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A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton |  | Author: John McPhee
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 122146
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0374526893
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780374526894
ASIN: 0374526893
Publication Date: June 30, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
First published in 1965, A Sense of Where You Are is the literary equivalent of a harmonic convergence, a remarkable confluence of two talents--John McPhee and Bill Bradley--at the beginning of what would prove to be long and distinguished careers. While McPhee would blossom into one of the best nonfiction writers of the last 35 years, Bradley segued from an all-American basketball player at Princeton, to Rhodes Scholar, to NBA star, to three terms in the U.S. Senate. McPhee noticed greatness in Bradley from the start; the book is an extension of a lengthy magazine profile McPhee wrote early in Bradley's senior year; the title comes from Bradley always knowing his position in relation to the basket. What's so noteworthy about the book is the greatness it promised--both for writer and for subject, a greatness both have delivered through the years again and again.
Product Description
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 Knicks and his election to the U.S. Senate—a story that suggests the abundant beginnings of his professional careers in sport and politics.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 13
 Good Reading! Felt Like I was With Frazier & Debusschere on a fast break! June 21, 2010
Performing
Dollar Bill never really lived up to the hype of his pro career.
But he did have success on the court. His life at Princeton was interesting.
This is a fine book that keeps your interest. No doubt old Knick fans like myself
enjoy this more than other basketball fans. Thinking about how much Bradley has accomplished
in his life is quite a feat!
Classic McPhee: exploring the minds of men at work August 31, 2009
Stephen R. Laniel (Cambridge, MA USA)
This was John McPhee's first book, so it obviously holds a lot of interest as a glimpse at the man's later style. I'm happy to say that while this is obviously McPhee -- you can tell it's him within a page or so -- it's one of the weaker McPhees. Which is praising by faint damns: McPhee's style seems to have emerged fully-formed from his forehead at The New Yorker, and moved continuously upward in small, methodical steps. By the time we get to Uncommon Carriers, which I'll review soon, the McPhee style has been honed to a keen edge.
A Sense Of Where You Are is also notable as a first glimpse at Bill Bradley: future Rhodes Scholar, future New York Knicks basketball player, future senator, future presidential candidate. One wants to say "All of the future Bradleys were there when McPhee wrote A Sense of Where You Are," and that may be true: not only a great athlete, Bradley was the most admired man on the Princeton campus. And this isn't just retrospective I-knew-him-whenism: A Sense of Where You Are came out in 1965, before anyone could know what Bradley would become.
If I tell you that this is a McPhee book, and if you've read McPhee, I can basically stop there. A McPhee book is characterized by a gentle forward motion propelled atop sentences that have no right to work as they do. The sentences are largely staccato, and in books other than this one they tend to feel like a sequence of random observations. In The Curve of Binding Energy, for instance, you feel like you're reading a mere litany of facts about nuclear fusion which seemed interesting to John McPhee, yet by the end you really have learned a lot about the construction of a nuclear weapon, and the sentences more than merely hang together; they flow. It's the strangest thing; McPheee routinely pulls off a nonfiction magic trick.
McPhee studies men at work. He quickly falls into their lingo, which is both one of the greatest irritants of his books and one of their key charms. It's irritating because McPhee will often use a long string of disciplinary buzzwords before defining them; this reaches its nauseating pinnacle in Annals of the Former World, where we've absorbed a couple hundred pages of dense geological concepts before McPhee gets around to telling you what those concepts mean. It's charming because you feel like you're right in the thick of the action with citrus pickers in McPhee's Oranges; with truckers, ship captains, and UPS employees in Uncommon Carriers; and with basketball players in A Sense of Where You Are.
McPhee follows Bradley on and off the court; when not watching Bradley -- the greatest basketball player, apparently, at the time McPhee wrote, and by some measure the fourth-best athlete on earth -- he's asking Bradley to walk, step by step, through how he negotiates difficult problems on the court. Standing in McPhee's kitchen, one imagines, Bradley pivots, feints, dodges and leaps to show McPhee exactly how his mind works. It's absolutely captivating.
It's also a lot of hero-worship. It's a beautiful work, but a bit adulatory for my tastes. Orangemen, truckers, pilots, and nuclear engineers surely fascinate McPhee, and he respects them for the difficult tasks that they get done, and moreover he writes about them from the thick of the action, but somehow he manages in those later works to stay above the fray. By contrast, John McPhee is godfather to Bill Bradley's daughter.
Don't let that dissuade you, though. If you love McPhee -- and if you don't, you must not have read him -- dive into A Sense of Where You Are and observe two great men at work.
 New Journalism Classic August 23, 2008
OlingerStories
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Whether you like sports or not, McPhee's book is so well written that it carries you along. Bradley at Princeton seems so ancient compared with the sports scene today, but the story reveals unknowingly how much we have lost in the culture when it comes to heroes.
A beautiful mind! April 1, 2008
Lars Sonsteby (Norway)
"A sense of where you" are, offers a fascinating look at a true scholar athlete. Author John McPhee`s debut is well written and gives the reader a look at how a student athlete should approach life and grasp the opportunity ahead. Bill Bradley is the consumate teamplayer who pays tribute to the small and important details of the game of basketball. A hoop junkie growing up, but also a reflective mind,perhaps too reflective to become President of the United States.
An inspiring book that should be read by people of any age, who seek to become successfull at whetever they do.
Must read for young athletes and their parents January 28, 2006
Karner Blue (USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a must read for all aspiring young athletes and their parents. Bill Bradley always had his priorities straight. Although a gifted athlete, he knew that his education was more important. After being named the best college player in America, he eschewed the money and glory of the NBA to accept a Rhodes scholarship. Can you imagine one of today's selfish, ignorant, anti-intellectual, basketball stars doing that today?
Showing reviews 1-5 of 13
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