Playing for Keeps

Michael Jordan and the World He Made

By: David Halberstam

Narrated by: JD Jackson

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist comes “the best Jordan book so far” (The Washington Post), the story of Michael Jordan’s legendary years with the Chicago Bulls, capped by the 1998 NBA Finals and the team’s second three-peat.

From The Breaks of the Game to Summer of ’49, David Halberstam has brought the perspective of a great historian, the insider knowledge of a dogged sportswriter, and the love of a fan to bear on some of the most mythic players and teams in the annals of American sports. With Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls he has given himself the greatest challenge and produced his greatest triumph.

In Playing for Keeps, Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan’s epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the book chronicles the forces in Jordan’s life that have shaped him in to history’s greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.

Critic reviews

"David Halberstam has written a remarkable book about the changes in American society over the last twenty-five years. On one level, it is about basketball and the game's greatest player, Michael Jordan. On another level, it is about how an entertainment culture envelops Jordan and makes him its own. But on its deepest level, it is a story about working to overcome the odds, honoring parents and family, and striving to become a positive social force. This book is a must read for basketball fans, admirers of Jordan, and anyone who seeks to understand sports in America today." --Bill Bradley

Praise for

The Breaks of the Game

"One of the best books I've ever read about sports."
--The New York Times

"The best book Halberstam has written...immediate and moving."
--The Washington Post

Summer of '49

"Dazzling... a celebration of a vanished heroic age and a 'simpler America.' "
--The New York Times

"Paradise regained...a gorgeous story with personalities and anecdotes jam-packing every page."
--Newsweek

The Amateurs
"Astonishing... moving. One of the best books ever written about a sport."
--Newsweek

Perfect for NBA nerds!

Perfect companion to nextflix's The Last Dance. Also give great detailed insights about the nba as on organization during the 80's and 90's

Excellent!

Excellent book for all fans of Jordan and Basketball itself. Amazing story through the years that Michael Jordan dominated the sports world.

If You Liked "The Last Dance," You Will Love This

This is a really great book for sports fans, and particularly for Michael Jordan fans. The book, which was written about 20 years ago, covers Jordan's life, including the North Carolina years. It provides an incredibly in depth look at Jordan, his teammates and coaches. For the Chicago Bulls years, it covers much of the same ground as the recent ESPN documentary "The Last Dance."

I'm not sure, but my guess is that this book was a primary source for a good part of "The Last Dance." The documentary even follows the basic organization of the book--going back and forth between championship years.

What the book offers is a much more in depth look at coaches and others in Jordan's life, including UNC coach Dean Smith. For all of Jordan's massive talent (and his incredible work ethic to become the best basketball player ever), we learn much more about the influence of his parents, his brother Larry, and Dean Smith, Roy Williams and other other coaches who helped launch his career.

The book also provides a more in depth look at the Bulls years and the people who shaped it, providing, for example, a somewhat more nuanced view of Jerry Krause than the documentary. The book includes informative vignettes on Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and other teammates, and, of course, Phil Jackson.

The narration is really good and the audiobook is well produced.

Great

This audiobook is perfect. Halberstam is in peak form; nailing how Jordan became the icon we know today. It excludes his personal life but deftly explains his relentless inner drive to succeed and dominate.
JD Jackson isn’t flashy as narrator but for me this is perfect. I dislike overly dramatic narrations and even though his various voices are not all that nuanced, I thought he perfected Jordan’s deep inflection.
I also like how this ends in 1998. No need to think about or even remember Jordan’s time in DC.

Excellent Companion for "The Last Dance"

I wanted to have a book that would give me more context while watching "The Last Dance" Jordan Documentary and this book exceeded my expectations! the depth of the content, how it goes beyond just MJ and explains the people around him, this book is everything you need to know about Jordan and the world around him. aside from being about Jordan's life from Carolina to Chicago, it also enlightened me about the NBA world around Jordan and how the world changed because of him