A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton [Paperback]

When John McPhee met Bill Bradley, both were at the beginning of their careers.A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee's first book, is about Bradley when he was the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen. McPhee delineates for the reader the training and techniques that made Bradley the extraordinary athlete he was, and this part of the book is a blueprint of superlative basketball. But athletic prowess alone would not explain Bradley's magnetism, which is in the quality of the man himselfhis self-discipline, his rationality, and his sense of responsibility. Here is a portrait of Bradley as he was in college, before his time with the New York Knicks and his election to the U.S. Senatea story that suggests the abundant beginnings of his professional careers in sport and politics.

John McPheewas born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began atTimemagazine and led to his long association withThe New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published A Sense of Where You Are, his first book, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written nearly 30 books, includingOranges(1967),Coming into the Country(1977),The Control of Nature(1989),The Founding Fish(2002),Uncommon Carriers(2007), andSilk Parachute(2011).Encounters with the Archdruid(1972) andThe Curve of Binding Energy(1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize forAnnals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.