BALL GAMES

Currently Lebron James is a globally recognized athlete, pitch-man, and entrepreneur. In Shooting Stars (Penguin Press, $26.95) reporter Buzz Bissinger helps tell James’s back story, where nothing of his future but basketball seemed assured. Growing up in a poor and unstable home, James ricocheted around Akron, Ohio, until he found twin anchors in basketball and in the teammates who became his surrogate family. Romeo, Willie, Sian, Little Dru, and Lebron chose loyalty above all else, enrolling together at small Saint Vincent’s, known more for academics than athletics, and taking the school to three state championships. The book gives vivid descriptions and play-by-plays of important games, with insight provided by recollections from James and others. But most memorable here is the appreciation of James’s maturation over a brief and tumultuous period, during which he was an object of suspicion, admiration, jealousy, adulation, expectation, and greed, all while trying to find himself as an emerging adult and public figure. Lebron James is lauded as a fantastic teammate, and in this book that unique quality is shown even more off the court than on it.