A Sense of Where You Are

A Sense of Where You Are
Published by Farrar; Straus & Giroux
Paperback: 0-374-52689-3; $12.00US

Read an excerpt from A Sense of Where You Are

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 superlative basketball. But athletic prowess alone would not explain Bradley's magnetism, which is in the quality of the man himself--his self-discipline, his rationality, and his sense of responsibility. Here is a portrait of Bradley as he was in college, before his time with the New York Knickerbockers and his election to the U.S. Senate--a story that suggests the abundant beginnings of his professional careers in sport and politics.

Reviews

After watching Bradley play several times, even when he was eighteen, it seemed to me that I had been watching all the possibilities of the game that I had ever imagined, and then some. His play was integral. There was nothing missing. He not only worked hard on defense, for example, he worked hard on defense when the other team was hopelessly beaten. He did all kinds of things he didn't have to do simply because those were the dimensions of the game. --from A Sense of Where You Are

"Immensely well-written, inspiring without being preachy, and contains as well the clearest analyses of Bradley's moves, fakes, and shots that have appeared in print." --Rex Lardner, The New York Times Book Review