Namath was no angel, thank goodness, but this evocative portrait shows him at play in the fields of magic.
Meaty biography of Broadway Joe from sports-columnist-turned-novelist Kriegel (Bless Me, Father, 1995).
The sooty mill towns in western Pennsylvania have churned out a host of professional football players, but none left a mark on the sport like Joe Namath, the handsome bad boy, boozer, and womanizer from Beaver Falls. Just a few months ago, Namath turned to alcoholic rehabilitation and disappeared from the public eye. Good thing, too, Kriegel writes in this detailed work, for in his last public appearance on national TV, he drunkenly told a sports reporter that he could care less about the game and would rather be kissing her. But then, that was the Joe we knew and loved, “disheveled, but happy,” doing what he liked and thumbing his nose at authority (unless that authority wore the name Bear Bryant, who coached Namath at the University of Alabama). Kriegel does a nice job portraying the two Namaths. One was a football player of intuitive genius who could read the developing angles in sports where that type of calculus mattered (football, pool, golf). The second Namath had a far more difficult time reading the emotional complexity of his life, particularly all that booze and all those women. Some of his antics were stupefying, but others defined the new braggadocio beat that a few athletes brought to the culture. While not of the same ilk as Mohammad Ali, judges Kriegel, Namath was a touchstone in an age of defiance; he managed to get on the enemy lists of both J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon. Plus, he was simply brilliant at what he did on the field, delivering on his promises in a way a politician never could or would. Kriegel has also uncovered a lot of terrific backstory from friends and coaches and sportswriters.
Namath was no angel, thank goodness, but this evocative portrait shows him at play in the fields of magic.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03329-4
Page Count: 452
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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