Glory Days is one of the best sports books I've read. The story of how the summer of 1984 was such a pivotal time in the worlds of sports and pop culture was extremely interesting. From Michael Jordan to Michael Jackson to the L.A. Olympics and so much more, this book has everything covered. Wertheim does a great job using today's achievements to tie back to this time and clearly explain the foresight and vision shared by so many influential people. I highly recommend this to any fan of sports, pop culture, or 80s history. 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Mariner Books for the ARC.

I felt like this was going to be a really interesting read especially since this was the summer my parents were going to be starting their senior year. I thought it would be fun to read something that they got to witness. I really enjoyed the read, I could have gone with less of Michael Jordan though.

For a book about sports in the summer of 1984, there was a serious lack of Olympic coverage. I enjoyed learning about Michael Jordan's rise to the NBA, but the focus on him was a bit much. Easily half the book.

Whoever designed the cover did a poor job. Why was Mary Lou Retton featured on the cover when there was only a couple of sentences (maybe 2 or 3) about her?

And did we seriously need a whole chapter about Donald Trump briefly owning the ASFL's New Jersey Generals?

This book was definitely not for me. Had I known Mary Lou would have been reduced to less than a paragraph while Donald Trump got a full chapter, I wouldn't have picked it up.

Glory Days has an interesting premise- the summer of 1984 was the lynchpin for multiple changes throughout sports and culture. I went in with an open mind, ready to be persuaded by Wertheim, one of my favorite sportswriters. While Wertheim clearly did his research for the book and did deep dives into the Olympics and Maria Navratilova, and to a lesser extent, Michael Jordan, it felt as it most of the book was skating through. The depth that I would have expected wasn’t there. The book wasn’t bad by any means. It was enjoyable and a quick read. However, it didn’t feel like the central premise was fully explored. It was there, but it felt rushed through. I enjoyed it, I just wish there had been more meat to it, and a clearer through line established to the present day. Decent, but Wertheim has typically done better.

It's really odd to read history you lived through. I'm old enough to have gone to several 1984 Olympic events (team handball for life, yo), and to see how the Olympics were an energizing force for sports, LA, and the country. I grew up idolizing the showtime Lakers and hating the Celtics and being amazed by Michael Jordan. I didn't really understand the USFL, but more spots were good in my book, and my dad and I were amazed by the Aussie rules football the new ESPN channel showed at all hours. Tennis wasn't really my thing, but it was hard not to be wowed by Martina Navratilova.

All that to say, the mid 1980s (and 1984 in particular) were a great time for sports, and, as this book details, was when the seeds of many modern sports and cultural trends were first planted. Nike and the rise of athlesiure? Air Jordan was drafted in 1984. Heck, the rise of drafts as mega events in themselves was foreshadowed by the first televised draft in 1984. The 1984 Superbowl had an ad for a scrappy little company called Apple releasing their flagship product the Mac. The rise of corporate sponsors/overlords in sports and culture? Look at the Olympics again and the Jackson Five tour (sponsored by Pepsi). <i>Donald Trump<i/> was in the news for suing the NFL, for Pete's sake. The Karate Kid doomed us to innumerable underdog saga sports movies. And Cindi Lauper boosted her music career with an appearance at the first ever WrestleMania.

Just a ton of things to fit into one summer and a ton of things that have influenced (USA) sports culture nearly 40 years later. Wertheim does a great job telling these stories, juggling the different plot threads, and making these events interesting and compelling. A very good read.

Excellent essay collection around Wertheim's central theme-1984 was a seminal year where events clashed, in sports and entertainment, in ways that left permanent legacies. You don't have to be a sports fan at all to enjoy this book-each essay is so well-written and thoughtful, it's perfect for absolutely anyone with a cursory interest in reading at all. As an 80s kid, these were of particular interest to me, specially the essays on Martina Navratilova and Michael Jackson. Hugely recommended!

