A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Female Athlete - Hardcover

Joyner-Kersee, Jackie; Steptoe, Sonja

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446522481 ISBN 13: 9780446522489

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 1997

Synopsis

Jackie Joyner-Kersee is one of the world's most successful athletes, and has dominated the women's decathlon for many years. With this book, Jackie discusses how she has overcome her difficult early years to rise to the top.

About this title

Review:

The best sports stories are about overcoming overwhelming odds, confronting adversity, and--with a magical combination of skill, will, impossibly hard work, and determination--beating back the obstacles and triumphing with grace. It's no surprise, then, that Jackie Joyner-Kersee, multi-Olympic champion, All-American basketball star, and all-around inspiration and role model would include "Grace" in the title of her stirring autobiography; through her long careers, she has been both its beneficiary and its embodiment. Her journey from the poverty of East St. Louis to international fame and accomplishment is a marvelous tale of courage and conviction, which she movingly relates with passion, humor, honesty, and, of course, grace.

From the Back Cover:

Jackie is known throughout the world as the best female athlete ever - the winner of six Olympic medals, three of them gold; the current world-record holder in the heptathlon (the women's version of the male decathlon); the one-time world-record holder in the long jump; and an All-America basketball player. She grew up in East St. Louis in a house "little more than wallpaper and sticks". Her parents were poor teenagers when they married. She made her first long-jump pit in her backyard from borrowed playground sand. One of her first performances went unrecorded because of the color of her skin. Yet Jackie not only had an innate ability to conquer speed and distance, but possessed an irrepressible personality and a deep, unshakable love of sport. As she harnessed her talents, Jackie began an amazing string of multisport successes. In the midst of it all, she would try to hold her family together after her mother's tragic early death (Mary was only 37), and face her own devastating grief. As she climbed the dizzying heights of international and Olympic competition, she would face relentless media attention that escalated when she married Bob Kersee, her enormously successful - and controversial - coach. As she reached her profession's peak, she would battle life-threatening asthma, unfounded accusations of drug-induced performance enhancement, and recurring injuries. Ultimately, she would unite her experience and determination to achieve the most meaningful victories of all - those that shape and build lives beyond the field.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0446522481
• ISBN 13: 9780446522489
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336