by Mark Ribowsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 2018
The book has its moments, but not enough to overcome Ribowsky’s flubs and irksome penchant for mockery.
An in-depth look at American football royalty.
The Manning quarterbacking family has figured prominently in the nation’s football landscape for nearly 50 years. In his latest book, veteran biographer Ribowsky (Hank: The Short Life and Long Country Road of Hank Williams, 2016, etc.) chronicles the careers of father Archie and sons Peyton and Eli. The author draws interesting comparisons between the obsessive, publicity-hungry Peyton and the quiet, phlegmatic Eli. Whereas the former has superior statistics and will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, the latter has just as many Super Bowl wins (two) and a reputation as a better performer in the clutch. Ribowsky also illustrates how Archie, whose father committed suicide, made a point to be more invested in the lives of his children. Unfortunately, in telling this family history through the conduit of the American South and race, the author never misses an opportunity to take cheap shots at the protagonists. Thus he accuses Archie of “racism acceptance,” adding that while there is no evidence that the Mannings of Drew, Mississippi (where Archie grew up), joined the Ku Klux Klan, “neither is there any reason to believe they opposed” it. Ribowsky also wields his acerbic pen against Manning contemporaries: Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan is a “choker,” while the decision of University of Florida star Danny Wuerffel to decline a spot on Playboy’s All-America team was nothing but “self-serving treacle.” Moreover, the author’s put-downs are compounded by numerous errors. Texas Western won the NCAA men’s basketball championship in 1966, not 1965. Ryan Zimmerman plays for the Washington Nationals, not the Philadelphia Phillies. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. occurred before that of Robert F. Kennedy, not after. When President Barack Obama called Peyton following the latter’s loss in the Super Bowl, Obama was in office for more than a year, not “weeks into his first term.”
The book has its moments, but not enough to overcome Ribowsky’s flubs and irksome penchant for mockery.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-309-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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
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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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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