Evinces some of Robinson’s sweetness and flair, but doesn’t pack as much power.
An examination of the life of boxer Sugar Ray Robinson and his influence—both direct and indirect—on athletes who came after.
This digression-laden biography is less an in-depth character study than a prism through which to view the evolution of the modern celebrity athlete. Shropshire (The Business of Sports Agents, 2002, etc.) contends that Robinson’s combination of talent, charisma and style enabled him to attain an iconic status unrealized by previous sports superstars. Born Walker Smith Jr., Robinson grew up in poverty, with boxing one of the few avenues that provided a chance for escape. Despite a slender build, his skill was apparent early on, and he quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the greatest (attaining both the welterweight and middleweight championship titles) and prolific (fighting nearly 200 times, a figure that dwarfs the number of bouts fought by Muhammad Ali and other legends) fighters ever. It was Robinson’s influence outside of the ring, however, that the author claims had the greatest cultural impact. With his innate sense of “cool,” flamingo-pink Cadillac and million-watt smile, Robinson influenced celebrities outside of the boxing world (Miles Davis), younger fighters (Ali) and countless future athletes. These qualities, combined with his commitment to building businesses in the black community, made him a beloved icon despite his arrogance, womanizing and later financial difficulties. Paradoxically, his popularity surged as his skills eroded late in his career. Shropshire’s insights aren’t always profound, as he often tracks trends that are readily apparent to even semi-serious sports fans. When he delves deeper, however, and discusses the dearth of star athletes with the charisma, intelligence and awareness to take advantage of their positions to agitate for social change (he cites John Carlos and Tommie Smith as models), his skillful analysis serves to highlight the convergence of sports and culture.
Evinces some of Robinson’s sweetness and flair, but doesn’t pack as much power.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2007
ISBN: 0-465-07803-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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.
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
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
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