Hurley’s writing walks a fine line between unadorned and overly conversational, but the messages come through clearly, and...
Twenty-five state championships, four national championships, seven undefeated seasons: With the assistance of veteran co-author Paisner (co-author: Nobody's Perfect: Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History, 2011, etc.), Hurley tells the stories behind his remarkable success.
What are the numbers that a coach or athlete must garner before they are eligible to write the how-it’s-done guide to utter domination in the sport and in life? Without question, Hurley has met the requirements over his 40-plus seasons as head coach at St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, N.J., and a quote from Vince Lombardi at the beginning dispels the notion that Hurley is selling the idea that perfection can be achieved. Throughout, the author espouses the values of preparation and hard work in stories that span his career in coaching. Books from former coaches, proclaiming to deliver the secrets to success in sports, are a dime a dozen, but Hurley’s entry stands out as an example of how some of the older standards for sport—such as humility, the embrace of endless hard work, ignoring the trappings of success and the “bigger is better” mindset that leads athletes to put the bling before the ring—are still worthy standards to follow. Hurley often trained with the high school students he was coaching, to teach them that nobody, not even the coach, was above bettering themselves physically. At the same time, he writes, he questioned the impact it would have to erase one of the “lines” between the coach and the players, wondering if the benefits would outweigh the potential costs.
Hurley’s writing walks a fine line between unadorned and overly conversational, but the messages come through clearly, and fans of Friday Night Lights, as well as sports fans in general, will enjoy the author’s memories.Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-98687-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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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