make him a truly forceful actor in the nation's racial drama.'' Insightful and well written: a fine analysis of the business side of sports and of the creation of a modern legend. (Eight-page photo insert.)

Pub Date: March 12, 1992

ISBN: 0-446-51629-5

Page Count: 280

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992

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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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