Mark Kriegel has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Pistol.
Pistol
Summary
Pistol is more than the biography of a ballplayer. It's the stuff of classic novels: the story of a boy transformed by his father's dream and the cost of that dream. Even as Pete Maravich became Pistol Pete, a basketball icon for baby boomers, all the Maraviches paid a price. Now acclaimed author Mark Kriegel has brilliantly captured the saga of an American family: its rise, its apparent ruin, and, finally, its redemption. Almost four decades have passed since Maravich entered the national consciousness as basketball's boy wizard. No one had ever played the game like the kid with the floppy socks and shaggy hair. And all these years later, no one else ever has. The idea of Pistol Pete continues to resonate with young people today just as powerfully as it did with their fathers. In averaging 44.2 points a game at Louisiana State University, he established records that will never be broken. But even more enduring than the numbers was the sense of ecstasy and artistry with which he played. With the ball in his hands, Maravich had a singular power to inspire awe, inflict embarrassment, or even tell a joke. But he wasn't merely a mesmerizing showman. He was basketball's answer to Elvis, a white Southerner who sold Middle America on a black man's game. Like Elvis, he paid a terrible price, becoming a prisoner of his own fame. Set largely in the South, Kriegel's Pistol - a tale of obsession and basketball, fathers and sons - merges several archetypal characters. Maravich was a child prodigy, a prodigal son, his father's ransom in a Faustian bargain, and a Great White Hope. But he was also a creature of contradictions: always the outsider but a virtuoso in a team sport, an exuberant showman who wouldn't look you in the eye, a vegetarian boozer, an athlete who lived like a rock star, a suicidal genius saved by Jesus Christ.
©2007 Mark Kriegel (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.
Namath
Summary
In between Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan there was Joe Namath, one of the very few sports heroes who transcended their game. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, Namath left the steel country of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, for the Deep South, where he played quarterback for Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama. Almost four years later, he signed a $427,000 contract with the New York Jets that changed football forever, transforming a crude, violent game into show business. Namath became the most glamorous athlete in America; his fame nurtured by the age of television, the point spread, and the sexual revolution. His hair, his draft deferment, and his white shoes became symbols for a generation. But it was his "guarantee" of victory in Super Bowl III that ensured his legend. In the tradition of Richard Ben Cramer's Joe DiMaggio, David Maraniss's A Life of Vince Lombardi, and Nick Tosches's Dino, Mark Kriegel details Namath's journey from steeltown pool halls to the upper reaches of American celebrity, and beyond. He renders Namath as an athlete and a man, a brave champion and a wounded soul. Here are Namath's complex relationships with pain and fame plus his appearances in pantyhose ads, on The Simpsons, and Nixon's Enemies List. Namath is not just for football fans, but for any listener interested in the central role of sports in American culture.
©2004 Mark Kriegel (P)2004 Penguin Audio and Books on Tape, Inc.
The Good Son
Summary
From the best-selling, critically acclaimed author of Namath and Pistol comes another remarkable biography: the life of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. In the early 1980s, Mancini was more than the lightweight champ. He was a national hero. Sinatra fawned over him. Warren Zevon wrote a tribute song. Sylvester Stallone produced his life story as a movie of the week. After all, an adoring public considered Boom Boom the real Rocky. Lenny Mancini - the original Boom Boom, as he was known - had been a lightweight contender himself before fragments of German mortar shell almost killed him in 1944. By winning the championship just as he vowed - for his wounded father - Ray produced his own feel-good fable for network television. But it all came apart in a brutal 1982 battle against an obscure Korean challenger. Deuk Koo Kim lost consciousness in the fourteenth round and died within days. Three months later, his despondent mother took her own life. The deaths would haunt Ray and ruin his image, turning boxing’s All-American Boy into a pariah. Now, 30 years later, Kriegel finally uncovers the story’s full dimensions, tracking the Mancini and Kim families across generations and excavating mysteries - from the killing of Mancini’s brother to the fate of Kim’s son. Even as the scenes move from Youngstown to New York, Las Vegas to Seoul, Reno to Hollywood, The Good Son remains an intimate history, a saga of fathers and fighters, loss and redemption.
©2012 Mark Kriegel (P)2012 Simon & Schuster