Momentous events are not evenly distributed throughout history, and the same principle applies to sports. Fans need not look any further than the 2000 NBA Draft, which featured a crop of players who produced an average number of wins below replacement level. That essentially means that first-overall pick Kenyon Martin (arguably the best player in retrospect) and friends effectively made the NBA less talented through their entry into the NBA. Meanwhile, three years later LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, and Dwayne Wade would go in the draft’s top five. The summer of 1984 is the “2003 NBA Draft” of random three-month periods for sports: it saw the ascendance of Michael Jordan as he made early inroads into superstardom, a patriotism-heavy, exciting, and lucrative summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Wayne Gretzky winning his first Stanley Cup, and a variety of other developments that dramatically shaped athletics for decades to come. In Glory Days, longtime Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim chronicles these events and their long-term impact on sports with some additional insights on developments in the broader entertainment space that also occurred during the period. It is a fun and well-written reflection on the period and enjoyable even if it’s not adding a ton of new insights.

Each chapter of Glory Days is structured around one topic in sports or entertainment. Most of the subjects are multi-chapter affairs, as Wertheim ends up returning several times to the 1984 Olympics, Michael Jordan, while there are a few topics like professional wrestling that are one-offs. The interweaving of multiple narratives helps keep things fresh and also allows things to proceed somewhat chronologically across the summer.

Glory Days does more than simply recount some fun memories from 1984. He also examines some big decisions from the summer that influenced entertainment for years to come: the US Olympics Committee deciding to loosen amateur restrictions for the 1984 and paving the way for the Dream Team, ESPN opting to charge affiliates fees to air the channel which eventually helped drive humongous growth, and the NBA shifting to a more reporter-friendly Finals format that helped earn the 1984 Finals the highest TV ratings to-date. And while Wertheim does spend some time recounting basic facts about some of these topics, he also chucks in some interesting factoids that were at least news to me, like how Wayne Gretzky was apparently friends with Andy Warhol (and Warhol was apparently also a big fan of professional wrestling) and sprinter Carl Lewis was drafted in both the 1984 NBA and NFL Drafts despite never playing either sport competitively.

Wertheim was 13 in 1984 and writing Glory Days was clearly a labor of love. That generally works in the book’s favor as Wertheim’s passion is evident on each page but it also means there is arguably too much time dedicated to Wertheim’s pet interests (a good portion of the book is dedicated to Wertheim’s favorite team the Chicago Cubs and his favorite sport of tennis which both were not really that interesting in the summer of 1984 specifically). There are also several chapters that try to shoehorn entertainment developments such as the release of The Karate Kid and a major Michael Jackson tour that occasionally came off as clunky within the context of the broader book but are still fun reads even if they offer more surface-level analysis. A lot of Glory Days is not going to be earth-shattering for sports fans with some knowledge of the eighties (I warn born six years after 1984 but still had a basic familiarity with most of the topics covered), but Wertheim still offers a fun and well-written trip down memory lane that makes for an excellent summer read.

8/10

Subtitled: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

This book examines the events of summer 1984 in sports and how it relates to popular culture. I hadn’t ever thought before about how many things happened in that short period of time that involved some of the greatest athletes in history that also changed the status quo in pop culture as well.


There are a few things that the author touches on multiple times during the book – the 1984 Summer Olympics and the U.S. Olympic basketball team, the dominance of Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe in tennis, and Nike’s courtship of Michael Jordan to become the primary face of their brand.

In other traditional sports, summer 1984 saw Wayne Gretzky and his Edmonton Oilers win their first Stanley Cup, and the first NBA Finals matchup between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. In baseball, the Chicago Cubs surged to start their journey to their first post-season action in more than 40 years. In football, Donald Trump and the USFL continued their challenge to the established NFL.

In off-the-field developments, financially struggling ESPN avoided being sold to Ted Turner and a subsequent move to Atlanta while discovering their programming was popular enough that cable companies should pay to carry their network rather than the other way around. In my favorite chapter, the World Wrestling Federation (now know as WWE) built on the momentum of Hulk Hogan’s championship win earlier in the year by courting a more mainstream audience through a storyline that involved Cyndi Lauper and resulted in live wrestling airing on MTV.

I gave Glory Days five stars. I appreciated getting behind-the-scenes details on the things that happened at that time. I was in graduate school at the time, so while I followed these things as they happened I didn’t know the entire story behind them.

Year-in-review books usually represent something of "hanging fruit" when it comes to books. Pick a year, review what happened, perhaps overstate its importance, and ... you have a book.

"Glory Days" is different. L. Jon Wertheim sets out to make a case that the summer of 1984, give or take a few weeks, represented a transformational moment in the world of sports. What's more, he does such a good job at it that the reader is forced to shake his head after a while and say, "Yup, he could be right."

