West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life by Jerry West

(Little, Brown, $28)

“Jerry West is going to hate his autobiography,” said Mike Downey in the Los Angeles Times. That may sound odd, but consider what we learn about him. Here’s Jerry West, NBA legend, the man whose silhouette graces the league’s logo, confessing to us that he’s not a hugger, not even with his wife and children. Here’s West, longtime Los Angeles Lakers executive, revealing that he once complained about a steak in a restaurant, demanded a check after being told there would be no charge, but was so insulted when the check was actually presented that he walked out, ordered a cheesecake elsewhere, and carried the dessert back into the first joint to signal his resentment. West is not just tormented; “he is unknowable”—except that he can always be counted on to change his mind.

Give West “points for honesty,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. Beside the story of his rise from small-town West Virginia to the Hall of Fame, West lays out a parallel story of a deeply troubled life. He’s haunted by the loss of his older brother, who was killed in the Korean War. His father beat him, for reasons he still can’t fathom, and the chronic scorn he suffered from that corner left West scarred, congenitally unable to enjoy his many successes. His book is without doubt “an authentic expression of a certain kind of tortured American masculinity.” Still, “honesty alone” does not make a good memoir. In charting his resentments, he can come across as “a boor, and worse, a bore.”

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“The dark cloud that hovers over the book can feel overwhelming,” but the pain is at least authentic, said Sean Gregory in Time. Readers looking for West’s dish on his relationship with coach Phil Jackson will find it, along with his thoughts on losing six championship series to the Celtics during his playing career; the book “jumps all over the place.” But the main story it shares is “raw, honest, and entertaining”—until the moment near the end when he insists that he has achieved a form of peace. Frankly, “I’m not sure I believe him.”