The literary equivalent of an NFL pregame show: obnoxious, frequently incoherent and only engaging when it actually focuses...
A former All-Pro defensive lineman with a mouth as big as his massive frame dishes on life in the NFL trenches and various controversies that dogged his career.
One of the greatest defensive players of his era, Sapp helped transform the perpetually pathetic Tampa Bay Buccaneers into Super Bowl champions. He was also one of the game’s harder hitters, biggest talkers and more controversial figures. With assistance from Fisher, Sapp chronicles his poor upbringing in Apopka, Fla.; his starring role on a University of Miami team that included future NFL legend Ray Lewis and wrestling icon Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; and his 13 seasons in the NFL. Unfortunately, his inimitable style can best be characterized as self-aggrandizing and far less hilarious than the author thinks it is. While he manages to share a few interesting insider stories—among them insight into the fines that teams hand out to offensive linemen caught loafing after an interception—there’s little doubt that the spotlight will focus on Sapp’s contention that Miami alumni, including Michael Irvin and Jim Kelly, contributed to a pool of money that was doled out to college players for making big plays. He downplays the incident, but his intimation that Irvin and others contributed up to $5,000 to the pot is sure to generate headlines. Elsewhere, Sapp attempts to explain the circumstances around failed drug tests and his arrest on domestic abuse charges—incidents, he contends, greatly exaggerated by a misinformed media—while failing to address—as a member of the media—his own apparently erroneous labeling of Jeremy Shockey as the “snitch” who blew the whistle on the New Orleans Saints’ bounty program.
The literary equivalent of an NFL pregame show: obnoxious, frequently incoherent and only engaging when it actually focuses on the game.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-00438-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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