That's because even if such transformations don't work like an on-off switch, they certainly were centered in that particular summer. In hindsight, it was a significant and crowded time for sports.

Want a list? Happy to help.

* The biggest event of the summer was the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. That particular sporting festival was in big trouble at that point, with few cities/countries wanting to take on such a major event as host because of the costs involved. Even though the Eastern Bloc countries didn't show up via a boycott, Los Angeles proved you could host the Games successfully ... and make a profit along the way.

* Larry Bird and Magic Johnson played their first NBA Finals against each other. Not only was it great theater, but it started a rivalry that lasted through the 1980s and attracted attention from a growing number of sports fans.

* Speaking of basketball, a kid named Michael Jordan came out of North Carolina to join the NBA. Not only was he about to become one of the greatest players ever, but he revolutionized sports marketing with a deal with Nike that gave him his own signature line of shoes.

* While Wayne Gretzky already had achieved almost mythical status in the National Hockey League with unbelievable scoring totals, he still hadn't won a Stanley Cup entering the 1983-84 season. The New York Islanders were always in the way. But in 1984, Gretzky and his Edmonton Oilers beat the Islanders in the finals, giving them the Stanley Cup. The Great One had taken the last step, and it helped the NHL start down a road that helped it claim a firm status as a fourth major league sport along side of MLB, NFL and NBA.

* ESPN had been around for a few years by that point, but it figured out a way to make money. It charged cable companies a monthly fee for each subscriber who watched it. That made it financial solvent that summer, and its future was assured. ESPN soon became the most valuable media property in the business, and began a run of success that lasted into the 2010s.

* The NCAA lost an anti-trust lawsuit involving television rights of its member schools filed by the University of Oklahoma. Suddenly, universities weren't restricted to rare appearances on networks on Saturdays (and, as it turned out, every other day of the week). Games could be shown anywhere and everywhere ... and piles of money soon followed.

* It was also the summer of John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova, who dominated the tennis courts in spectacular ways. The Chicago Cubs turned their fortunes around and reached the playoffs, creating a new set of fans through broadcasts on cable television. Mike Tyson was just coming on to the scene, losing in the Olympic trials but showing that he would be the proverbial force to be reckoned with in the future.

That's a lot. Wertheim also has chapters on a few unlikely events. This was the summer when rock and roll merged with wrestling, thanks in part to a chance airplane flight in which Cyndi Lauper sat next to Lou Albano. That relationship had its entertaining moments and did give pro wrestling some national status, but feels like an odd fit here. The Jacksons' Victory Tour gets a chapter, in part because the family that owned the New England Patriots at the time ran the tour and lost millions along the way. The author also covers a sleeper movie called "The Karate Kid." I'm not sure I buy the idea that the film helped us down the road toward Mixed Martial Arts and Ultimate Fighting, but it is a good story.

This all could have been done rather routinely, but luckily Wertheim did his homework. He talked to a variety of people who were there at the creation of these events, and did plenty of other research as well. This is really the key to this book - there is information here that at the least is little known and at most new to virtually everyone. What's more, it's almost always interesting. Wertheim is a fine reporter and writer, with several good books and articles to his credit, and he obviously threw himself into this project with full enthusiasm.

I am duty-bound to report on one little slip-up along the way. In a brief item on the movie "The Natural," the text says the climatic scene was set in a place that was supposed to be Wrigley Field in Chicago. While such a scene took place, it occurred earlier in the movie. The big scenes, including the last one, were shot in the departed War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo. That movie came out in 1984 too, and anyone from Western New York will tell how that film doubled as a love letter to "The Old Rockpile" that started something of a baseball renaissance in the area that continues to this day.

"Glory Days" is irresistible. Those who lived through 1984 will enjoy the memories of all that went on, and those who didn't will learn much about the proverbial question asked by the popular 1980s band Talking Heads, "How did we get here?" Many will race through it with a smile every step of the way.

I'm a huge sports fan so getting to read Glory Days provided me with even more insight on the popularity of them, specifically in America. Although I wish there was more depth with certain events, I would recommend this to older readers, even those who want to branch out.

DNF. I really liked the premise but the writing did not work for me at all. It wouldn't be fair to the book if I finished reading and gave it a low rating.

