by John Taylor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2005
Elegant, even Plimptonesque at points—top-notch sports history.
Taut, well-crafted account of the fierce decade-long rivalry and odd friendship between two (literal) giants of basketball.
It’s a long-standing conundrum for sports fans: Do we cheer for the virtuoso prima donna who plays by his own rules, or do we cast our lot with the exemplary team player who plays fair and wins all the same? The question animates Esquire writer Taylor’s (The Count and the Confession, 2002, etc.) portrait of the race between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to dominate the NBA, a race that proved so newsworthy, and so freighted with drama, that it helped make basketball a major sport. Boston Celtics center Russell played, after all, for a team that was “a purely commercial afterthought in a sport without strong roots in the city’s culture,” and in an arena that was seldom more than half full; Chamberlain, playing for the Philadelphia Warriors, came aboard a team that had been an afterthought, too, until he brought his impossible-to-defend fadeaway shot. Well over seven feet tall (he would not allow himself to be measured), Chamberlain was a star, and he acted the part; the marginally smaller Russell played as part of a well-tuned team. From the time they first faced off, in 1959, each knew that the other was the competition. Chamberlain—hailed as “probably the greatest athletic construction ever formed of flesh and blood”—got the better press, especially after Russell began to espouse black nationalist views; yet Russell neatly matched Chamberlain in ability, so well, in fact, that Boston was “the only club in the league that did not feel it necessary to double-team Chamberlain.” In their final showdown, a decade later, Chamberlain behaved very oddly, Russell denounced him and their rivalry took a bitter turn for years after either figured on the court. Taylor’s account of this singular contest is a highlight of a book full of fine moments.
Elegant, even Plimptonesque at points—top-notch sports history.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6114-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
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by John Gierach illustrated by Glenn Wolff ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.
The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.
As in his previous books—from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars—Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. Even when catching fish is the point, it almost seems beside the point (anglers will understand that sentiment): At the end of one essay, he writes, “I was cold, bored, hungry, and fishless, but there was still nowhere else I’d have rather been—something anyone who fishes will understand.” Most readers will be profoundly moved by the meditation on mortality within the blandly titled “Up in Michigan,” a character study of a man dying of cancer. Though the author had known and been fishing with him for three decades, his reticence kept anyone from knowing him too well. Still, writes Gierach, “I came to think of [his] glancing pronouncements as Michigan haiku: brief, no more than obliquely revealing, and oddly beautiful.” Ultimately, the man was focused on settling accounts, getting in one last fishing trip, and then planning to “sit in the sun and think things over until it’s time for hospice.”
In these insightfully droll essays, Gierach shows us how fishing offers plenty of time to think things over.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6858-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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by Dave Lowry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 2005
A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich...
A reflective and entertaining journey through Japan, as the author seeks to reconnect with his martial arts sensei.
Lowry is a student of koryu (not to be confused with kendo), a style of Japanese classical swordsmanship. Koryu is a medieval art, like Noh and the tea ceremony, a style of combat born on the battlefield–but more importantly, it’s a way to address the world (though an esoteric one: Lowry may well be the only American practicing the art in the United States). Indeed, present-day practitioners refrain from exercising its fatal possibilities. Lowry’s sensei left the U.S. to return to Japan, urging Lowry to follow. Though his life headed in a different direction, he never forgot his training–when the time was ripe, he journeyed to Japan to join his sensei. The narrative revolves around this pivotal decision, and it provides a warm center from which the author expounds on such topics as the glories of a Japanese bath; the evolution of the Samurai caste; the peculiarities of Japanese landscape architecture; the elements of proper sandal-tying; the custom of the premarital shenanigans called yobai; and the teachings of mikkyo Buddhism. He also includes the vital story of the sword–what it reveals about Japanese life and technology, social structure and aesthetic values, etiquette, apprenticeship and the process of education. Lowry’s seriousness lends an earnest cast to the proceedings, but he’s not without a sense of humor–commenting upon his accomplished slurping of noodles, a friend’s wife notes, “He really sucks!”
A broad and deep look at Japan’s medieval referents, and a capable illustration of a martial art form steeped in rich tradition.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2005
ISBN: 1-890536-10-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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