Williams coaches far better than he writes, but he does spin a good yarn.
A Hall of Fame college-basketball coach chronicles his rise from poor son of an alcoholic father to winner of two national championships at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina.
It’s difficult to take seriously a man who habitually eschews curse words in favor of epithets like “dadgum,” so it’s fortunate that Williams has built up serious credibility during his distinguished career as the head coach at UNC and the University of Kansas. Williams’ aw-shucks demeanor masks the inner fury of an intense competitor, a man so driven to win that he invents new competitions just to give himself another chance at victory. A near-perfect embodiment of the American Dream, he endured a hardscrabble youth dominated by a violent father—who ultimately abandoned the family—before climbing down out of a family tree filled with far more scoundrels than scholars. The scrappy Williams overcame those inherent disadvantages and carved out a niche for himself as a junior-varsity player at UNC, foregoing varsity scholarships at smaller schools, before giving up his playing career to focus on coaching. While on-court emotion and intensity account for much of his success, these attributes sometimes overpower the narrative. Williams’ unrelenting desire to convey his earnest belief in hard work and love for his family, friends and players (Tyler Hansbrough in particular) is as cloying as it is compelling—he opens by recalling bouts of insomnia prior to the 2009 season brought about because he so desperately wanted Hansbrough to win a championship in his senior season. Still, the legions of Carolina fans will relish stories—including the recruitment of Michael Jordan—from Williams’ days as an assistant under legendary coach Dean Smith; college-basketball fans will admire his tenaciousness; and Kansas fans may finally forgive ol’ Roy for leaving (well, maybe not).
Williams coaches far better than he writes, but he does spin a good yarn.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-56512-959-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
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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