Next book

THE BEST THAT I CAN BE

A diverting autobiography by the 1960 Olympic decathlon champion, told with equal parts grace, humility, and candor. Johnson’s story is set up in ten chapters, each representing an event in the decathlon and bearing titles such as “Clearing the Hurdle” and “Vaulting High, Falling Far.” Born in 1935 in Texas, he grew up In Kingsburg, Calif.,, a small town not far from Fresno. He was attracted to track, in part, he says, “because the sport did not involve one-on-one physical confrontation or attempts to do harm to opponents.” Fresh out of high school in 1953, he started doing well in national meets, placing just behind Olympians like Bob Richards. A young black man, he attended UCLA because of the school’s “proud long-standing commitment to racial equality” and because he felt a special affinity for Coach Elvin “Ducky” Drake. Johnson won the decathlon at the 1955 Pan Am Games, setting a new record in his first international competition. His sights were on Olympic gold, though injuries forced him to settle for silver at Melbourne in 1956. He would reach the pinnacle at the1960 Rome Olympics in an intense competition with his good friend C.K. Yang of Taiwan. Johnson’s insights and descriptions of the decathlon events are a highlight of the book. Following his athletic career, Johnson appeared in a number of Hollywood films (without distinction), worked for People to People and the Peace Corps, served as a sports reporter for NBC, and was hired as an affirmative-action consultant by Continental Telephone, where he became a vice president. Always one to be involved, Johnson was a member of Robert F. Kennedy’s entourage and was present when the senator was assassinated. He offers a riveting account of that event, of helping to wrestle Sirhan Sirhan to the floor and prying the gun from his hands. Never an ego-driven man, Johnson is perhaps the most undervalued, underpublicized sports hero in recent memory. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)

Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1998

ISBN: 0-385-48760-6

Page Count: 276

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998

Next book

NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

Next book

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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

Close Quickview