Here’s what Bird couldn’t reveal in the sports pages about his back injury, his decision to coach the Pacers, his thoughts on fellow players and coaches, his honors, and more. Bird with Bob Ryan wrote Drive in 1989, but this one should win the tip-off. Only the first quarter of this articulate, candid book concentrates on Bird’s playing days, NBA to “Dream Team,” and is initially dominated by the back troubles that curtailed his spectacular career. We couldn’t know what kind of agony Bird was playing with or missing games for. Thanks to “with” author MacMullan, we learn the details of his condition, and how therapist Dan Dyrek became a more constant and intimate friend than any teammates, coaches, or rivals—many of whom, especially “Magic,” there are interesting anecdotes about. The pain was so bad that when he retired without fanfare in 1992 it was a happy occasion for this fierce competitor, and like a hick from French Lick, Ind., Bird removed his back brace, “took out my shotgun and blew it to pieces.” Because this superstar is genuinely, refreshingly shy, he didn’t want to play for the Olympics “in some kind of honorary role,” and he was embarrassed that his presence overshadowed the retirement of Parrish’s number and that fellow inductees in the Hall of Fame had to say “thank you all for inviting me to Larry’s party.” There are enough descriptions of Celtics and Pacers games, and playing against Michael Jordan, “Magic,” playoff teams and their coaches to keep basketball enthusiasts happy. The book is endearing for its humanity, however, as we see this poor son of a waitress and suicide realize his hoop dreams but put away his money and ego. (There is a foreword by Pat Riley.) Courtside seats to one of the game’s greatest, most driven and pained figures. (TV satellite tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-446-52464-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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