Shooting stars book

Book Synopsis

From Jeff Benedict, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tiger Woods and The Dynasty, this is the definitive biography of LeBron James, one of the greatest athletes of all time--the king of basketball, the figure at the center of social movements, the man everyone has an opinion on--based on three years of exhaustive research and more than two hundred interviews.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. He wears the crown like he was born to it. Yet what makes LeBron's story so compelling is that he won his destiny despite overwhelmingly long odds, in a drama worthy of a Dickens novel. As a child, he was a lost little boy living in a public housing project in Akron, Ohio. His mother, who had LeBron when she was sixteen, would sometimes leave him on his own. Scared and alone, destitute and fatherless, LeBron missed close to 100 days of school in fourth grade and didn't play organized basketball. LeBron tells the full, riveting saga of how a boy adrift finds the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict, the #1 New York Timesbestselling author of Tiger Woods, paints a vivid picture of LeBron's epic origin story, showing the gradual ascent of a star who, surrounded by a tight-knit group of friends and adult mentors, transformed into a speeding comet during high school. LeBron today has built not only a basketball career that will go down as one of the greatest in the sport's history, but a solid family and a business empire. He produces Hollywood films and television shows, he has a social media presence that includes over 100 million followers, he engages in political activism and takes outspoken stances on racism and social injustice, he transforms lives through his visionary philanthropy, and he's the first active NBA player to become a billionaire. To tell the story of LeBron's rise to dominance on the court and beyond, Benedict pored through thousands of pages of primary source documents and countless of hours of video footage. He conducted hundreds of interviews with the people who were intimately involved with LeBron at different stages of his life, taking us inside his early years through his famed NBA career spanning championships with three teams as well as his supremacy in the Olympics. Destined to be the authoritative account of LeBron's life, LeBron is a gripping and unprecedented account of one of the world's greatest and most iconic athletes.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR OTHER BOOKS BY JEFF BENEDICT* The Dynasty * An epic business story . . . The Dynastygoes deeper than anyone has before on the Beatles-esque collaboration among an owner, a coach, and a star player."
--Bloomberg"Most often in our business, there are writers and there are reporters, and rarely do the twain meet. In The Dynasty, Jeff Benedict shows he's masterful at both. His reporting on the very well-worn (trust me) earth of the Patriots' greatness is groundbreaking, starting with his illumination of the evening in the hospital in 2001 when Drew Bledsoe's life was in peril and going all the way through to previously unknown details of the emotional play-by-play of Tom Brady's departure from New England. The imagery and prose are just as strong. Such a great read from Benedict."
--Peter King, NBC Sports, author of "Football Morning in America" "For two decades we've been peering up at the castle looming over the American sportscape with the same mixture of awe, suspicion, and envy with which peasants have peered up at palisades for millennia. So when a deft and lyrical serf named Benedict slips inside, lowers the drawbridge, and waves us in to see the ramparts, towers, turrets, and castle keep where the Brady-Belichick-Kraft trinity ruled . . . how can a peasant resist?"
--Gary Smith, longtime Sports Illustrated writer and author of Beyond the Game"This is an extraordinary book. The narrative is comprehensive, intimate, and original. I've watched and written about the entire Patriots dynasty, and yet this epic story provides new insights and startling details that I didn't know. I can assure you that there's not another Patriots book like it."
--Michael Holley, author of Belichick and Brady and Patriot Reign"A marvelously told story of the New England Patriots . . . This is the story of a well-run and successful business, very much like Apple or Amazon. . . . You don't need be a sports fan to enjoy this masterpiece study of a successful sports franchise. . . . With substantial research, great attention to detail and superb writing, The Dynastyis a book worthy of the team it chronicles."
--Book Reporter"A page-turner for Patriots fans. There are plenty of behind-the-scenes, untold nuggets, along with more detailed versions of often-told stories that have taken place during Robert Kraft's ownership of the team. . . . It was as if Benedict was a fly on the wall for many of these significant events, and in some cases, he was in fact present to witness some indelible moments."
--Boston Herald* Tiger Woods * "Irresistible . . . Immensely readable . . . The authors have laid out a saga that is part myth, part Shakespeare, part Jackie Collins. . . . Benedict and Keteyian bring us along for the ride in a whirlwind of a biography that reads honest and true."
--Leigh Montville, The Wall Street Journal"There is beauty and awe in this perfectly pitched biography . . . It has torque and velocity . . . It's a confident and substantial book that's nearly as sleek as a Christopher Nolan movie. It makes a sweet sound, like a well-struck golf ball. I found it exhilarating, depressing, tawdry and moving in almost equal measure. It's a big American story. . . . The authors bring grainy new detail to almost every aspect of Woods's life."
--Dwight Garner, The New York Times"Comprehensive, propulsive, packed with incident . . . and unsparing."
--Ian Crouch, The New Yorker"An ambitious 360-degree portrait of golf's most scrutinized figure . . . The book features fresh reporting on almost every significant element of Woods' story. . . . It is a book brimming with revealing details."
--Sam Weinman, Golf Digest"Chilling . . . Exhaustively researched . . . The authors present Woods as a man 'both blessed and cursed' by his otherworldly ability to separate his off-the-course problems from his performance on it. Tiger Woodsis a fascinating analysis of the former, but for golf fans--and probably for Woods himself--his worth will still be judged by the latter. . . . What Benedict and Keteyian do better than in any biography I've read about Woods is detail the human costs of this machine-like focus."
--John Paul Newport, Bloomberg Businessweek

About the Author

Jeff Benedict is the bestselling author of seventeen nonfiction books. He's also a film and television producer. He is the coauthor of the #1 New York Timesbestseller Tiger Woods. The book was the basis of the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Tiger, which Benedict executive produced. The Dynasty, the definitive inside story of the New England Patriots under Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick, and Tom Brady, was a New York Timesbestseller. The book is the basis of a forthcoming ten-part documentary series for Apple TV+, which Benedict is executive producing. His critically acclaimed book Poisonedis the basis of a Netflix documentary, which Benedict executive produced. His legal thriller Little Pink Housewas adapted into a motion picture starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Benedict wrote Steve Young's New York Times bestselling autobiography QB, which was the basis of an NFL Filmsdocumentary. Benedict's upcoming biography of LeBron James will be published in 2023.