A diffuse and hype-riddled profile of world soccer's ``bad boy.'' Burns, a correspondent for Britain's Financial Times, pieces together the career of Diego Maradona, which saw remarkable heights and depths—often in quick succession. To Burns, Maradona (who as of this book's UK release in 1996 was serving a ``banned substances'' suspension by soccer's international governing board) was a mercurial soccer ``genius''—a phrase the author badly overplays—who all too often fell prey to his protean appetites for drink, drugs, and the company of easy women. Growing up in Argentina's machismo-soaked sporting culture, Diego was further encouraged to succeed by his family as a way out of poverty. Maradona's later troubles, it would seem, stemmed from his having too much too soon: He played his first professional match in 1976, just shy of his 16th birthday; by the time he was 22, he was a millionaire. When he was good, he was very good: In 1986 he led Argentina to a World Cup title, and during the late '80s he paced the moribund Napoli franchise to two Italian league championships. However, as talented as he was down on the pitch, he could never outrun the demons that tormented him, including addictions to alcohol and cocaine—the latter habit he likely picked up in the early '80s while he was with his first international club, Barcelona FC. Complicating Diego's life was the steady company of hangers-on who fed his ego and nurtured his love for fast times, too often while reaching into his pocket. While Maradona's is an interesting story, even for soccer-ignorant Americans, Burns's narrative lacks, well, soccer- -specifically, any description of what made Maradona so much greater than other players. Without this to complete the picture, the accounts of his repeated failings lack either context or interest. (24 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1997
ISBN: 1-55821-597-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
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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