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SPORTS HEROES, FALLEN IDOLS

HOW STAR ATHLETES PURSUE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE PATHS AND JEOPARDIZE THEIR CAREERS

An even-handed, practical argument that athletes must be guided by decency and held accountable for their actions—and that...

A psychotherapist explores the by-products of fame that encourage athletes’ destructive behavior.

Like all humans, gifted sports players have inner demons; what interests Teitelbaum are the special circumstances that prompt athletes’ loss of perspective and poise. First, he takes a look at why they have been granted wealth and adulation. One cause, Teitelbaum suggests, is the fans’ need for heroes: We are moved and inspired by greatness, and we enhance our self-image by imagining an association with sports stars. They give us a sense of involvement, connection and purposefulness, a romantic yet observable feeling that life can be fantastic. Not to be forgotten, the media’s fawning over athletes taps into a celebrity culture that makes a lot of money for a number of people, from team owners and sportscasters to the sportswear and endorsement industries, never mind the players. Yet Teitelbaum writes persuasively that sports stars have much to answer for, giving hundreds of examples of gambling, substance abuse, sexual assault and even murder. These are the products, he argues, of terminal adolescence, a distorted sense of entitlement, an attitude of omnipotence and invulnerability allowing athletes to reside outside the rules that govern daily life. This attitude in part reflects the violence and moral erosion of society at large, but it also stems from immaturity characterized by a lack of empathy and self-control. Teitelbaum is well aware that emotional frailty often underlies athletes’ physical prowess: Many come from upbringings marred by domestic violence on the one hand and overindulgence on the other, he notes, though there are also many well-adjusted sports stars. When is the front office going to come out of denial? the author asks. “The leagues,” he says, “need to do a better job of policing themselves and withstanding the pressure to be lenient towards those superstars who cross the line.”

An even-handed, practical argument that athletes must be guided by decency and held accountable for their actions—and that fans need to get a life, or at least a dose of reality.

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2005

ISBN: 0-8032-4445-2

Page Count: 264

Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005

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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

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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

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