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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
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # mon0000187451
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780767904445
Book Description Paperback or Softback. Condition: New. Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made 0.8. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9780767904445
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Book Description Softcover. Condition: New. 1st Broadway Books trade pbk. ed. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist comes the best Jordan book so far (The Washington Post), the story of Michael Jordans legendary years with the Chicago Bulls, capped by the 1998 NBA Finals and the teams second three-peat.From The Breaks of the Game to Summer of 49, David Halberstam has brought the perspective of a great historian, the insider knowledge of a dogged sportswriter, and the love of a fan to bear on some of the most mythic players and teams in the annals of American sports. With Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls he has given himself the greatest challenge and produced his greatest triumph.In Playing for Keeps, Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordans epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the book chronicles the forces in Jordans life that have shaped him in to historys greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world. Seller Inventory # DADAX0767904443
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