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On Being John McEnroe | 
 enlarge | Author: Tim Adams
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $0.92
You Save: $15.08 (94%)
New (6) Used (14) Collectible (1) from $0.04
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 790199
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.2 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 1400081475
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.342092
EAN: 9781400081479
ASIN: 1400081475
Publication Date: April 5, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Earlier edition, brand new, with blue cover and different picture of tennis player. Great gift! Prompt shipping!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The greatest sports stars characterize their times. They also help to tell us who we are.
John McEnroe, at his best and worst, told us the story of the 1980s. His improvised quest for tennis perfection, and his inability to find a way to grow up, dramatized the volatile self-absorption of a generation. His matches were open therapy sessions, and they allowed us all to be armchair shrinks.
In this book, Tim Adams sets out to explore what it might have meant to be John McEnroe during the turbulent 1980s, and in his subsequent lives, and to define exactly what it is that we want from our sporting heroes: how we require them to play out our own dramas, and how the best of them provide an intensity by which we can measure our own lives.
At the heart of this book are two fascinating characters—McEnroe and Bjorn Borg—and the extraordinary rivalry that defined them, a rivalry as compelling and dramatic as Ali and Foreman or Spassky and Fischer. Their great Wimbledon match of July 5, 1980—the central event in Adams’s narrative—was, as he writes, “a confrontation between two highly developed states of mind: a struggle between extreme consciousness and an absolutely studied containment of consciousness.”
It’s a book that’s “full of pleasures,” according to the London Sunday Times, and will appeal to any tennis fan or serious sports reader.
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| Customer Reviews:
nice writing about someone not so nice June 30, 2005
4 out of 13 found this review helpful
I would categorize this book as nice writing that takes a former star and tries to analyze him, while acknowledging his icon or idol status.
Too late. McEnroe's glory is gone, and there is no need for a whitewash, since nobody cares anymore. Yesterday's star is today's has-been.
Having read two David Evans books about John McEnroe and also "You Can't Be Serious", and being a reformed tennis addict, I
desired something that dared to be more critical. "On being John McEnroe" was not the book I was looking for.
This book is a very quick read. Even though I am a slow reader, I read the entire 173 pages in about 3 hours. There is little of substance here, just many beautifully worded anecdotes that paint a murky picture but leave no real impression.
Shamefully abusive on the tennis court (even now while playing on the seniors tour), McEnroe gave tennis a bad name and helped end the "tennis boom" of the 70s.
Had McEnroe played during the era when Wimbledon and the other grand slam tournaments were amateur events, he probably would have been banned from competition had he acted the way he did.
I'm hoping that the book "Bad News for McEnroe" will give me more grit, sustenance, and truth.
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