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LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century, and he's in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined—the truth is vastly more interesting than that.
What makes LeBron's story so compelling is how he won his destiny despite overwhelmingly long odds, in a drama worthy of a Dickens novel. As a child, he was a scared and lonely little boy living a nomadic existence in Akron, Ohio. His mother, who had LeBron when she was sixteen, would sometimes leave him on his own. Destitute and fatherless, he missed close to one hundred days of school in the fourth grade. Desperate, his mother placed him with a family that gave him stability and put a basketball in his hands.
"An absorbing chronicle of talent, character, pluck, and luck" (Wall Street Journal) LeBron tells the full, riveting saga of how a child adrift found the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict, the most celebrated sports biographer of our time, paints a vivid picture of LeBron's epic origin story, showing the gradual rise of a star who, surrounded by a tight-knit group of teenage friends and adult mentors, accelerated into a speeding comet during high school. Today LeBron produces Hollywood films and television shows, has a social media presence that includes more than one hundred million followers, engages in political activism, takes outspoken stances on racism and social injustice, and transforms lives through his visionary philanthropy. He went from a lost boy in Akron to a beloved hero who uses his fortune to educate underprivileged children and lift up needy families—and brought home Cleveland's first NBA championship.
But LeBron is more than just the origin story of a GOAT or a recap of his multi-championship, multi-MVP, gold medal–decorated career on the court. Benedict delves into LeBron's relationship with fame and power: how he has cultivated it, harnessed it, suffered from it, and leveraged it. In these pages, we watch his evolution from a player who avoided politics and was widely criticized for not joining his teammates in protesting China's role in the Darfur genocide to becoming an athlete who partnered with President Obama; campaigned for Hillary Clinton; became an advocate against gun violence, racism, and voter suppression; and openly clashed with President Trump, empowering other athletes to speak out against social injustice.
To capture LeBron's extraordinary life, Benedict conducted hundreds of interviews with the people who were involved with LeBron at different stages of his life. He also obtained thousands of pages of primary source documents and mined hundreds of hours of video footage. Destined to be the authoritative account of LeBron's life, LeBron is a "masterful...propulsive" (Los Angeles Times) and unprecedented portrait of one of the world's most captivating figures.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 11, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781797152585
- File size: 507214 KB
- Duration: 17:36:41
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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March 6, 2023
Film and TV producer Benedict (The Dynasty) delivers an engrossing biography of LeBron James, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, who is considered by many to be the greatest player to ever grace the court. Drawing from hundreds of interviews and extensive research, Benedict chronicles the star’s hardscrabble Akron, Ohio, childhood, when his teen mother struggled to put food on the table and pay for heat, eventually forcing the two to move in with a neighbor. The instability made James “a quiet kid who seldom spoke up,” though fortunes shifted when he joined a peewee football team at age nine and gained confidence in his athletic abilities. Benedict takes readers through the athlete’s high school basketball days, after which he bypassed college to join the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003; his 2010 move to the Miami Heat; and his eventual return to his home state, helping Cleveland earn its first-ever NBA championship in 2016. LeBron’s achievements off the court get their due, from his anti-racist activism to his founding of an elementary school for at-risk children in Akron. This authoritative account renders the athlete’s life in fascinating, fine-grained detail, though it gives short shrift to recent developments. (James’s tenure with the Los Angeles Lakers—including winning a 2020 NBA championship—gets fewer than 10 pages.) Even devoted fans will emerge with a greater understanding of the superstar. -
Having become a big name even to those who don't follow basketball, LeBron James has transcended the sport. Author Jeff Benedict covers James's life in this definitive biography. The self-proclaimed kid from Akron makes it to the NBA and, through a series of savvy moves that include keeping a close-knit group of friends nearby, soars to unprecedented heights on and off the court. Chris Jackson's clear tone matches the author's writing style--it's not flashy or showy and has no wasted emotion. Jackson stays focused and delivers consistent enunciation. This is an interesting listen, thanks to a writer who doesn't overwrite and a narrator who brings steady storytelling to this account of James's lives in Akron, Cleveland, Miami, and Los Angeles. M.B. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
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