The New York Times bestselling 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. A
renowned biographer--People magazine called him "a master"--Kriegel
renders his subject with a style that is, by turns, heartbreaking,
lyrical, and electric. The narrative begins in 1929, the year a
missionary gave Pete's father a basketball. Press Maravich had been
a neglected child trapped in a hellish industrial town, but the
game enabled him to blossom. It also caused him to confuse
basketball with salvation. The intensity of Press's obsession
initiates a journey across three generations of Maraviches. Pistol
Pete, a ballplayer unlike any other, was a product of his father's
vanity and vision. But that dream continues to exact a price on
Pete's own sons. Now in their twenties--and fatherless for most of
their lives--they have waged their own struggles with the game and
its ghosts. Pistol is an unforgettable biography. By telling one
family's history, Kriegel has traced the history of the game and a
large slice of the American narrative.
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