One of those sports biographies that transcends sports.
A baseball icon, as never before portrayed.
Gehrig’s losing struggle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) offers one of the saddest and most poignant instances of a popular athlete dying young in sports history. This tragic battle was so public that ALS is now popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Countless biographies of Gehrig (1903–41) have focused mainly on his illness and his stupendous record of 2,130 consecutive games played, which earned the well-loved New York Yankee the nickname Iron Horse. Wall Street Journal writer Eig chronicles the illness and marvels at the record, of course, but he’s not content merely to retell a familiar story. The author digs deeper, uncovering 200 pages of previously unpublished correspondence to and from the ballplayer and interviewing hundreds of people, including over 30 former players who knew him well. This research pays off handsomely as lesser-known aspects of Gehrig’s life become more prominent, including his childhood in New York City and his close relationship with his mother. The reader also learns about the surprisingly bad blood between Gehrig and Babe Ruth, supposedly due to a sexual infidelity. With these rich details, Eig crafts a portrait that goes far beyond the usual rendering of the doomed ballplayer as a tragic soul who bravely endured, “poor Lou” stoically soldiering on until his death. Yes, Gehrig is depicted as a man who faced death without complaint, but he’s also outstandingly portrayed as a fallible man with faults and peccadilloes. Eig’s highly readable account brings uncommon humanity to a legendary, golden sports hero.
One of those sports biographies that transcends sports.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-4591-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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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