Next book

BUT SERIOUSLY

With his signature irreverence, tempered just a bit by age, McEnroe serves up a juicy, revealing look at how his tennis...

The tennis legend reflects on later stages of his personal life and career.

In a follow-up to his bestselling first memoir, You Cannot Be Serious (2002), McEnroe offers fans more glimpses into the storied career of an unassuming kid from Queens with “quick hands, good movement,” and a “smart tennis brain.” Now pushing 60 and over a decade out from his last major tour event, one of the greatest lefties ever to dominate both singles and doubles play presents an assortment of vignettes recalling pivotal moments on the court. He also reflects on the trappings accompanying that world-renown mastery, particularly as he attempts to redeem his thorny image as the anti-establishment “Jesus of Anger”—a pithy characterization offered by wife Patty Smyth, who weighs in on her husband’s character and episodes in their life. If one subject centers McEnroe’s account, it is the plight of the aging professional athlete “learning to cope with the impact the advancing years have on you,” made all the more challenging because pros “do it in public.” In addition to reckoning with physical changes—and as much as he likes to “moan about how badly selfies suck”—the author admits that, for him, “competing, performing and getting applause for what I do will probably always be the ultimate drug.” He paints his disparate forays into art collecting, sports commentating, coaching, game show hosting, guitar playing, being a bit actor, and now father of six all as attempts to fill that void. Tennis fans looking for more insight into the game will not be disappointed, as McEnroe rails against the sport’s elitism, the distraction of “grunting,” strategic bathroom breaks (“totally out of hand”), and the “annoying habit” of doubles partners opting to high-five “after missing a shot or double faulting.”

With his signature irreverence, tempered just a bit by age, McEnroe serves up a juicy, revealing look at how his tennis afterlife is playing out off the court.

Pub Date: June 27, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-316-32489-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: June 27, 2017

Next book

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

Next book

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

Close Quickview