A riveting new biography of The us’s greatest all-around athlete by the bestselling creator of the classic biography When Pride Still Mattered.
Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at each and every sport. He won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon on the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was once an All-American football player on the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was once one in every of a kind.
But regardless of his colossal skills, Thorpe’s life was once a struggle against the odds. As a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, he encountered duplicitous authorities who turned away from him when their reputations were at risk. At Carlisle, he dealt with the racist assimilationist philosophy “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” His gold medals were unfairly rescinded because he had played minor league baseball. His later life was once troubled by alcohol, broken marriages, and financial distress. He roamed from state to state and took bit parts in Hollywood, but even the film of his own life failed to make stronger his fortunes. But for all his travails, Thorpe didn’t succumb. The man survived, complications and all, and so did the myth.
Path Lit by Lightning is a brilliant American story from a master biographer.