Glory Days by L. Jon Wertheim comes at the reader very quickly. One can see in Wertheim’s writing style an inner child of sorts emerge as he recounts the key sports and pop culture events that took place in the summer of 1984 and in many cases how those events still are being felt almost forty years later.

The chief storyline is the emergence of the NBA through Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and others trying out for the Olympic team, the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry getting people interested, and David Stern’s instillation as commissioner and the internationalization of basketball as well as seeing the marketing/draft of players as the way forward.

Not a fan of basketball. Fine, we got hockey and Wayne Gretzky. Don’t like hockey, what about football? Specifically the brash owner of a USFL franchise named Donald Trump, who displayed in 1984 the same bombast that would eventually lead him to the White House to the joy of some and the consternation of many. Baseball and my beloved Chicago Cubs are here too. But don’t worry, Cubs fans. There is hope.

Wertheim even has something for WWF/E fans as he devotes a chapter to Rock n Wrestling, which largely gave us the WWE we know today. Well maybe you’d like to hear about the making of the Karate Kid since Cobra Kai is all the rage these days and it’s impact on popular culture?

My only regret is actually how quick this went because reading experiences this enjoyable don’t happen every day.

1984 was a year that was not only popularized by George Orwell's novel written 35 years earlier, but also was a year that was a watershed one in several sports, most notably professional basketball, tennis and the Summer Olympics. Those moments and what they meant in the history of not only sports but also for social and political movements are captured in this excellent book by long-time Sports Illustrated (SI) writer L. Jon Wertheim.

The best passages are those about basketball and tennis, two sports he covered regularly for SI. The passages on Michael Jordan, especially near the end of the book, are very compelling. This is true whether they are about his basketball or his marketing appeal, especially for a relatively unknown shoe company at the time called Nike. The reader will learn much about the 1984 Jordan, especially his connection with Nike. Of course, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are included as well, including a great chapter on the NBA Finals that year with Bird's Celtics winning a thrilling 7 game series over Johnson's Lakers.

As for the tennis, the main personalities of his focus are the two players who were nearly unbeaten that entire year, John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova. While the stories on McEnroe are good, Navratilova's story is even better, especially as she was one of the first athletes to speak out on social issues. For her, there were plenty – an immigrant who became an American by defection, her coming out as a lesbian, her hiring of a transgender coach, Dr. Renee Richards and even her training regiment. For the latter, she developed a muscular tone, considered to be taboo for female athletes at the time. I found this connection to many of the female athletes today who are activists like Megan Rapinoe and Serena Williams quite fascinating.

There are other important athletes and teams of from that year, most notably the Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles. Instead of focusing solely on the boycott by the Soviet Union and other communist nations, the text focuses on the athletes and the organizer of the games. Portrayals of Mary Decker and Mary Lou Retton are notable, but the best writing on the Games was about the director, Peter Ueberroth and his determination to make the Games not only memorable but also profitable. His success with them led to him being named the new commissioner of baseball that year. Throw in some writing about Wayne Gretzky, Ryne Sandberg and the Chicago Cubs and even Mike Tyson trying out for the Olympic boxing team and you have a great book that captures the sports pulse for that summer.

I wish to thank Houghton Mifflin for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Read if you: Want an energetic and entertaining look at the sports world in 1984, from basketball, pro wrestling, the Olympics, and more.

Niche histories focused on a particular year seem to becoming more popular. The best sports writing will engage readers who might not be a fan of the sport/team/athlete, but are pulled in by the dynamics of the story. Wertheim succeeds in doing so here; I am not much of a basketball fan, but the sections on the Lakers and Celtics rivalry was riveting!

Librarians/booksellers: A great choice for your Gen X and older patrons!

Many thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

1984 seems to be having a moment, as I just recently read "Can't Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop's Blockbuster Year" by Michaelangelo Matos (Thanks, Netgalley!). This book is the sports equivalent and I loved every minute of it! Really drilling down on the summer '84 shows how much was packed into just 90 days of this exceptional year.

A good overview (albeit somewhat Chicago-centric) of the goings on in the summer of 1984 in sports. Michael Jordan, as he usually does, takes center stage, but Ryne Sandberg is represented. I was a 12-year-old Cubs fan, so I had fond memories of that summer.

I consider myself a bit of a sports fan but there’s a lot I don’t know about American sports. This book taught me so much about the magical summer of 1984 and how it came to be one of the most influential periods in the American sporting landscape, even it they didn’t know it at the time.

