An account of the charmed life of New York Yankee icon Derek Jeter that’s as short on salacious revelations as it is long on adulation.
If Jeter’s life hasn’t been perfect, it’s come pretty close. Notwithstanding some troubling childhood encounters with racism, the handsome, charismatic, biracial Jeter managed to combine the hardworking mindset of his grandfather with the loving positivity of his parents to turn himself into the best baseball prospect—not to mention the biggest Yankees fan—ever to emerge from Kalamazoo, Mich. After being drafted by those same Yankees, the highly touted prospect shot through the minor league ranks and went on to win rookie of the year in Major Leagues, an honor that would presage bigger things to come. ESPNNewYork.com writer O’Connor (Arnie and Jack: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Golf’s Greatest Rivalry, 2009) ably chronicles that rise and those bigger things, including five World Series titles to date, as well as the astonishing list of A-list starlets Jeter dated along the way (while miraculously minimizing his tabloid presence), and his strange relationship with superstar rival/teammate Alex Rodriguez. Though Jeter’s cooperation was limited to a few locker-room interviews, it quickly becomes apparent how much the author reveres his subject, a man whose on-field talent is apparently matched by his off-field integrity, impish sense of humor and ability to charm children. The only real dirt O’Connor can dig up is Jeter’s inability to forgive those who slight him, no matter how innocuously, and even that revelation reads like a well-qualified job candidate’s rehearsed response to the standard interview question about one’s greatest weakness. Still, there’s something refreshing about an icon who actually lives up to his billing as a nice guy, hard worker and great teammate, even if it seems odd to tell his story while it’s still unfolding. Not unlike the Captain’s public persona—polished and well put together, but a bit bland.
Pub Date: May 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-32793-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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