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Jumpman
- The Making and Meaning of Michael Jordan
- Narrated by: Gregory Jones
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
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Jumpman
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Publisher's Summary
How Michael Jordan’s path to greatness was shaped by race, politics, and the consequences of fame
To become the most revered basketball player in America, it wasn’t enough for Michael Jordan to merely excel on the court. He also had to become something he never intended: a hero.
Reconstructing the defining moment of Jordan’s career—winning his first NBA championship during the 1990-1991 season—sports historian Johnny Smith examines Jordan’s ubiquitous rise in American culture and the burden he carried as a national symbol of racial progress. Jumpman reveals how Jordan maintained a “mystique” that allowed him to seem more likable to Americans who wanted to believe race no longer mattered. In the process of achieving greatness, he remade himself into a paradox: universally known, yet distant and unknowable.
Blending dramatic game action with grand evocations of the social forces sweeping the early nineties, Jumpman demonstrates how the man and the myth together created the legend we remember today.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
What the critics say
“In Jumpman, author Johnny Smith distills the mythology of a sports legend and gives us a story not only about His Airness, but, more broadly, about America.”—Gary M. Pomerantz, author of The Last Pass