A compelling portrait of a dynamic and influential man, on and off the court.
Biographer Schumacher (Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, 2005, etc.) turns his eye to a basketball legend.
Renowned as the Minneapolis Lakers’ All-Star center, George Mikan began life in 1924 as the son of a Joliet, Ill., tavern owner. He studied to become a priest, then switched to law, before his prowess on the hardwood led him to the emerging sport of professional basketball. At DePaul University, he established himself as one of the nation’s best players and led his team to a collegiate championship. His dominance as a center earned him a contract with the Chicago American Gears. Schumacher provides a detailed account of how Mikan altered the way basketball was played by proving that a center could do more than leap for the jump ball to start games. He became a pre-eminent scorer, so unstoppable that several rule changes were made specifically to limit his dominance. Schumacher also shows the evolution of professional basketball, as the sport’s rising popularity convinced owners that it could be a lucrative business. But he doesn’t sentimentalize the past: Mikan staged a holdout when the financially strapped Gears tried to cut his salary, Schumacher notes, and he expected his teammates to defer to him at all times. He went to the Lakers in 1947, and his intensity brought the team multiple titles. Recognized by the NBA in 1996 as one of its 50 greatest players of all time, he tirelessly crusaded to get better pensions for former players. The men who had established the league that allowed players like Shaquille O’Neal and Kevin Garnett to earn $100-million contracts, Mikan reminded fans, received a mere $1,700 per month in retirement benefits. He made significant progress for his fellow retired players, but lost a leg and several fingers to diabetes before dying in 2005.
A compelling portrait of a dynamic and influential man, on and off the court.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59691-213-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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