An engaging personal journey about finding what you need to find and keeping it in your heart.
A global fishing trip that hooks more than fish.
There is life, and then there is fly-fishing. Coggins believes that the second of these can provide crucial insights into the first, through the patience required, the unique mixture of simplicity and complexity, the connection to the natural environment, the lessons of failure, and the thrill of success. He covered some of this ground in his 2014 book The Optimist, but this book is more personal and candid and less technical. At the age of 45, which he thought would be the middle of his life, the author embarked on a yearlong tour that included Patagonia, Scotland, Spain, Norway, Belize, and even Cuba, as well as various parts of the U.S. As Coggins recounts, sometimes he landed a good catch, and sometimes he went home empty-handed. Nonetheless, his excursions were always journeys of self-discovery, and Coggins found the space and time to ask and answer crucial questions about his life and his connections to others. Along the way, he met an assortment of interesting people, an eccentric brotherhood bound by a love of the cast, and developed hard-won wisdom, for which “there’s no short-cut, no self-help book, no retreat, no guru, no mountaintop, no fad diet, no hack, no money-back guarantee.” Coggins eventually decided that he would remain an enthusiastic amateur, an occasional caster of the lure. That, he notes, is enough for him, perhaps more than enough. He concludes: "I think I’ve arrived at a better balance, based on something I already knew: you can survive very well with less fishing, or anything else for that matter. You’ll be alright.” That, indeed, is the thought to take away from this meditative, enjoyable book.
An engaging personal journey about finding what you need to find and keeping it in your heart.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668004715
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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