An ambitious, remarkably frank, but overlong and digressive chronicle of the Philadelphia Eagles' 1992 season by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. Bowden begins and ends in the middle of the Eagles' dramatic come-from-behind playoff victory over New Orleans in January 1993. In between are 400 pages of reconstruction of behind-the-scenes goings-on, as well as highly personal profiles of the players, coaches, and owner Norman Braman. Just prior to the start of the football season, All-Pro defensive lineman Jerome Brown was killed in an auto accident. The talented, irrepressible Brown was mouthy and loud, often flabby from poor workout habits, and apparently determined to set an NFL record for paternity suits and speeding tickets. His locker became a shrine, and his loss helped bring to light the team's barely concealed divisions and animosities. Linebacker Seth Joyner became openly insulting to ``franchise quarterback'' Randall (Randoll, Joyner called him) Cunningham, accusing him publicly of consistently letting the team down in the clutch. Joyner and the rest of the defense were ``Buddy's Boys,'' hard-nosed athletes assembled by fiery, controversial Buddy Ryan, axed the previous year and replaced as head coach by the team's relatively inexperienced offensive coordinator, Rich Kotite—soon dubbed Coach Uptight by the press. As the season progressed and the team disintegrated, Bowden reenacts a wild fight in the stands between defensive back Wes Hopkins's wife and mistress and other fairly irrelevant outbursts. His recounting of the more pertinent football controversies, such as the debate over whether Cunningham or Jim McMahon should be quarterback, demonstrate the depth of the venomous feelings within the team. By midseason, even the press was urging the players to ``shut up and play football.'' Bowden's writing has an it's-all-so-amusing edge. As incident- laden and wacky as the season was, he's too long-winded to sustain interest. (16 pages photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42841-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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