This book is a really intriguing read from start to finish and I was truly amazed at some of the details and facts listed (i.e. annual income of the NBA and how much of that comes from television, a conversation I was coincidentally having with someone the day before I read that page, so I was pleased to be able to send the, a message saying I had just read about it!). You can tell that a lot of research has gone into creating this story and, while it focuses a lot on basketball, it’s also about the Olympics, tennis, ice hockey, NFL, and baseball, among other sports, which I really appreciated.

I enjoyed how easy this book was to read. I was often finding myself getting through chapters quite quickly based on the interesting content and the language that wasn’t too complicated.

To me, sport is a huge part of my life and an important part of society, so I love stories that highlight the impact of sport on the wider world (commercialisation, politics, broadcasting), so thank you, Werthheim, for introducing me to this magical summer. An enjoyable read I would recommend to sports fans.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. I understand what the author was trying to achieve with capturing the summer of 1984 as a summer of change in culture and sport, but felt that certain chapters were stronger than others. For example, any of the hockey references definitely needed to be checked, like the Hartford Whalers being in the World Hockey ASSOCIATION (not League). And Gretzky being in the top 10 of the NHL's All-time Scoring list after 3 years in the league (1981-82), when he had 513 total points? Better fact-check the heck out of that one, definitely incorrect. Seeing these types of errors definitely made me question what other errors existed that I didn't catch.

In addition, although Michael Jordan had a huge impact in the future of sports/culture, featuring him in several chapters here felt redundant and made me question whether the author didn't have enough material on Jordan for a full book solely on him, and instead tried to pad it out with other goings-on in 1984.

Finally, if you name your book "Glory Days" and feature Bruce Springsteen prominently on the cover, it is somewhat of a crime to not feature The Boss anywhere in the book. I also found it curious that Prince is featured on the cover but is nowhere in the book.

Overall, a fun and light read, but I think it could've been more than what it was.

I remember 1984 being a glorious year, and this book hammers home that point. The three Michaels - Jordan, Jackson, Tyson, Donald Trump, the LA Olympics - this book has it all. Great read.

If you are even a casual hoops fan, this book is a must. Wertheim goes in-depth into so many prominent NBA figures who connected during this time: David Stern as a young, new commissioner; Mike Krzyzewski, a young head coach at Duke, who had an extremely rough start to his tenure; Charles Barkley, who was grossly overweight (interesting fact: Moses Malone helped motivate Barkley to lose weight and get into All-Star form); a young Michael Jordan, still wearing North Carolina-issued Converse at the time; and Gloria James learned she would have a son eventually named LeBron.

Another plus for basketball fans is the way Wertheim skillfully connects the up-and-coming elements of the NBA that would dominate the NBA and world sports landscape in the 1990s but also respectfully pays homage to the NBA veterans at the height of the Magic-Bird rivalry.

One minor quibble is if you don't care about basketball, this book definitely puts a heavy emphasis on it. You'll have to skip ahead to specific chapters to read about USFL, NFL, wrestling, tennis and more. However, I think Wertheim is simply covering the most significant events of the time, and, while there were multiple significant sports events in 1984, the most lasting occurred in basketball.

Another minor quibble: while recounting, Patrick McEnroe’s doubles win at the French Open, he simple refers to the competition as Boris Becker and another young German. I would have at least appreciated the author taking the time to fact-check this. I’ll admit this isn’t an easy fact to find, but I managed to locate it by searching the Associated Press: Becker’s teammate was Eric Winogradsky, who was French, not German. An avid tennis fan might know that name, as he finished runner-up at the 1989 French Open (but didn’t have anywhere near the success of his then-teammate).

That said, I have to give Wertheim a lot of credit: on the surface, 1984 seemed like a pivotal year for the Summer Olympics and the NBA, but he brings a lot of other significant events to the fore, such as John McEnroe’s legendary match with Ivan Lendl, Wayne Gretzky’s emergence, Robert Kraft becoming owner of the Patriots, ABC's purchase of ESPN, and even Donald Trump. It was a meaningful time in sports and Wertheim pulls in outside forces as well, particularly those in popular culture like Prince, Michael Jackson, David Bowie and many others. Any reader interested in sports or in that particular time will find this book interesting.