BOOKS THREAD

I've been reading Jack McCallum's book from a few years ago about the 1992 Olympic "Dream Team." (Also the title of the book.)

I'm really enjoying it. It's fun to read something by a journalist who covered and knows what he writes about - both that team and the NBA, generally. It seems like McCallum was able to get fresh interviews with everyone on the team, Jordan and Magic included. There is some first-person used, but it's totally appropriate and works here.

 

Halfway through Bringing the Heat and everyone's thoughts on it were certainly accurate. It's outstanding. It's been more than a decade since I read Black Hawk Down or Killing Pablo so I don't remember Bowden's style in those books. In Bringing the Heat, it reminded me a bit of Richard Ben Cramer in What it Takes.

Few months ago read McCallum's new one, Golden Days, about the 72 Lakers and current Warriors. I thought I knew everything about those Lakers but I learned new things and while I'm a bit Warrior'd out, those sections were good too. And his interviews with West -- the link between those two teams -- especially produce outstanding material.

 

Haven't read Hue 1968, Bowden's new one, but Guests of the Ayatollah is highly recommended too.

 

My friend who is a high school coach loves McCallum’s nook :07 Seconds. Says it gave him a new appreciation for the coaching done in the NBA.

 

I really enjoyed both. Hue 1968 was excellent.

 

My favorite hoops books are Pluto's book on ABA and Halberstam's one on the Blazers, so enlightening.

 

Picked up Lincoln in the Bardo yesterday. Crushed 30 pages at lunch. I didn't love Tenth of December by Saunders, but his first novel is great so far.

 

Can you let us know what you think when you finish it? I've been meaning to read it but it sounds like it might be cripplingly sad.

 

"December 8, 1980: The Day John Lennon Died" by Keith Elliot Greenberg. Published in 2010.

Enjoyed the format of this book — weaving details of that tragic day with the background of Lennon and his killer, Chapman. Greenberg tracks down a lot of ordinary people who were around the Lennons and/or the shooting, and their perspectives add to the story.

Still so sad, 37 years later, to see how easily this could have been avoided — so many things happened just the right way to put that loser in front of the Dakota with a gun in his jacket.

 

I have some interest in animal conservation issues and read "Elephant Dawn" by Sharon Pincott, who recounts an autobiographical narrative of how she gave up a high-powered corporate IT job to spend more than 13 years as a volunteer, self-funded researcher, getting to know, personally, the wild elephant population of crime-ridden and poverty-stricken Zimbabwe.

The book is by turns exhilarating and life-affirming, shocking, heartrending, and crushing -- mostly crushing, by the end, even for Pincott. She finally had to leave in 2014 because she just couldn't take it anymore -- the fact that, seemingly, nobody cared -- about anything: not the prevailing governmental corruption, the truly scary and murderous "land-grabs" and general lawlessness, the poverty and economic collapse, and certainly not, the wildlife or the poaching and "ration-hunting" of it.

She watched elephants that she knew by name and who recognized her, even coming right up to her as if asking for help, be horrifically injured and killed in pick-offs with wire snares that cut off their trunks, cut their throats, wrapped tightly around their heads, or their legs, or else, simply got left, purposely, high up in trees, the better to strangle giraffes.

She heard them get shot in the night, in areas that are supposed to be national wildlife game preserves, and in locations open to photographic tourist traffic. She railed as elephants got their faces hacked off, just for the tusks, and shuddered as the killing became even worse, more massive and efficient, with hundreds of elephants at a time felled by cyanide poisoning that was fast-acting and nice and neat: After a just a couple days, the tusks would just fall out of their sockets, eliminating the need for the bloody messes left behind previously, but truly decimating families and populations because elephants only breed every three or four years.

It's hard to think about and realize such senseless, calamitous, purposeful killing goes on. All by people. Who should be the stewards of this world.

But it's an easy book to stay engrossed in. Indeed, you can't help it, and I highly recommend it.

 

I finally finished Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll, by Peter Guralnick. What a great book. The author had known Phillips for years before officially starting work on the book. And while I don't like when most authors insert themselves into their work, it was totally justified this time. Guralnick had access to Sun Records archives -- and a bunch of other materials -- and obviously conducted many, many interviews with Phillips' wife, girlfriends and sons.

A couple of years ago, I read The History of Rock 'n' Roll Volume 1: 1920-1963, and the Sun book -- though not attempting to cover such a wide topic -- was a much better read.

Joe Bob says definitely check it out.

 

Guralnick's Elvis books are outstanding.