Sometimes accused of being a complainer on the court, Boeheim comes across as likable in this readable, thoughtful book...
An autobiography from a legendary coaching lifer.
In 1962, Boeheim (b. 1944), a native of tiny Lyons, New York, walked on to the Syracuse University basketball team as a lightly touted freshman, eventually earning a scholarship. In the fall of 2014, he will begin his 39th season as head coach of the Orange. In 2003, Boeheim won the national championship after several near misses, and in 2006, he was elected to the coaches’ wing of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Only Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has more wins in the history of Division I. In this memoir, Boeheim’s voice rings through clearly, a tribute to both the coach and to his co-author, McCallum, a respected veteran basketball writer (Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever, 2012, etc.). Boeheim keeps his focus on the college game, its evolution and his experience as the most visible person at Syracuse, although he shares relevant details of his personal biography as well. Basketball junkies will especially value the coach’s insights. Every two or three chapters, Boeheim breaks up the narrative with one of nine multipage “coaches notes” from the 2013-2014 season; these provide additional insight into Boeheim’s passion and preparation as well as his philosophies in dealing with players, officials, and peers on and off the court. Syracuse was an inaugural member of the Big East Conference that helped to transform college basketball in the 1980s, highlighting a tough, hard-fought style of play and larger-than-life coaching personalities, of which Boeheim was one of the more prominent. The tales from the Big East in its heyday mark some of the highlights of the book, as do his coaching insights.
Sometimes accused of being a complainer on the court, Boeheim comes across as likable in this readable, thoughtful book about coaching college basketball.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0062316646
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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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