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The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson Audiobook
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Publisher Description
By the New York Times bestselling author of Showtime—the source for HBO’s Winning Time—the definitive biography of mythic multi-sport star Bo Jackson.
From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports, and overtook Michael Jordan as America’s most recognizable pitchman. He was on our televisions, in our magazines, plastered across billboards. He was half man, half myth.
Then, almost overnight, he was gone.
He was Bo Jackson.
Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, New York Times bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University’s transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball and ubiquitous “Bo Knows” Nike pitchman. Did Bo really jump over a parked Volkswagen? (Yes.) Did he actually run a 4.13 40? (Yes.) During the 1991 flight that nearly killed every member of the Chicago White Sox, was he in the cockpit trying to help? (Oddly, yes. Or no. Or … maybe.)
Bo Jackson isn’t Jim Thorpe.
He’s not Deion Sanders, either.
No, Bo Jackson is Paul Bunyan.
The Last Folk Hero is the true tale of Bo Jackson that only “master storyteller” (NPR.org) Jeff Pearlman could tell.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
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“Gets us closer than we’ve ever gotten to the truth of who Jackson really was and how he got to be that way. The book is appointment reading, an undeniable masterclass.”
— Chris Herring, author of Blood in the Garden
Quotes
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“It’s just not possible to write a better biography than The Last Folk Hero, which is Jeff Pearlman’s best book yet. And that’s saying something.”
— New York Post -
“An excellent, well-researched biography…Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal (starred review) -
“Provide[s] an array of vignettes that distinctly portray the human arc of one of sport’s most mythical figures.”
— Alec Lewis, Kansas City Royals beat writer for The Athletic -
“As a child of Birmingham, Alabama, who fell in love with sports in the 1980s thanks to Bo Jackson, I consider this one of the greatest sports biographies ever written.”
— Joseph Goodman, author of We Want Bama
Awards
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A New York Times bestseller
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A #1 Amazon bestseller in Football
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About Jeff Pearlman
Jeff Pearlman is the New York Times bestselling author of eight books, including Football for a Buck, The Bad Guys Won!, Boys Will Be Boys, Showtime, Sweetness, and Gunslinger. He is the host of the Two Writers Slinging Yang podcast and blogs regularly at jeffpearlman.com.
About JD Jackson
JD Jackson is a theater professor, aspiring stage director, and award-winning audiobook narrator. He is a classically trained actor, and his television and film credits include roles on House, ER, Law & Order, Hack, Sherrybaby, Diary of a City Priest, and Lucky Number Slevin. He is the recipient of more than a dozen Earphones Awards for narration and an Odyssey Honor for G. Neri’s Ghetto Cowboy, and he was also named one of AudioFile magazine’s Best Voices of the Year for 2012 and 2013. An adjunct professor at Los Angeles Southwest College, he has an MFA in theater from Temple University.