A truly rounded, fully fleshed portrait of a significant 20th-century figure.
One of the greatest—and most controversial—athletes of all time gets a well-balanced biographical and historical treatment.
Jim Brown (b. 1936) is arguably the best football player in the history of the sport, a truly larger-than-life figure who may have also been the best lacrosse player ever. “From the moment he stepped onto a playing field,” writes Nation sports editor Zirin (Brazil's Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy, 2014, etc.), “the operative emotion expressed in describing Jim Brown has been reverence.” Few would argue, but as always in Zirin’s books, the playing field is only one element of the narrative equation. The author ticks all the biographical boxes—multisport star in both high school and college; tumultuous career at Syracuse, where he truly began to understand the scourge of racism; Hall of Fame career with the Cleveland Browns; up-and-down forays into Hollywood; lifelong activism—but what is most refreshing about this book is Zirin’s focus on Brown’s character, both awe-inspiring and highly flawed. Brown has spent his life fighting racism and advocating for economic and social justice for the black community, but he has also been accused of rampant misogyny and instances of violence against women. He has brought together rival gang members in his own home but also managed to shut out some of those closest to him due to stubbornness to remain on top in a “world of competing male egos and unfettered ids.” As Zirin notes, for Brown, maintaining his manhood—however he conceives of it—has been the most important driving factor of his life. Brown simply refuses to be “soft” in any way, and he is not shy about criticizing the current athletes who, writes the author, “have fumbled the baton passed to them and surrendered an awesome opportunity to affect seismic social change.” Zirin, who spent considerable time with Brown, deftly navigates this rocky terrain, providing ample room for Brown to tell his own story and for others to weigh in as well.
A truly rounded, fully fleshed portrait of a significant 20th-century figure.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-17344-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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