Details
Synopsis
David Halberstam, the author of many highly regarded books on sports and American culture, examines the life and career of Michael Jordan--and in doing so, profiles the personalities and the business practices that have changed the game of basketball. This book follows Jordan from his youth to his final game as an NBA player. A New York Times Notable Book for 1999.
| Size | | Length: | 421 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 28.0 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "In the fall of 1997, Michael Jeffrey Jordan, once of Wilmington, North Carolina, and now of Chicago, Illinois, arrived in Paris, France, with his team, the Chicago Bulls, to play a preseason tournament run by McDonald's, one of his principal corporate sponsors, as well as a very important corporate sponsor of the National Basketball Association. Even though it featured some of the better European teams, the tournament was not, in terms of the level of play, likely to be competitive for a top NBA team like the Bulls. Nor was it supposed to be: It was a part of the NBA's relentless and exceptionally successful attempt to showcase the game and its star players in parts of the world where basketball was gaining in popularity, particularly among the young. It was also done in no small part because it delighted the league's corporate sponsors by opening up and solidifying critical international markets. Not surprisingly, the American players did not take the competition very seriously."
Industry Reviews
"...the author exhaustively chronicles young Jordan's rise from Laney High School in Wilmington, N.C., where as a sophomore he failed to make the varsity team, to Game Six of the 1997-98 NBA Finals, where, with only seconds left, Michael famously sank the winning jumper."
Business Week - Ciro Scotti (02/08/1999)
"...[V]eteran reporter-author Halberstam tells an engrossing, multi-layered story."
Washington Post Book World - Robert D. Novak (01/31/1999)
"Halberstam has often written with a style that reads like a first draft. His sentences can fall into a dogged sameness, repetition of themes and phrases become a stylistic tic...pet words such as 'palpable' have a way of repeatedly cropping up....[B]ut no sane person would question Halberstam's masterful understanding of human nature, especially the qualities that drive and define greatness. Once Halberstam gets going, he comes through with great characterization after great characterization."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - Steve Kettmann (02/21/1999)
"The faults in 'Playing for Keeps' include an occasional excess of information regarding peripheral aspects of Jordan's life and lapses in which the language is less than carefully or thriftily wrought. One oversight occurs when Halberstam suggests that Jordan is an incarnation of the transformation in sports hype that allows players today to be promoted above team. He neglects to mention that Babe Ruth and Red Grange were there decades before, as was the famous Madison Square Garden marquee, 'Geo Mikan vs. Knicks.' But Halberstam over all has succeeded in lending perspective to the world Michael Jordan both made and inherited, as well as in portraying Michael Jordan the man and not the icon, guiding us, in effect, beyond the Bosporus."
New York Times - Ira Berkow (01/31/1999)
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