A book about an impressive trek through unforgiving Western lands that offers a personal reflection and meditation on the...
A middle-aged cycling enthusiast takes a cross-country trip in this travel memoir.
In 2011, Hanson (The Pilgrim Way: Ultralight Bicycle Touring, 2015, etc.) surprised his friends with an announcement. He was planning a cross-country bicycle trip in which he would ride from Big Sur in California to the east coast. It was an ambitious undertaking, but he was undaunted. Though not a professional cyclist, Hanson, 57, had enough experience and know-how, and apparently the stamina, to pull it off. A friend would join the ride in Flagstaff, Arizona. As Hanson departed from Monterey, he hoped for northwest winds to help him reach a respectable goal of more than 100 miles per day. Sometimes the winds cooperated, sometimes they didn’t, but the journey along the Pacific coast and through redwood forests provided a picturesque and soulful beginning to a trip that had more to do with peace of mind than simple achievement. What lay ahead was the desert in summer. Across the Mojave, temperatures in June hovered around 120 degrees, and there were stretches with no services for 75 miles. Good planning and precise calculations tempered the struggle, as did some interactions with business proprietors in remote locales. After the cyclist’s friend Dave Giesler joins the odyssey, the book covers some of the science of riding in pairs against the wind and delves into personal and professional history to highlight what makes the trip important to Hanson. In southern Colorado, the story turns more meditative, inspired by the astonishing scenery, and light philosophizing gives way to a terrific reflection on cycling as a way to balance the need to achieve with the wish to enjoy life. Hanson writes his first-person adventure with enough descriptions of the pains and joys of cycling to pull the story successfully through some slow patches in barren landscapes (and plenty of truck stop breakfasts). He may be determined to accomplish his goal, but his simultaneous desire to improve himself adds a somewhat humble layer to the narrative. The tale concludes in Kansas, with a sequel planned to document the remainder of the journey.
Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9826391-2-2
Page Count: 232
Publisher: High Prairie Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Smith offers a straightforward account of the heady world of professional football as he describes his recent seasons as the premier running back of ``America's Team,'' the Dallas Cowboys. In telling how a poor Florida boy became a multimillion-dollar star, Smith shows that modern football plays many roles in America today: It's an art, a thing of magic, a way of life—but most of all a gritty and competitive business (and for stars like Smith, a lucrative profession). Smith talks about his sandlot heroics, his childhood dream of becoming a star for the Cowboys, and the constant doubts his size raised about his ability to compete (in childhood he was too big, as a pro too small, said his detractors). Smith's account of his football career is, however, a success story from the beginning: He was a standout in high school and at the University of Florida. Dismayed, he says, by the instability of the Florida program, Smith left prior to his senior year in order to participate in the NFL draft. Picking Smith in the first round, Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson signed him for $3 million for three years (throughout Smith's account, stories of his numerous contract negotiations loom as large as his tales of on-field feats). With the Cowboys, Smith emerged as a player of big words and big deeds, making cocksure comments but placing first among rookie rushers his first season, subsequently leading the NFL in rushing, becoming the youngest player to rush for 1,500 yards, appearing in three Pro Bowls, and leading his team to consecutive Super Bowl victories. Smith's account, written with the help of Delsohn (coauthor of John Wayne, My Father, not reviewed) culminates in his amazing 1993 season, when he won the rushing title, the season MVP award, and the MVP award for the Super Bowl. A pleasant, absorbing look at life in the NFL—from the top. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59985-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
The athletes and their story deserve better.
An American doctor covers the trials of the men who bioengineered East Germany’s champion swim teams.
Ungerleider, a sports doctor and consultant who obviously knows his way around international athletics, sets out to document the prosecution of the East German officials responsible for plying hundreds of teenage athletes with steroids during the cold war. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the East German state developed a program of “supportive measures”—a euphemism for drug and doping treatments—that were used to turn promising teenagers into überathletes who dominated Olympic and international competitions. In addition to broad backs and low swim times, however, the drugs also led to exaggerated male sexual characteristics in women, devastating psychological traumas, serious long-term health problems, and a rash of birth defects. Now, led by Professor Werner Franke, a crusading scientist, and Brigitte Berendonk, a former swimmer, many of the doped athletes are bringing civil and criminal suits against the doctors and trainers who gave them the little blue pills in the first place. Ungerleider has a great story: a tragedy with ties to the Holocaust, communism, nationalism, science, justice, feminism, and the other epic themes of the 20th century. Unfortunately he botches it terribly, and the end result is little more than an overblown, repetitive magazine article with no apparent organizational principle and writing so bad one wonders if it was just shoddily translated from German. The legal context of the trials is never explained, the narrative is nearly impossible to follow, and even the medical science dissolves into static. It makes things only worse that the babble is interspersed with snippets that strive for the heroic and fall miserably short.
The athletes and their story deserve better.Pub Date: July 20, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26977-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
