The first comprehensive biography of the legendary figure who redefined American sports—arguably the greatest all-around athlete the United States has ever seen.
With clarity and a fine eye for detail, Kate Buford traces the defining moments of Jim Thorpe’s incomparable career: leading the Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team to victories
against the country’s finest college teams, coached by the renowned “Pop” Warner; winning gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics; defining the burgeoning sport of
professional football; and playing long, often successful—and previously unexamined— years in professional baseball.
At the same time, Buford vividly depicts the difficulties Thorpe faced as a Native American, and a Native American celebrity at that, at the beginning of the twentieth century: from the
infamous loss of his Olympic medals—stripped from him because he had previously played professional baseball—to his struggles with alcoholism and personal misfortune, his advocacy for Native
American rights while he chased a Hollywood career, and his distrust of the many hands extended to him.
Here is the story—long overdue and brilliantly told—of a complex, iconoclastic, profoundly talented man whose life encompassed both tragic limitations and truly extraordinary achievements.
