A positive though often blunt and unpleasant story of a man who has it all yet remains restive.
A staff writer for Forbes expands to full, generally flattering length a profile of Alabama football coach Nick Saban published in that magazine.
For this book, Burke, who has previous titles about both fishing and football (4th and Goal: One Man's Quest to Recapture His Dream, 2012, etc.), interviewed myriads of folks whom Saban has known—and not all are admirers. (The author spoke a number of times with Saban, as well.) Burke shows what he believes is the enormous influence of Saban’s father, charts his subject’s own modest athletic career, and then follows him through a most restless coaching career. Until the Alabama job (2007-present), Saban rarely stayed anywhere very long. College, the NFL, assistant coach, head coach—he moved around until he found a position where he had absolute control and where, as Burke points out, he collects millions of dollars each year in salary and incentives. Although the author clearly admires the accomplishments of his subject, he continually notes the traits of Saban that many (non–football fans) might find troubling. He rarely sees his family (he does phone his wife every day, writes Burke), evinces no enduring pleasure in even the most significant wins (his teams have won four national championships—one was with LSU), has a fiery temper (Burke calls him “livid” more than once and describes testosterone-soaked basketball games/fistfights with his coaching staff), demands absolute loyalty, weeps occasionally, and is fundamentally humorless. However, the coach unquestionably possesses an Ahab-ian focus, and he has perhaps only one true peer when it comes to recruiting (Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer). Some have called him “The Lord of the Living Room” because of his persuasiveness. Burke muses near the end about what would have happened if Saban had focused his talents on some more serious social need.
A positive though often blunt and unpleasant story of a man who has it all yet remains restive.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8993-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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