The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business

by Wright Thompson

Overview

The instant New York Times bestseller!

From one of America's most beloved sportswriters and the bestselling author of Pappyland, a collection of true stories about the dream of greatness and its cost in the world of sports.

"Wright Thompson's stories are so full of rich characters, bad actors, heroes, drama, suffering, courage, conflict, and vivid detail that I sometimes thinks he's working my side of the street - the world of fiction." - John Grisham

There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers (see back of book). But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive. Wright Thompson figures people out. He jimmies the lock to the furnaces inside the people he profiles and does an analysis of the fuel that fires their ambition. Whether it be Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Pat Riley or Urban Meyer, he strips the away the self-serving myths and fantasies to reveal his characters in full. There are fascinating common denominators: it may not be the case that every single great performer or coach had a complex relationship with his father, but it can sure seem that way. And there is much marvelous local knowledge: about specific sports, and times and places, and people. Ludicrously entertaining and often powerfully moving, The Cost of These Dreams is an ode to the reporter's art, and a celebration of true greatness and the high price that it exacts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143133872
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	64,935
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN and the bestselling author of Pappyland. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.

Editorial Reviews

Thompson has written some of the most important pieces of contemporary sports journalism…demonstrating unparalleled insight into the lives of the most compelling figures in sport…Much of Thompson's best work is now collected in The Cost of These Dreams. Chrestomathies of this sort can feel like a grab bag, or a halfhearted attempt to make a second buck on old work. This volume elevates reporting and writing that was already operating above the rim. Thompson's intricate stories reward a second (and third) reading. And when they are read back to back, themes emerge that permit a view not just of the subject at hand—Urban Meyer, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods—but of something larger: the price these men have paid for greatness.

The New York Times Book Review - John Swansburg

""Thompson has written some of the most important pieces of contemporary sports journalism . . . demonstrating unparalleled insight into the lives of the most compelling figures in sport. . . . This volume elevates reporting and writing that was already operating above the rim.” —The New York Times

"Knockout sportswriting from Wright Thompson . . . Mr. Thompson is an investigator of men’s souls, though his writing is as much about the search for clues as it is about what he finds. . . . None of these pieces are strictly sports stories, but all exemplify the high purpose to which so much sports writing aspires today." —Wall Street Journal

"Wright is a supremely gifted writer who cuts through the mythology with a scalpel.” —The National Book Review

“[Thompson] demonstrates his storytelling talents by probing the personalities of some of the biggest names in sports, both past and present, including Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Ted Williams, and Bear Bryant.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Mississippi native Wright Thompson is not only the best active sportswriter in America but also one of the best writers, period. This collection compiles his greatest pieces.” —Men’s Journal
 
“Thompson demonstrates his talent, deftly portraying a diverse cast of athletes and coaches. . . . [He] also brilliantly reprises the riots and other events surrounding James Meredith’s enrollment at Ole Miss in 1962 and the school’s outstanding football team during that tumultuous year.” —Booklist

“Thompson’s abundant strengths as a long-form journalist are evident on nearly every page…. Richly researched and textured writing that reveals the humanity of the author’s subjects.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2019-01-21

A senior writer for ESPN The Magazine debuts with a collection of his explorations of sports-world notables who reached—or are reaching—the ends of their careers.

Thompson's abundant strengths as a long-form journalist are evident on nearly every page. He is a relentless researcher and sensitive interviewer, a writer who tries to understand the factors that made his subjects who they are—or were. In an essay about Muhammad Ali, for example, Thompson engages in a seemingly endless pursuit of one of Ali's very first opponents, a man who vanished from the grid. The author pursues the end-of-career stories of Michael Jordan and, later, Tiger Woods and helps us see the connections between the two, who are friends. He also chronicles the lives of people far less celebrated—e.g., Tony Harris, a college basketball star whose paranoia sent him into the jungles of Brazil, where he was found dead. Wright is particularly incisive in his essays on coaches, including Bear Bryant (Alabama football), Pat Riley (NBA) and Urban Meyer (who just completed his final football season at Ohio State)—all three of whom have had to deal with the end of their glory years. There are some longer, more complicated pieces here, too—the story of the New Orleans Saints, the Super Bowl, and Hurricane Katrina—and of football at the University of Mississippi when James Meredith broke the color line in 1962. Thompson also deals with the rugged family dynamics of Ted Williams and, in a brief piece, the angst and celebration in Chicago when the Cubs finally won the World Series in 2016. He ends with an emotional piece about his own late father. Though he's sometimes a little quick on the draw with his identifications of motives and causes, his gritty determination makes it easy to forgive.

Richly researched and textured writing that reveals the humanity of the author's subjects.

Kirkus Reviews

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