Wilt: Larger Than Life (ISBN 1572439157) is a biography of deceased NBA basketball Hall-of-Fame Wilt Chamberlain, written by journalist Robert Cherry. The 416-page book was published in November 2004 by Triumph Books. The foreword is written by Jerry West, Chamberlain's team mate and friend on the Los Angeles Lakers. It is the only biography of Wilt Chamberlain to be released after his death.
The book chronogically spans the entire life of Wilt Chamberlain, starting with his roots in middle class Philadelphia, highlights his rise to young basketball prodigy in Overbrook high school and at Kansas University, follows his entire NBA career as member of the Warriors, Sixers and Lakers franchises and his successful business life afterwards up to his death. Cherry also gives room for the more colorful aspects of Chamberlain's private life, most prominently his notorious claim to have slept with 20,000 women.
In the final "Acknowledgements" chapter, Cherry gives credit to over 250 interview partners, and acknowledges Chamberlain's lawyer Sy Goldberg, his sister Barbara Lewis (née Chamberlain) and close personal friends Lynda Huey, Zelda Spoelstra, Sonny Hill and Bob Billings as main sources.
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Famous quotes containing the words larger than life, larger and/or life:
“America loves the representation of its heroes to be not just larger than life, but stupendously, awesomely bigger than anything else. If blue whales built statues to each other they’d be smaller then these.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)
“We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers’ wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
‘Tis all that I implore—
Through life and death, a chainless soul,
With courage to endure!”
—Emily Brontë (1818–1848)