The first definitive biography of basketball legend LeBron James, by the acclaimed author of Tiger Woods.
LeBron is unquestionably the greatest basketball player of the 21st century. Off the court, LeBron's political activism, outspoken stance on racism and social injustice have helped build a social media presence that includes 117 million followers on Instagram and 51 million followers on Twitter. He is an international brand worth billions of dollars. He doesn't just have huge endorsement deals with some of the biggest corporations in the world; LeBron sits on boards of directors and has an equity stake in the companies he sponsors. He has forged a close friendship with President Barack Obama and clashed publicly with President Donald Trump.
As a child, LeBron was a lost little boy living in a public housing project in Akron, Ohio. His mother, who had LeBron when she was just sixteen, would disappear for days at a time. Scared and alone, LeBron rarely attended school. He was dirt poor and fatherless. And he had never played organised basketball. Yet he would become the most successful and most popular athlete that the United States has produced this century, bringing success to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers.
To tell this epic story, Benedict has done exhaustive research, digging through thousands of pages of primary source documents, articles, books and hundreds of hours of video footage. He's also conducted hundreds of interviews with the people who were intimately involved with LeBron from the beginning of his life to the present. He shows the initial slow rise of a star that suddenly transformed into a speeding comet during his senior year of high school. It is a unique and unmissable insight into one of the world's greatest athletes. Jeff Benedict is the bestselling author of sixteen non-fiction books, as well as a television and film producer. His latest book, The Dynasty, is the definitive inside story of the New England Patriots. A special features writer for Sports Illustrated, he has also written for the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and his stories have been the basis for segments on 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, CNN and the Discovery Channel among others. In 2018, Jeff co-wrote the William Hill Prize shortlisted Tiger Woods, and he was an executive producer on the HBO documentary Tiger that was based on the book and aired in 2021.He lives with his wife and four children in Connecticut.
