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73rd out of 340 books
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939 voters
A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton
by
John McPhee
When John McPhee met Bill Bradley, both were at the beginning of their careers. A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee’s first book, is about Bradley when he was the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen. McPhee delineates for the reader the training and techniques that made Bradley the extraordinary athlete he was, and this part of the book is a blueprint of superlativ...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
June 30th 1999
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(first published 1965)
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Bill Bradley was born in a small Missouri town, the son of the town's banker, who taught him discipline, hard work, and a love of learning, and his wife, a fiercely competitive but loving former athlete. Their son was one of the most celebrated schoolboy athletes in Missouri history, and was offered scholarships to over 70 colleges to play basketball. However, he chose to attend Princeton University, which did not provide athletic scholarships and was not known for its basketball team, as he had...more
I can't exactly say how I came to hear the two of them recommend this book, but when Robert Greene and Paul Graham both say something is good, I don't need to be told a third time. The title comes from a Bill Bradley quote about his hook shot, about how after enough of them his feel for the game was so good that he didn't need to look to see where he was on the court. He just knew. I guess it's probably a bit of the selection bias, but it's fascinating to me to read a biography of someone before...more
Every now and then, I'll read a book, watch a movie, or see a youtube clip of Tim Tebow taking a handicapped girl as his date to a formal event that legitimately makes me want to be a better man. This book had that effect on me. Bill Bradley's drive, willpower, and moral fortitude are truly inspirational. Bradley's success in basketball and in his career thereafter speak to the value of hard work and perseverance. It was also refreshing and interesting to read a biography about someone that was...more
Sure did like this book about Bill Bradley who played at Princeton while I was growing up there. I never saw him play, and I didn't even read this til much later, but it's an outstanding profile of a young basketball player at the start of his career by a young writer also starting off his writing career. Through detailed description, McPhee captures not just the training and techniques that made Bradley such an extraordinary athlete, but also the self-discipline and strong sense of where he was...more
A detailed history of Bill Bradley's basketball career at Princeton University in the early 1960s. Though suspiciously laudatory, it provided some useful technical insights on the game from a players perspective. The main part of the book was first published in 1965, but this edition has addenda from 1978 and 1999 with photographs of Bradley's NBA career with the New York Knickerbockers and his political career as a United States Senator from New Jersey. I learned of this book through a tribute...more
A really good profile of Bill Bradley in college, before he'd go on become a NBA player and politician. McPhee does a great job capturing how thoughtful, diligent, smart, and exceptional Bradley was compared to his college peers at Princeton and other schools.
My only real criticism with the book is that much of the writing on basketball feels horribly dated. McPhee wrote this book before much good writing on basketball existed, so his explanation of plays and shots feels clunky. I wish he would'...more
My only real criticism with the book is that much of the writing on basketball feels horribly dated. McPhee wrote this book before much good writing on basketball existed, so his explanation of plays and shots feels clunky. I wish he would'...more
best book about growing up as a gifted athlete who has skills and ambitions loftier than those of most top athletes. mcphee's description of game sequences is unrivalled, and he captures his character's most emblematic features in mundane moments. one unforgettable scene. bradley is practicing jump shots in the gym as mcphee observes. he's missing shot after shot. he tells mcphee that the height of the basket is a half-inch off of regulation. bradley adjusts, and sinks shot after shot. later, mc...more
This just reminded me of how much I love McPhee's style and also reminded me what it was like in the 1960's to be living in a home where Cazzie Russell was such a house-hold name that it reverberates today with great clangor still today.
This is essentially biographical sketch of a young Bill Bradley just after he left Princeton. Totally basketball, but a glimpse into the workings of the mind nevertheless. In a sense, it is a companion to a piece McPhee wrote within the last year for "The New Yor...more
This is essentially biographical sketch of a young Bill Bradley just after he left Princeton. Totally basketball, but a glimpse into the workings of the mind nevertheless. In a sense, it is a companion to a piece McPhee wrote within the last year for "The New Yor...more
Quick. McPhee's first book shows how much he impacted the style of the New Yorker biographical profile (I still have to go find more Joseph Mitchell). Tight, short little book following Bill Bradley through his years at Princeton, & addendums provide small updates to his post college career as a Knick & a US Senator. Interesting how the relationship forms between writer and subject.
McPhee's 1st book. For those who know him from elsewhere, it may be a bit of surprise that a sports bio (almost hagiography) is 1st. That said, it's a typically straightforward McPhee discussion of a pretty remarkable person (read, way more than athlete). Considering when it was originally written (Bradley's senior year) the trajectory he took after that moment is all the more remarkable.
a great account of bill bradley in what may be perhaps his best forum, though possibly the one for which he is least known. mcphee's first work follows bradley's senior year/ season at princeton. during this year he would win the national player of the year award, take princeton to the final four, and be selected as a rhodes scholar. bradley must be the greatest student-athlete of all time and this book accounts the incredible dedication, resolve, and work that made it possible. the only complai...more
I just found my old paperback copy of this book. While in high school, I admired Bill Bradley's basketball playing at Princeton a great deal. As a result, I bought this book soon after it came about. This is a good luck at the career of Bradley at Princeton University. Literately written and a fascinating character study. . . .
