Readers not put off by the taste of sour grapes will find much of interest here, from the unique mind of one of baseball’s...
With the assistance of Baker (The Big Crowd, 2013, etc.), legendary slugger Jackson (Reggie: The Autobiography, 1984, etc.) attempts to set the record straight about the tumultuous World Series–winning New York Yankees of 1977 and 1978.
When he signed with the Yankees in 1976, Jackson was already a star, having won two championships with the Oakland A’s and a league MVP award in 1973. He also had a reputation for speaking his mind in a way that did not always endear him to teammates and fans. None of this, however, prepared him for the cauldron that was the Yankees, run by manager Billy Martin and owner George Steinbrenner. Much has been written about this team, and Jackson announces early on that this book was born out of his outrage at how he was portrayed in the 2007 miniseries The Bronx Is Burning; indeed, the tone is often aggrieved as the author recounts the many injustices he faced along the way. There’s no denying he has a point: He was often treated unfairly by the press and his teammates and certainly by Martin, a volatile personality at the best of times, who never got over his resentment that Jackson was brought onto the team against his wishes. But whatever was behind the struggles—racism, resentment over his comments to the press, his superstar salary or other factors—Jackson does himself no favors by repetitively rehashing these old wounds, though he does at least acknowledge partial responsibility for some of them. Resentment aside, the author remains a fascinating character who offers plenty of insight into the game as it was played then and now. No baseball fan can deny the greatness of Jackson’s magical three consecutive first-pitch home runs in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, and many will enjoy reliving the moment through his eyes.
Readers not put off by the taste of sour grapes will find much of interest here, from the unique mind of one of baseball’s most enigmatic stars and greatest clutch performers.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-53311-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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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