Yo Soy El Diego (--de La Gente)

The bittersweet memoir of soccer's most controversial and entertaining star, Maradona (born 1960), recounts his precipitous rise to fame and glory from humble origins in an Argentine shantytown. The book is remarkable not only for the inside look at some of the soccer world's most important events and figures of the last three decades but for the candid exploration of Maradona's polemical life off the field. His struggle with the immense pressure of fame studies once deemed him the most recognized public figure on the planet and his confrontation with the powers that be are all chronicled with a familiar and picaresque tone that illustrates his (often-flawed) profound humanity. Maradona's autobiography paints several often contradictory portraits: family man, creative genius, loyal friend, tragic hero, temperamental artist, man of the people, and rebellious child. The truth about Maradona lies in none of these incarnations but rather in the contradictory sum of his parts; he is ultimately an enigmatic yet sincere human being, a brazen child from the slums who suddenly found himself dining with popes and was unafraid to speak his mind. No matter is too delicate for Maradona's acerbic tongue: the discrimination endured by southern Italians in their homeland as perceived during his playing days in Naples, the corruption of the Catholic Church, his lifelong addiction to cocaine, and his strained relationship with the politicians and bureaucrats who have used him when convenient, among other issues. His is the defiant life story of one of the century's most brilliant and incisive athletes. Recommended for all public libraries and bookstores. Fernando Cwilich, New York