Becker uncovers it all and doesn't pull any punches, even when he's the one getting the beating.
Wimbledon champ Becker discusses his many triumphs and misadventures.
Becker, the blond Teutonic giant with the killer serve, Wimbledon’s youngest champion, was always known on the court for his intensity; that same focus is present on the page as Becker discusses his career and home life over the past two decades. The episodes that Becker explores include his divorce, his tax evasion trial and his illegitimate daughter. It seems that, despite the glory, the endorsements and the money, it wasn't easy being Becker, particularly with the hopes and dreams of his entire country riding on the outcome of every game he played. Along with the grueling personal incidents, Becker discusses his professional tennis days in detail: his coaches and their strategies, his battles on the court, his physical injuries. But while tennis fans should enjoy reading about the type of racket he used, where he stayed near Wimbledon and what he ate before big games, at the heart of this are Becker’s relationships, including those with competitors McEnroe and Lendl, with his ex-wife and children and with the one-night stand who became the mother of his only daughter. A non-linear timeline first places the champ on the court at the moment of his win, then at his father's funeral, then at the airport, where he is detained after a tax evasion conviction, and so on. In all, the work is intelligent and earnest, revealing a complexity that few may have suspected.
Becker uncovers it all and doesn't pull any punches, even when he's the one getting the beating.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-553-81716-7
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Bantam UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
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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