A worthwhile re-creation of a fast-fading athletic epoch.
A sprawling, well-researched account of diverse proto-superstars who popularized swimming in the early 20th century.
Balf, author of The Darkest Jungle and The Last River, reconnected with swimming while recuperating from cancer, and his enthusiasm led him to “the origin stories of several of the best swimmers of that time—Americans Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller, and Japan’s Katsuo Takaishi.” The author chronicles the dramatic contests at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, meandering through multiple societies and a generous time frame. “Anything was possible in the record-setting age,” he writes, “and pools were where some of it happened.” Balf convincingly argues that the Jazz Age suited the “emergence of a sport that produced larger-than-life creatures who embodied innovation, physical perfection, and, above all, speed.” At the same time, due to debates regarding speed and technique, “the clash between white and nonwhite athletes was surprisingly prevalent.” The taciturn yet “quietly fierce” Kahanamoku serves as the narrative’s moral core. Startling early accomplishments made him a vessel for Hawaiian cultural fascination, as such athletes “were aware that their athleticism was prized, but not their heritage.” Meanwhile, “Chicago golden boy” Weissmuller was presented as a “great white hope,” even as he concealed his birth in Hungary. As Olympic teammates, “Weissmuller and Kahanamoku were increasingly characterized as championship prizefighters,” and they both performed impressively during the 1924 Games, while “Takaishi led his team to do what no Asian swimmers had done before: perform competitively at the Olympics.” Balf’s storytelling highlights the racist absurdities and media frenzies of the age, and he ably captures the urban details and antic competitive spirit. The detailed focus on individual sporting contests, and the evolution of crawls and strokes, may seem repetitive to readers without a prior interest in the mechanics of swimming.
A worthwhile re-creation of a fast-fading athletic epoch.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9798874714178
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlanticsenior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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