A stirring account of the dubious battle waged against Jim Crow by an unsung pioneer.
This biography salutes a basketball phenomenon who integrated a bastion of racism.
Heys recaps the life of Henry Harris, the first Black athlete to play for a Deep South college in the Southeastern Conference when he started for the Auburn University Tigers basketball team in 1968. Hobbled by a knee injury that ended his dreams of NBA stardom, he killed himself in 1974. The writer—a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and author of The Winecoff Fire (1993)—makes Harris a potent symbol of the successes and shortcomings of the civil rights movement. Born to an impoverished family in harshly segregated Greene County, Alabama, Harris benefited from the quickening pace of desegregation in the ’60s, which prodded the previously all-White athletics programs at Auburn and the University of Alabama to offer him scholarships. But when he began playing at Auburn, Heys notes, Harris ran a gantlet of racial insults and threats at many of his games, struggled to find integrated accommodations on the road, and had to hide a relationship with a White girlfriend. More insidiously, even as his talent and fortitude made him a fan favorite, he felt a persistent loneliness and alienation on the overwhelmingly White campus—White teammates avoided rooming with him—and a sense of being disposable when his value to the Tigers waned. The author sets Harris’ experiences against a sweeping account of Jim Crow in Southern sports and the arduous struggles of Black athletes, who braved physical danger—one football player died when his White teammates suddenly piled up on him in a scrimmage—and ostracization. Heys’ narrative deftly untangles the complex evolution of racial politics in sports in the ’60s, while his lucid, sensitive prose lays bare the psychological pressures Harris faced and waxes lyrical about his quiet heroism. (“Harris was the tip of a spear heaved by his forebears…all the field hands who persevered in the South for decades, waiting for a chance to prove themselves…as if they had ushered him out of the cotton fields, a basketball in hand, to meet this appointed hour.”) The result is a gripping and poignant saga of an unfinished revolution.
A stirring account of the dubious battle waged against Jim Crow by an unsung pioneer.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-56578-1
Page Count: 387
Publisher: Black Belt Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dillard’s story reflects maturity and understanding from someone who was forced to mature and understand too much too soon.
A measured memoir from a daughter of the famous family.
Growing up in the Institute of Basic Life Principles community, which she came to realize was “a cult, thriving on a culture of fear and manipulation,” Duggar and her 18 siblings were raised never to question parental authority. As the author recalls, she felt no need to, describing the loving home of her girlhood. When a documentary crew approached her father, Jim Bob, and proposed first a series of TV specials that would be called 17 Kids and Counting (later 18 and 19 Kids and Counting), he agreed, telling his family that this was a chance to share their conservative Christian faith. It was also a chance to become wealthy, but Jill, who was dedicated to following the rules, didn’t question where the money went. A key to her falling out with her family was orchestrated by Jim Bob, who introduced her to missionary Derick Dillard. Their wedding was one of the most-watched episodes of the series. Even though she was an adult, Jill’s parents and the show continued to expect more of the young couple. When they attempted to say no to filming some aspects of their lives, Jill discovered that a sheet of paper her father asked her to sign the day before her wedding was part of a contract in which she had unwittingly agreed to full cooperation. Writing about her sex offender brother, Josh, and the legal action she and Derick had to take to get their questions answered, Jill describes how she was finally able—through therapy, prayer, and the establishment of boundaries—to reconcile love for her parents with Jim Bob’s deception and reframe her faith outside the IBLP.
Dillard’s story reflects maturity and understanding from someone who was forced to mature and understand too much too soon.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781668024447
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: today
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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