Lebron

Description: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The first definitive biography of basketball legend LeBron James, by the acclaimed author of Tiger Woods.

LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century and vying with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined.

As a child, he was a scared and lonely little boy living a nomadic existence in Akron, Ohio. Destitute and fatherless, one year he missed almost 100 days of school. Desperate, his mother placed him with a family that gave him stability and put a basketball in his hands.

Bringing home Cleveland's first NBA championship was the culmination of a stellar multi-championship, multi-MVP, gold medal-decorated career -- Le Bron is the NBA's all-time leading scorer and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire. Today LeBron also produces Hollywood films and television shows, has more than 100 million followers on socia media, engages in political activism, has taken outspoken stances on racism and social injustice, and transforms lives through his visionary philanthropy.

In LeBron, Jeff Benedict, the most celebrated sports biographer of our time, paints a vivid picture of LeBron's epic origin story and his meterioc rise to sports superstardom. He goes behind the scenes of LeBron's grappling with his seismic celebrity, including appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a high school junior. Based on three years of exhaustive research and more than 250 interviews, LeBron is a gripping, inspiring, and unprecedented portrait of one of the world's most captivating figures.

Review: 'Masterful . . . Propulsive . . . This is a fast break of a book, slicing into the many mini-narratives that James has lived and artfully tying them together to create a portrait of a man who has, by his own design, remained an enigma except to those he decides to trust. Benedict has constructed a sort of sports opera fueled by the drama and emotion surrounding his subject, but never sensationalistic or unfair. . . Benedict's greatest feat here might be the way he cuts through both the public hysteria surrounding James and the superstar's own protective field to paint a portrait of a man in full. . . . LeBron isn't just great sportswriting, it's also vivid narrative journalism' * Los Angeles Times *
'Inspiring . . . An absorbing chronicle of talent, character, pluck, and luck' * Wall Street Journal *
'The definitive biography of LeBron James . . . [Readers] will appreciate the perspective Benedict provides when it comes to just how much James changed the perception of what it means to be a modern athlete' * Associated Press *
'The definitive biography . . . It's fantastic. . . . So rich in granular detail' * Sports Illustrated *
'LeBron is fantastic. Add it to your list' -- Jon Bon Jovi
'An absolutely consumable book. It's the kind of in-depth reporting and context that you just don't get. . . . I thought I knew just about everything about LeBron. But the details and the digging here are so fun' -- Colin Cowherd
'Jeff Benedict knows how to begin and tell a story. . . . He's a master of his craft. . . . The vividness and execution of his writing . . . is almost cinematic, like watching an episode of Succession' * Irish Examiner *
'A skilfully confected and readable book that does very well with James's childhood' * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Biography: Jeff Benedict is the bestselling author of sixteen non-fiction books, as well as a television and film producer. His latest book, The Dynasty, is the definitive inside story of the New England Patriots. A special features writer for Sports Illustrated, he has also written for the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and his stories have been the basis for segments on 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, CNN and the Discovery Channel among others. In 2018, Jeff co-wrote the William Hill Prize shortlisted Tiger Woods, and he was an executive producer on the HBO documentary Tiger that was based on the book and aired in 2021.He lives with his wife and four children in Connecticut.