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Start giftingPlaying for Keeps
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Learn moreNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist comes “the best Jordan book so far” (The Washington Post), the story of Michael Jordan’s legendary years with the Chicago Bulls, capped by the 1998 NBA Finals and the team’s 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 Jordan’s 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 Jordan’s life that have shaped him in to history’s greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.
David Halberstam was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of numerous books, including The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, The Reckoning, Summer of '49, Playing for Keeps, and War in a Time of Peace. He died in April 2007.
J. D. Jackson is an educator, actor, and audiobook narrator. Currently an adjunct professor at Los Angeles Southwest College, he has an MFA in theater from Temple University and several television and movie credits, including House, ER, Law & Order, Third Watch, and Hack. He has also received several Audiofile Earphone Awards for his work.
Reviews
"David Halberstam has written a remarkable book about the changes in American society over the last twenty-five years. On one level, it is about basketball and the game's greatest player, Michael Jordan. On another level, it is about how an entertainment culture envelops Jordan and makes him its own. But on its deepest level, it is a story about working to overcome the odds, honoring parents and family, and striving to become a positive social force. This book is a must read for basketball fans, admirers of Jordan, and anyone who seeks to understand sports in America today." --Bill BradleyPraise for
The Breaks of the Game
"One of the best books I've ever read about sports."
--The New York Times
"The best book Halberstam has written...immediate and moving."
--The Washington Post
Summer of '49
"Dazzling... a celebration of a vanished heroic age and a 'simpler America.' "
--The New York Times
"Paradise regained...a gorgeous story with personalities and anecdotes jam-packing every page."
--Newsweek
The Amateurs
"Astonishing... moving. One of the best books ever written about a sport."
--Newsweek Expand reviews