Pistol

"I grew up possessed by the legend of 'Pistol' Pete Maravich. I've marveled at the supernatural skills of Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Jerry West, Kobe Bryant -- all of them were greater basketball players than the 'Pistol'. Yet none of them could touch the magical, otherworldly qualities he brought to the court, the genius and wizardry and breathtaking creativity. He could light up a crowd like a match set to gasoline. His game was lordly, inimitable and he should have been the greatest player to ever play the game. This great book by Mark Kriegel will explain why he was not. I never saw a greater or more electrifying basketball player and the 'Pistol's' is one of the saddest stories ever told. What a book!"
-- Pat Conroy, bestselling author of My Losing Season and The Prince of Tides

"Pistol is a classic American tale wonderfully told. With deep research and a vivid narrative style, Mark Kriegel brings us the joy and sorrow of Pete Maravich, an inimitable basketball player who was both timeless and before his time, an original talent haunted by demons -- his father's and his own."
-- David Maraniss, author of Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero

"Pistol is not just a biography of a transcendent, doomed athlete; it is a mesmerizing tale of a striving, grasping American family as dramatic as myth, of a father and son as intertwined as Daedalus and Icarus. Kriegel has written the rarest of sports books: a fast-paced, through-the-night page-turner. This isn't a slam dunk, it's a tomahawk glass-shatterer. Pistol is nothing but sensational."
-- Rick Telander, author of Heaven Is a Playground and senior sports columnist, Chicago Sun-Times

"Pistol Pete's moves on the basketball court defied the laws of physics. He did things you can't even film. He deserves a biographer with magic powers of his own, and he's found one in Mark Kriegel."
-- Will Blythe, author of To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever

"This is the best sports book I've read in years. The research, the writing, the pace -- it's All-Pro material."

-- Terry Pluto, The Akron Beacon Journal

"Mark Kriegel has written the sport's bio equivalent of Maravich on a fast break: dazzling and smart, and, even at 381 pages, over before you knew it."

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pistol skillfully pulls off the balancing act required of good sports biography. It plays large historical forces (segregation, the rise of televised sports) against the individual magic of its subject." -- New York Magazine

"A remarkable book that is the best researched biography yet of this revolutionary basketball player." -- The Raleigh News and Observer

"Like the best journalists, Kriegel has the ability to get out of the way and let a good story tell itself." -- The Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Pistol is a beautifully written book that captures the soul and inner turmoil of this son and father." -- The Tennessean