Lakers diehards and hoops historians should give it a shot, but others may pass.
In-depth biography of one of the NBA’s greatest players and executives.
Decades after the conclusion of Jerry West’s career, “Mr. Clutch,” the bumpkin-turned-superstar whose graceful silhouette serves as the NBA logo, is still considered one of the best players ever. Despite his star status, he often shunned the spotlight during his career. As Lazenby (Journalism/Virginia Tech Univ.; The Show: The Inside Story of the Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers in the Words of Those Who Lived It, 2005, etc.) peels back the layers of mystique surrounding his historically reticent subject, West is revealed as a peevish perfectionist whose hypercompetitive nature, which provided such an edge on the court, made him a high-strung, obstinate womanizer off it. The author painstakingly recounts West’s early years growing up in West Virginia, delving into his family history and focusing in particular on his contentious relationship with his father and similarities to his mother, from whom he derived his stoicism and legendary work ethic. After considerable success in high school, West earned All-American status at West Virginia University before being drafted by the Lakers. His professional career was marked by historic personal success (14-time all-star and Hall of Famer) and agonizing team disappointment—though he won one NBA title, West’s Lakers lost in the championship round eight times. A brief stint coaching the Lakers followed, but West ultimately found his post-career niche as a Lakers executive, proving to be an astute judge of talent in constructing multiple championship teams led by the likes of Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant. Lazenby gives short shrift to West’s decades of work as a scout and executive, however, and though the author makes a game effort, it’s impossible to make West as compelling on paper as he was on the court.
Lakers diehards and hoops historians should give it a shot, but others may pass.Pub Date: March 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-345-51083-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: ESPN Books/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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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