Camp Fire Site

  Glory Days.    L. Jon Wertheim. The Summer of 1984 and the 90 days that changed sports and culture forever. Nostalgia is often elicited when reading about the good old days or watching a movie or even recalling a memorable milestone in our lives.      For those readers old enough to have lived through the 1980’s we can draw upon many instances where this hits us hard.      Author Jon Wertheim put together a book covering this very era but narrowed his scope to the summer of 1984 in his 2021 book Glory Days .     At the barely ripe age of 17 by start of summer in 1984, this book reviewer was a known sports fan but also an intent follower of popular music in those days.     Drawing me to this book was the premise one would regal revisiting some of my past.    In a pleasant surprise, the author captures a number of transactions that not only defined the summer of that year but were impact...

  Barkley. A Biography. Timothy Bella.  Some people are born with big personalities.    Some of those individuals grow into larger-than-life athletes and icons.    Author Timothy Bella wrote a biography about one of these basketball icons, turned influential media member, in his book, Barkley, A Biography published in 2022.    To be clear this is a book about a man with a dynamic personality that happens to also be considered one of the fifty best basketball players of all time.     Bella, a journalist and former Washington Post writer, did extensive research to complete this book conducting 375 interviews along the way.      He writes about the early life of Charles Wade Barkley growing up in modest Leeds, Alabama (20 miles outside of Birmingham), his college career where he became a nationally known athlete, his professional playing career where he starred in three major American cities and ultimately his ev...