The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

by Peter Sis
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Using simple pictures with little color to great effect, Peter Sis tells his story of growing up in Czechoslovakia when the country was behind the Iron Curtain. Ostensibly for children, the book doesn't hold back from exploring the complexities of living under a Communist regime. The author shows how he was brainwashed as a child and told what to draw, and follows him through his teenage years when he awakened to much of the censorship and control going on around him.

This book is an excellent example of the way in which a story can be powerfully told in graphic form. The Introduction and Afterword serve as the text that grounds the story in history - both the general history of the Cold War, and Peter's personal history as he eventually leaves his home country behind. The images make up the bulk of the story, giving a bird's eye view as we very quickly go through twenty or so years of Peter's life and in how small the elements of the illustrations are. Most of the illustrations are black and white, except for the red of Communist flags and the colors of Peter's art. Clips from his journals serve both to move the story along through time and to give readers a fuller view of what's going on in Peter's life, including such things as the music that influenced him and photographs from his childhood. This is a really excellent, rich story that I highly recommend.

Open: An Autobiography

by Andre Agassi
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

Tennis star Andre Agassi bares all in his account of his life, from young phenom whose father pushed him to "Hit harder" and asked (or coerced) players to hit with his son, to troubled teen at the Bollettieri Academy to revered veteran of the game.

My father read this soon after it came out, and recommended it to me. Whenever it came up, he'd talk to me about Agassi's father, or what Agassi said about other players - he was not a fan of Connors, for example. The one phrase that kept coming to mind while reading his memoir was "brutal honesty." I mean, Agassi goes so far as to tell you in the acknowledgements who his ghostwriter/co-writer is (incidentally, this added a book to my TBR list, The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer), as well as setting the record straight in ways that do not always portray him in the best light. This is a candid account for sure, as Agassi literally opens up about his struggles and how he comes to terms with who he is. His present-tense narrative with no quotation marks for speech could have been distracting, but instead it made the past events all the more immediate. It's hard to say I enjoyed it, but I found it compelling and would definitely recommend it to sports fans and biography fans alike.

Out of the Blue

by Victor Cruz, with Peter Schrager
New York : Celebra, c2012.

If you follow football at all, you probably heard about Victor Cruz. He was an undrafted rookie free agent who signed with the New York Giants' football team, only to sit out most of the 2010 season with a hamstring injury. But in 2011, he made headlines, apparently coming out of nowhere to become Eli Manning's go-to receiver on third down. Cruz's autobiography details exactly where he came from, starting in a rough neighborhood in Paterson, New Jersey to go to the University of Massachusetts, through all the hardship and determination to make it in the NFL.

As a huge Giants fan from a family of Giants fans and a UMass alum, I may be biased, but I think even non-football fans would enjoy this read. He has a sense of where he's come from and knows he's a role model. Cruz shows how many times he could have ended in failure by bad decisions or just pure bad luck, and how hard his mother and his coaches worked to make him the young man he is today. The style of writing is chatty and personable (in my head, I could often hear Cruz's voice from my dad's highlight DVDs). An entertaining and inspiring read I'll be recommending to my family.