Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My LifeHarper Collins, 2009 M03 17 - 288 pages James Blake's life was getting better every day. A rising tennis star and People magazine's Sexiest Male Athlete of 2002, he was leading a charmed life and loving every minute of it. But all that ended in May 2004, when Blake fractured his neck in an on-court freak accident. As he recovered, his father—who had been the inspiration for his tennis career—lost his battle with stomach cancer. Shortly after his father's death, Blake was dealt a third blow when he contracted zoster, a rare virus that paralyzed half of his face and threatened to end his already jeopardized career. In Breaking Back, Blake provides a remarkable account of how he came back from this terrible heartbreak and self-doubt to become one of the top tennis players in the world. A story of strength, passion, courage, and the unbreakable bonds between a father and son, Breaking Back is a celebration of one extraordinary athlete's indomitable spirit and his inspiring ability to find hope in the bleakest of times. |
From inside the book
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... told me that it could take years to recover, and so the question of whether or not I would ever play again continuously lingered in the air. Zoster is often triggered by stress, so it made perfect sense that it hit me that summer, a ...
... told me he felt sorry for me because of my genealogy, predicting that I'd be hated by blacks and whites. I told my mother about what he said, and she replied that she didn't see why I wouldn't be loved by both communities, an outcome ...
... told us that he was eligible for an experimental drug that had had some small, but positive, effect on black and Asian patients. Then she shattered our expectations all over again when she told us, with sunny optimism, that he could ...
... told, a USAToday sports section cover story on me and my brother, when we were still competing for Harvard, with a huge photo of us, that really got the other suits at the agency jazzed up about us. “I'm thinking about shaving off my ...
Contents
1 | |
7 | |
It Could Be Worse | 35 |
Requiem for a Superman | 63 |
Five Minutes of Hitting | 115 |
Plan B | 147 |
If You Can Win One Set | 175 |
You Can Win Two 175 7 Fire It Up One Time Bam 203 8 Getting Better 241 Epilogue 257 Glossary | 265 |