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    Back From the Dead
    Back From the Dead
    Back From the Dead
    Audiobook12 hours

    Back From the Dead

    Written by Bill Walton

    Narrated by Bill Walton

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    “An elegiac yet exuberant new memoir” (The New York Times Book Review)—Bill Walton’s New York Times bestselling memoir about his recovery from debilitating physical injury and how lessons from John Wooden at UCLA (and the music of the Grateful Dead) have inspired his darkest hours.

    In February 2008, Bill Walton suffered a spinal collapse so devastating he was unable to get up. It was the culmination of a lifetime of injury. Although Walton had played fourteen seasons in the NBA, he actually missed more games than he played during those years due to injury. From the time of his spinal collapse until his eventual recovery, he spent most of three years flat on the ground. The pain was excruciating, and he thought seriously about killing himself. But he survived, and Back from the Dead is the story of his injury and recovery, set in the context of his amazing athletic career.

    Walton grew up in southern California in the 1950s and was deeply influenced by the political and cultural upheavals of the 1960s. Although Walton identified strongly with the counterculture, especially in music, the greatest influence on him outside his family was Coach John Wooden, a thoughtful, precise mentor who seemed immune to the turmoil of the times. The two men would speak every day for forty-three years until Wooden’s death at age ninety-nine.

    John Wooden once said that no greatness ever came without sacrifice. In this “frequently stirring memoir…Walton’s love for life and the people and things in it—including his college coach, John Wooden—is infectious. You can’t stop reading, or rooting for the man” (Publishers Weekly). Back from the Dead shares his dramatic story, including his basketball and broadcasting careers, his many setbacks and rebounds, and his ultimate triumph as the toughest of champions. “[Walton] scores another basket—a deeply personal one.” (Kirkus Reviews)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMar 22, 2016
    ISBN9781442368545
    Author

    Bill Walton

    Bill Walton was NCAA player of the year at UCLA from 1972 to 1974, when UCLA set an NCAA record eighty-eight consecutive-game winning streak. A former NBA Champion and MVP, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame and selected as one of the NBA’s Fifty Greatest Players ever. He has also had a successful award-winning broadcasting career with ABC, ESPN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, Turner, and Fox, among others. He currently resides in his hometown of San Diego with his family. Visit him at BillWalton.com.

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    Reviews for Back From the Dead

    4.5/5

    15 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a terrific read, not quite as stream-of-consciousness as a classic Bill Walton rant, but his voice prevails throughout, right down to his penchant for hyperbole. It is not just a chronicle of his own life, although his reminiscences of his time at UCLA and with the Boston Celtics are delightful. Throughout the book great sports heroes of the 1970s and 1980s make their appearances in varying degrees of prominence. But beyond his very remarkable life is his painful story of injuries, ultimately placing him flat on the floor, utterly incapable of getting up. His recovery from those depths of a collapsed spine and how he chose to respond to his body's redemption is inspiring.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Awesome listen! I enjoy Walton's narration so much, I listened on 1.0 speed for several stretches. This is a great book, even if you don't like basketball or sports. Very inspiring.
    • 5/5
      Fun basketball and Like book. Lobed Bill’s view of his personal history and American history during his life.
    • 4/5
      Back from the Dead is an autobiography with BOUNCE. And that’s despite Bill Walton’s book beginning with him immobilized on the floor, suffering from severe back pain, and besieged by suicidal thoughts provoked by the hopelessness of lying on that floor for some two and a half years. “Bounce” is just Walton’s exuberant nature. His Back from the Dead is a love song celebrating basketball, the Grateful Dead, his bicycle, his family, healers, and other people who’ve earned his admiration, as well as a great advertisement for his native San Diego—listening to him makes one wonder why anyone ever lived anywhere else.Raised by a music teacher and a librarian, Bill is a man attracted to sound and language. His ear is irresistibly drawn to music and also to superlatives and hyperbole. His way of communicating can most flatteringly be described as enthusiastic. Back from the Dead is interesting, fun, full of emotional highs and lows. It displays a contrasting combination of candor (e.g., blunt criticism of former teammate Tommy Curtis’s playing style) and reticence (e.g., not one mention of his first wife, mother of his four sons). Surgery eventually succeeded in raising Bill off that floor where his back pain had pinned him for so long. Then, after all that suffering, his first bike ride months later ended in a broken pelvis and sacrum. It’s easy to envision that feelings of futility and desperation could accompany such a setback. Bill, though, recovered yet again, and I saw him not long after at the start line of Chris Kostman’s Mount Laguna Bicycle Classic, out there ready to enjoy another superb day on his bike with similar folks full of energy and good spirit. That’s Bill Walton. Survivor and Celebrator of the Ceremonies of Life.