A must-read for fans, but fails to capture the true essence of Bettis’s charisma.
Self-serving career retrospective from one of the NFL’s all-time leading rushers and all-around nice guys.
Bettis’s life is a checklist of quintessential sports fairy-tale elements: dangerous childhood in a poor Detroit neighborhood; drug deals and bad influences; hardworking, supportive parents who instilled values; scholarship to prestigious university (Notre Dame); illustrious and potentially hall-of-fame career in the NFL; storybook ending after winning the Super Bowl in his last game—in his hometown of Detroit, no less. It’s beyond question that “the Bus,” an immensely popular player as a result of his talent, charm and tireless philanthropy, has a tale to tell. Too often, however, what could have been an enlightening, inspiring look inside professional football by an intelligent man who overcame overwhelming obstacles becomes a rote recitation of game statistics accented by a discordant measure of braggadocio. Bettis chronicles nearly every good game he ever played and offers justifications for some of the bad ones, ranging from the numerous painful injuries he suffered throughout his career to a lack of talented teammates. ESPN writer Wojciechowski (Cubs Nation: 162 Games, 162 Stories, 1 Addiction, 2005, etc.) valiantly tries to inject some life into each chapter via descriptive introductions and interviews with friends, and the duo does manage to provide some genuinely touching moments, particularly when highlighting the unswerving loyalty the Bus inspired in teammates like Hines Ward and Ben Roethlisberger. The book works best when Bettis discusses his relationships with his family and other players or riffs on random topics ranging from his love of bowling to his condemnation of Notre Dame for its relatively quick firing of black head coach Tyrone Willingham. When it loses itself in the congratulatory minutiae of its subject’s accomplishments, however, readers are likely to start heading for the exits.
A must-read for fans, but fails to capture the true essence of Bettis’s charisma.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52061-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
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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