Interesting book about a true scholar athlete who led the Princeton Tigers to the 1965 Final Four. This book does not cover Bradley's subsequent professional basketball or political careers. However, it does contain addenda that includes photographs of his 10 years with the Knicks and three terms in the US Senate.
A great read, a young John McPhee writing about a young Bill Bradley. I don't know much about basketball, but I know more now, and understand why Bradley was held in such great respect and with so much affection. Beyond McPhee's book, it's something to think about how different our country might be if Bradley had won the presidency in 2000.
It is fun to read a book written about a person before that person goes on to achieve & even exceed what everyone thinks he is capable of. You often read stories like this about young men or women who then end up burning out and not reaching their potential. This is obviously not the case with Bill Bradley. Another fun aspect of this book is the author John McPhee was a young author at the time and also went on to fulfill his potential.
A look at the life of Bill Bradley (former New York Knicker and US Senator) through his methodology of approaching and playing the game of basketball while at Priceton. A blueprint for success in athletics, and for success in much more important arenas of life. Highly recommended, particularly for young student athletes...
McPhee and Bradley got along. This book is a work that approaches adulation, but that seems appropriate given Bradley's incredible work ethic and discipline on and off the basketball court. A quick and exuberant read.
an in-depth story of a great, great basketball player. really shows how much of a boy scout bill bradley really was: a hard working ivy leaguer, a rhodes scholar, a future senator, and one of the sickest ballers ever.
Good book about an interesting guy. McPhee's book has a different pace from most popular biographies. It's somewhat detached and analytical, but then, so it seems is Bill Bradley.
Great portrait of a player through his own eyes. Bill Bradley was a unique player and man and John McPhee capturing some of those moments in action made this book relevant. I think I learned more about the game of basketball from this book than any other source.
I read this for the author, not the subject, and it had a couple magical passages, but it somehow isn't an obscure enough topic for him to really spread out.
Great introduction to McPhee's writing and to the future senator and New York Knick. McPhee's first book, it was written while Bradley was still at Princeton.
I feel like this is what McPhee was reaching for in works like The Headmaster - except this time it was interesting!
So short, so insightful.
So short, so insightful.
Probably one of my favorites. Not many people know who the best basketball player ever to live was.
A classical John MePhee profile. Read it many years ago in the New Yorker. It's as enjoyable as ever.
I read this book when I was 11 years old, late at night, alone, in my bed. It was sheer heaven.
Oct 01, 2011
Alexander
is currently reading it
I'm reading right now and my basketball coach told me it was a must-read
A clear, focused book on the rare and complete artistry of Bradley's game.
A great book for those who appreciate the little things, the fundamentals in sports (specifically basketball). Good sports writing is tough to find these days, but Mcphee's attention to the details sets him apart. Plus, its a really magnificent profile of a pre-NBA, pre-Senate Bill Bradley during his senior season at Princeton when he was both the National Player of the Year and a Rhodes Scholar ... truly epitomizing the student-athlete model while leading Princeton to the Final Four. Bradley wa...more
Good but it's lacking more.
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John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with the New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The P...more
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“Bradley is one of the few basketball players who have ever been appreciatively cheered by a disinterested away-from-home crowd while warming up. This curious event occurred last March, just before Princeton eliminated the Virginia Military Institute, the year's Southern Conference champion, from the NCAA championships. The game was played in Philadelphia and was the last of a tripleheader. The people there were worn out, because most of them were emotionally committed to either Villanova or Temple-two local teams that had just been involved in enervating battles with Providence and Connecticut, respectively, scrambling for a chance at the rest of the country. A group of Princeton players shooting basketballs miscellaneously in preparation for still another game hardly promised to be a high point of the evening, but Bradley, whose routine in the warmup time is a gradual crescendo of activity, is more interesting to watch before a game than most players are in play. In Philadelphia that night, what he did was, for him, anything but unusual. As he does before all games, he began by shooting set shots close to the basket, gradually moving back until he was shooting long sets from 20 feet out, and nearly all of them dropped into the net with an almost mechanical rhythm of accuracy. Then he began a series of expandingly difficult jump shots, and one jumper after another went cleanly through the basket with so few exceptions that the crowd began to murmur. Then he started to perform whirling reverse moves before another cadence of almost steadily accurate jump shots, and the murmur increased. Then he began to sweep hook shots into the air. He moved in a semicircle around the court. First with his right hand, then with his left, he tried seven of these long, graceful shots-the most difficult ones in the orthodoxy of basketball-and ambidextrously made them all. The game had not even begun, but the presumably unimpressible Philadelphians were applauding like an audience at an opera.”
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3 people liked it
“If basketball was going to enable Bradley to make friends, to prove that a banker's son is as good as the next fellow, to prove that he could do without being the greatest-end-ever at Missouri, to prove that he was not chicken, and to live up to his mother's championship standards, and if he was going to have some moments left over to savor his delight in the game, he obviously needed considerable practice, so he borrowed keys to the gym and set a schedule for himself that he adhereded to for four full years—in the school year, three and a half hours every day after school, nine to five on Saturday, one-thirty to five on Sunday, and, in the summer, about three hours a day.”
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2 people liked it
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Oct 01, 2011 08:03am