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Synopsis:
He intimidated people on and off the
football field. He was brutal yet brilliant, narcissistic yet
magnanimous, relentless yet unyielding. Most of all, he was the
greatest football player of all time. He was Jim Brown.
Jim Brown was an astonishing physical specimen with tremendous skills
and intelligence. An athlete who played a number of sports at Syracuse
University, he ultimately discovered that it was the violence of
football that appealed to him most. The idea of physically dominating
other men, surviving ferocious battles on the field against opponents
who would just as soon call him a nigger as try to gouge out his eyes
fueled an astonishing, record-making NFL career that led to the Hall of
Fame. He battled his defenses, sometimes his teammates, and often the
Cleveland Browns' legendary head coach Paul Brown.
But Jim Brown had ambitions greater than football. He used his athletic
brilliance to launch a movie career, becoming Hollywood's first black
action hero, culminating in a scandalous love scene with America's
sweetheart Raquel Welch. He leveraged his popularity into helping the
NFL's black players and becoming a civil rights activist. Never shy
about expressing his opinions, Brown would become the subject of FBI
investigations and surveillance throughout parts of his life.
Then there were the women. The patient wife who was essentially a
single mother and who endured public humiliation. The girlfriends he
ran through and the scandalous accusations of violence made by some of
them.
A complex and fascinating story, Jim Brown is a towering biography of a living legend.
Title: Jim Brown: The Fierce Life of an American Hero
Media Type: CD; set of 9 CD's
Listen:
Price: $29.95
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UNFORGETTABLE QUOTES
"Once,
after a blast of six or seven yards, Brown was the first to regain his
feet. When he got back to the huddle he was blowing hard - but the
inert figures of three Giants marked the trail where he had passed,
like the breadcrumbs on the forest path of Hansel and Gretel. For
mercurial speed, airy nimbleness, and explosive violence in one package
of undistilled evil, there is no other like Mr. Brown"
- - Red Smith
- Pulitzer Prize Winning writer
"His physique resembled that of a Greek god with dark skin"
- - John Burger
- who played lacrosse with Brown at Syracuse University
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