This is bound to be the best biography of Kobe Bryant for some time, even if at times it may be overkill.
A mammoth biography of one of basketball’s most complicated stars.
How readers respond to Lazenby’s (Michael Jordan: The Life, 2014, etc.) new tome will depend in no small part on how they feel about the Los Angeles Lakers’ mercurial Kobe Bryant and whether or not they buy into the idea that the recently retired superstar warrants a biography of more than 600 pages. There is no doubt that Bryant helped carry the NBA into the post–Michael Jordan era, but he was also difficult, hypercompetitive, and inclined toward self-aggrandizement—“showboat” was a nickname bestowed on him by teammates early in his career. Bryant alienated many of the people in his life, from teammates, whether little-used benchwarmers or future Hall of Famers, to family—he ended up estranged from even those who had been closest to him, including his parents (his father was a former NBA and Italian league player). Allegations of a sexual assault of a Colorado hotel worker in 2003 made him more toxic to some, even after authorities dropped the case when the alleged victim refused to testify. As he did with Michael Jordan and Jerry West, Lazenby tells Bryant’s story well, and he has a firm grip on the history and culture of the NBA. However, the question remains as to whether Bryant warrants this much space so soon after his 2016 retirement; it is likely too soon for the necessary critical distance in assessing his life and its significance in the history of the NBA. Customarily, such lengthy sports biographies require the subject to transcend sports, and Lazenby does not make a convincing enough case that Bryant does so. Still, the future Hall of Famer’s life is interesting, and much of the narrative is unquestionably compelling.
This is bound to be the best biography of Kobe Bryant for some time, even if at times it may be overkill.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-38724-8
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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