A class act and a courageous voice to the end.
The posthumous memoir by the sportscaster who brought hip-hop to ESPN and subsequently showed his strength of character through his fight with cancer.
Though Scott was once mainly known for his “Booyah!” catch phrase (which he explains the origin of here), this memoir shows what a mistake it would be to underestimate the man or his cultural influence. About half of it is what one would expect from a cancer memoir: the mysterious pain, the diagnosis, the operations, the chemotherapy, the false hope of an illusory remission, the support from family and friends, the unwitting insensitivity from others. Yet some of the most moving parts of the book have little to do with cancer—mainly showing what a devoted father Scott was to his two daughters—and some of the most revelatory sections reflect the dynamic between the sports journalism establishment (overwhelmingly white) and the athletes they cover (predominantly black). “I’ve been criticized for being too chummy with and soft on athletes,” he writes. “That critique is born of a very particular type of journalism: one in which predominantly white, middle-aged writers and broadcasters judge young, often black, athletes. I’ll ask tough questions, if need be. But they’ll be in service of explaining rather than judging.” Within such a culture clash, Scott was also closer in age to many of these athletes, sharing the culture of hip-hop that seemed to mystify or annoy older white fans (and broadcasters) but plainly resonated with a larger, younger part of the audience. So this is also the story of how he got to be where he was (unlike others, he had never aspired to ESPN). It’s also the story of a man who felt blessed by what life gave him and even learned to appreciate the perspective that terminal cancer afforded him: “It makes you look fresh at small moments and see them—really see them—as if for the first time.”
A class act and a courageous voice to the end.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-17406-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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
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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