Playing for Keeps (Paperback: Illustrated: 448 pages)

Enhanced Muze Note

...[V]eteran reporter-author Halberstam tells an engrossing, multi-layered story.

Enhanced Muze Note

The faults in 'Playing for Keeps' include an occasional excess of information regarding peripheral aspects of Jordan's life and lapses in which the language is less than carefully or thriftily wrought. One oversight occurs when Halberstam suggests that Jordan is an incarnation of the transformation in sports hype that allows players today to be promoted above team. He neglects to mention that Babe Ruth and Red Grange were there decades before, as was the famous Madison Square Garden marquee, 'Geo Mikan vs. Knicks.' But Halberstam over all has succeeded in lending perspective to the world Michael Jordan both made and inherited, as well as in portraying Michael Jordan the man and not the icon, guiding us, in effect, beyond the Bosporus.

Enhanced Muze Note

Halberstam has often written with a style that reads like a first draft. His sentences can fall into a dogged sameness, repetition of themes and phrases become a stylistic tic...pet words such as 'palpable' have a way of repeatedly cropping up....[B]ut no sane person would question Halberstam's masterful understanding of human nature, especially the qualities that drive and define greatness. Once Halberstam gets going, he comes through with great characterization after great characterization.