Simply wonderful.
Thoroughbred stallions are an aloof lot, so they don't make a big fuss over being graced with early retirement, plentiful sex, and an enviable cash flow.
New Yorker staff writer Conley provides all the needful color commentary with cool brio and a heart-gladdening display of language. His prose displays an easy grace, lightly worn intelligence, and unbeveled enthusiasm that makes you plain like the guy rather than envy him. He can nail physical appearances: one horse has “a sharp crescent moon way over near his left nostril, a curious marking that makes him look moody and dangerously attractive”; another’s “lips were covered with an unsightly green froth that made him look louche beyond redemption, like a pasture-grazing Henry VIII.” Or he can skewer a whole era: “harebrained conclusions based on zoological minutiae were as typical of the nineteenth century as weird facial hair.” One suspects this writer could tackle any subject with aplomb, but thoroughbred horse-breeding, populated by violent, menacing subjects boasting competitive streaks that border on the criminal, certainly offers a fine canvas for his brush. The horse world is awash with entertaining characters, from bookies and grooms and bloodstock agents to kings, sheikhs, and tax exiles; Conley takes their measure like an expert tailor. He captures the horses’ personalities too, elevating them above the status of sex machines (not that it’s so terrible to earn $20 million annually, as top stud Storm Cat does) and inviting them into the story as genuine characters. Mostly, Conley sticks to the rarified air of thoroughbred farms in Bluegrass Kentucky, that unfussy rolling landscape with its own referents: thoroughbreds must be naturally “covered,” and any offspring produced by artificial insemination will not keep their bloodline. Stud ends, however, with the author standing amidst a herd of wild horses during a driving rain, the whole pack serving as a big weathervane by shifting to keep their butts to the wind.
Simply wonderful.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58234-184-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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