With humor, a touch of pathos, and equal amounts of jock-talk and social history, Sports Illustrated senior writer Montville tells how 7'7'' Manute Bol went from cow-tender in the Sudan to multimillionaire shot-blocker for basketball's Philadelphia 76ers. A spindly giant among giants, Bol has been described as ``the ultimate player from the ultimate ghetto.'' He's also been called ``a liability'' and the worst player in the NBA. A Dinka tribesman from the village of Turalie (recently destroyed in Sudan's civil war), Bol had never heard of basketball prior to 1979. But ``discovered'' by Don Feeley, a journeyman coach looking for a ticket to the big time, Bol found himself in Ohio in 1983, the pet project of Cleveland State coach Kevin Mackey (whose drug problems landed him in jail, while his recruiting violations led to suspension). Illiterate and speaking almost no English, Bol was enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he played basketball and took photography, racquetball, and pottery (the school was later placed on probation). When his selection in the NBA draft was voided on a technicality, he signed with the Rhode Island Gulls of the fledgling USBL. Teamed with the 5'7'' Spud Webb, Bol, Montville notes, quickly tired of being a sideshow, a ``photo opportunity.'' Finally drafted by the Washington Bullets and later traded to Golden State and then Philadelphia, the much- too-slender backup center (who weighs less than 200 pounds) never developed his offense, averaging fewer than four points per game, and was unable to hold his own ``against...brutes the size of Moses Malone.'' But Bol has led the league in blocked shots, and his mere presence on the court requires adjustments by opposing teams. Montville suggests that Bol's greatest impact on the game may be in opening the door to other Africans. Oddly touching and funny: a captivating look at a unique individual. (Eight pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Feb. 24, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-74928-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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