Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made - Hardcover

Halberstam, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679415629 ISBN 13: 9780679415626

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999

Synopsis

Presents a portrait of the basketball superstar and his dramatic impact on the changing world of American sports, examining Jordan's diverse roles as talented athlete, celebrity spokesman, and cultural icon

About this title

Review

One of the finest non-fiction writers in any line-up, Halberstam likes to alternate what he's deemed his serious work--books like The Best and the Brightest, The Fifties, and The Children--with his sporting interludes, though in his hands, sports are much, much more than fun and games. Books like The Breaks of the Game and October 1964 use sports as a prism. Culture, race, society, and history are all filtered through it, and Halberstam refocuses--and interprets--what comes out the other side.

That he would now turn his considerable abilities to exploring Michael Jordan is not surprising. Halberstam loves hoops, and Jordan not only defines the game, he defines an era. His fame crosses international borders as easily as he dribbles past half-court lines. In focusing on Jordan--as athlete and force of nature--and his osmosis from a young hoop dreamer to product pitchman to the world, Halberstam is really examining intangibles like myth and legend, celebrity and fame, wealth and image, excellence and genius, race and style, the qualities of heroism and the pursuit of perfection. "That there had been even one Michael Jordan seemed in retrospect something of a genetic fluke," he writes, "and the idea that anyone would arrive in so short a span of time and do what he did both on and off the court seemed highly unlikely." But the phenomenon that is Jordan did just that.

Understanding, even admiring, what he did, how he did it, and what it means in a basketball context and a larger one is Halberstam's goal, and, despite Jordan's lack of cooperation--or maybe because of it--Halberstam's muscular prose and thinking scores powerfully. Yet, there is a wistfulness, in the end, to Playing for Keeps; the game doesn't seem as much fun and collegial as it used to for Halberstam, and Jordan, great as he may be, emerges with less of the historic grace exhibited by Jackie Robinson, Ali, and Arthur Ashe than with a quality that Halberstam deems the athlete-explorer "in terms of going beyond previously accepted limits of what was humanly possible, and somehow by dint of physical excellence and unmatched willpower, pushing those limits forward that much more." Dazzling, certainly, but not necessarily heroic. Playing for Keeps is also available on audiocassette. --Jeff Silverman

Review

"The best Jordan book so far."
--Washington Post

"A remarkable book . . . a must-read for basketball fans, admirers of Jordan, and anyone who seeks to understand sports in America today."
--Bill Bradley

"The single greatest sports book I've ever read."
--Dan Le Batard, ESPN Radio

"What David Halberstam delivers--and what the reader has come to expect from Halberstam--is insight, balance, analysis."
--New York Times

"A wonderful book, written by a remarkable journalist."
--Seattle Times

"Halberstam writes the story of Jordan in layers through unforgettable tales of his brilliant career . . . An insider's view of basketball, structured like a sports reporter's private journal."
--Dallas Morning News

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0679415629
• ISBN 13: 9780679415626
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352