Word: agassi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Andre Agassi's memoir, open: An Autobiography (Alfred A. Knopf; 388 pages), is just as entrancing as his tennis game. Agassi's mind pops back and forth like a ball during one of his rallies: I hate the sport, winning is fun, my father preys on me, but I understand why. It's a perpetual struggle, yet Agassi, who won eight Grand Slams, survives the excruciating points, and your eyes stay glued to the action. He can hit a loud smash. In case you haven't heard, at one point in his career Agassi grew quite fond of crystal meth...
Sports has a proud history of producing self-serving, cliché-ridden memoirs. But by sharing an unvarnished, at times inspiring story in an arresting, muscular style, Agassi may have just penned one of the best sports autobiographies of all time. Check--it's one of the better memoirs out there, period...
...help. Agassi leaned on J.R. Moehringer, who won a Pulitzer for feature writing in 2000, to craft mounds of interview transcripts into a coherent narrative, told in the present tense. (Moehringer, feeling that the book belonged to Agassi alone, refused to put his name on the cover.) Their doubles team clicked. One passage describes how a teenage Andre, landing in Las Vegas after a tournament in Seoul, makes the bold decision to embrace his taskmaster dad. Mike Agassi tortured his son with endless drills; he wasn't the cuddly type. When the moment arrives, Mike "stiffens," Agassi writes. "It feels...
...completely lucky and spoiled growing up. I was able to catch the tail end of John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors and lived through the golden age of American tennis with Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras and Jim Courier and Michael Chang. Even cooler than that, I've been able to establish a relationship with most of them. I'm glad that I had those guys to look...
...mention the relative successes of Shai Agassi, of A Better Place, and Tom Casten, of Recycled Energy Development. What's been holding back other people with big ideas about energy efficiency? Breaking through in a big way with an idea revolving around alternative energy or efficiency is hard because, in most cases, these projects don't assume to be profitable for years. Agassi has found success because he was already a giant in the world of software. Coming up with $100 million for an electric car project would be a nearly impossible task for anybody without the clout of Agassi...