Operation Yao Ming(姚明传)|报价￥56.40|图书,进口原版,Biographies & Memoirs 传记,Pop stars 明星,
品牌：
基本信息
·出版社：Gotham Books
·页码：352 页码
·出版日：2005年
·ISBN：1592400787
·条码：9781592400782
·版次：2005-11-03
·装帧：平装
·开本：20开 20开
内容简介
Book Description
Born in Shanghai to a poor Communist family, Yao Ming never intended to become the most famous living Chinese person on earth. But with his deft shooting touch and unassuming demeanor, the Houston Rockets' 7'6" center has become an NBA All-Star and multimillionaire celebrity endorser - and changed the face of American sports. Yet many mysteries surround him. How did a nation known for people of short stature produce such a towering giant? And how did Yao emerge from the shadowy sports system of his rapidly changing homeland to take a place under the spotlights on professional sports' brightest stage?
In Operation Yao Ming, award-winning journalist Brook Larmer draws on years of groundbreaking reporting to answer these questions while weaving a gripping narrative of sports, politics, and business in the age of globalization. The story begins before Yao was born, when Yao Ming's basketball player parents and those of his countryman and rival Wang Zhizhi were paired up at the urging of Maoist sports officials intent on creating a new generation of super-athletes. The pair rose through the ranks of a Soviet-style sports system in which hundreds of thousands of athletes undergo years of brutal training to bring glory to the motherland. Wang would eventually flourish as a fleet-footed 7'1" center with the People's Liberation Army Bayi Rockets team while the younger Yao would emerge as a star with the Shanghai Sharks. By the late 1990s the two giants would join forces on the national team to become twin symbols of a country longing to stand tall in the world. But when the NBA and Western corporations such as Nike fixed their gaze on the Middle Kingdom's 1.3 billion potential consumers, China's sports machine would collide with global capitalism.
In scenes packed with intrigue and suspense, Operation Yao Ming details the East-West tug-of-war over the two athletes, bringing to life the politics and subterfuge surrounding the process that would bring first Wang, then Yao, from the straitjacketed Chinese system to the brash, individualistic universe of the NBA. Larmer follows them to America, where they would struggle to adapt to the weight of expectations, the rigors of the NBA, and the shock of new lives as millionaire celebrities in a foreign land - and where Wang's unwillingness to continue playing the good soldier begat a stunning turn of events that would send their careers hurtling down divergent paths. In the middle of the maelstrom are two young men - one a rising superstar and hero to millions; the other a struggling athlete rejected by his homeland and running out of options.
FromPublishers Weekly
The 7'5" Yao Ming didn't get where he is today because of some lucky genes and a good three-point shot. Everything about him, from birth to first endorsement deal, was planned by a confluence of government and business interests intent on creating a superstar. Basketball has been popular in China since the late 19th century, so a government with a Soviet-style, militaristic sports system intent on creating world-class athletes thought little of mating its tallest athletes in an attempt to pass on their genes. Thus in 1980, Yao was born to the tallest couple in China, the result of matchmaking that carried with it the dark shadow of eugenics. From there, a government campaign worked to turn "a boy with an ideal genetic makeup into the best basketball player in Chinese history," writes Larmer, and it wasn't long before Nike and the NBA had their hooks in him. Larmer, Newsweek's former Shanghai bureau chief, crafts his narrative well, explaining the byzantine interests competing for their pound of Yao's flesh with admirable simplicity. Yao's story is so controlled that when he finally overcomes his initial clumsiness and starts rebelling against his government at book's end, it's hard not to feel empathy for the gentle giant.
FromBooklist
Larmer, former Newsweek bureau chief in Shanghai (and Buenos Aires, Miami, and Hong Kong), traces the development and emergence of Yao Ming as China's first bona fide NBA star, from the arranged marriage of his parents--both reluctant but sensational, and tall, basketball players in China--to his care and feeding as a youth by PRC sports officials, to Nike's savvy insinuation into Yao's career and into mainstream Chinese culture in the mid-1990s, to his number-one selection in the 2002 NBA draft. Not coincidentally, Yao's story here reflects the seismic shifts taking place in Chinese sports, post-1949; it starts with a country virtually invisible in the global arena that becomes, by the time of Yao's emergence, an international power not embarrassed to flex its muscle. If Larmer's account succeeds in contextualing Yao in the high-octane world of the NBA, it also succeeds in revealing one aspect of China's more fundamental struggle with its socioeconomic identity in the world today.
Alan Moores
About Author
Brook Larmer was the Newsweek bureau chief in Buenos Aires, Miami, Hong Kong, and most recently Shanghai. Operation Yao Ming is his first book.
Book Dimension :
length: (cm)24 width:(cm)17
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