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description:  NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the #1 bestselling author of The Dynasty and Tiger Woodsthe definitivefantastic (Sports Illustrated) biography of basketball superstar LeBron James based on three years of exhaustive research and more than 250 interviews.LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century and hes in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predeterminedthe truth is vastly more interesting than that. What makes LeBrons story so compelling is how he won his destiny despite overwhelmingly long odds in a drama worthy of a Dickens novel. As a child he was a scared and lonely little boy living a nomadic existence in Akron Ohio. His mother who had LeBron when she was sixteen would sometimes leave him on his own. Destitute and fatherless he missed close to one hundred days of school in the fourth grade. Desperate his mother placed him with a family that gave him stability and put a basketball in his hands. An absorbing chronicle of talent character pluck and luck (Wall Street Journal) LeBron tells the full riveting saga of how a child adrift found the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict the most celebrated sports biographer of our time paints a vivid picture of LeBrons epic origin story showing the gradual rise of a star who surrounded by a tight-knit group of teenage friends and adult mentors accelerated into a speeding comet during high school. Today LeBron produces Hollywood films and television shows has a social media presence that includes more than one hundred million followers engages in political activism takes outspoken stances on racism and social injustice and transforms lives through his visionary philanthropy. He went from a lost boy in Akron to a beloved hero who uses his fortune to educate underprivileged children and lift up needy familiesand brought home Clevelands first NBA championship. But LeBron is more than just the origin story of a GOAT or a recap of his multi-championship multi-MVP gold medaldecorated career on the court. Benedict delves into LeBrons relationship with fame and power: how he has cultivated it harnessed it suffered from it and leveraged it. In these pages we watch his evolution from a player who avoided politics and was widely criticized for not joining his teammates in protesting Chinas role in the Darfur genocide to becoming an athlete who partnered with President Obama; campaigned for Hillary Clinton; became an advocate against gun violence racism and voter suppression; and openly clashed with President Trump empowering other athletes to speak out against social injustice. To capture LeBrons extraordinary life Benedict conducted hundreds of interviews with the people who were involved with LeBron at different stages of his life. He also obtained thousands of pages of primary source documents and mined hundreds of hours of video footage. Destined to be the authoritative account of LeBrons life LeBron is a masterfulpropulsive (Los Angeles Times) and unprecedented portrait of one of the worlds most captivating figures.
language: None
title: LeBron
publisher: Simon  Schuster Audio