Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780061132988
ISBN: 0061132985
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: July 01, 2007
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: July 03, 2007
Sales Rank: 1257731
Studio: Harper Perennial

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:


As a boy, Stephen J. Dubner's hero was Franco Harris, the famed and mysterious running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers. When Dubner's father died, he became obsessed—he dreamed of his hero every night; he signed his school papers "Franco Dubner." Though they never met, it was Franco Harris who shepherded Dubner through a fatherless boyhood. Years later, Dubner journeys to meet his hero, certain that Harris will embrace him. And he is . . . well, wrong.



Told with the grit of a journalist and the grace of a memoirist, Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper is a breathtaking, heartbreaking, and often humorous story of astonishing developments. It is also a sparkling meditation on the nature of hero worship—which, like religion and love, tells us as much about ourselves as about the object of our desire.






Rating: - Odd, but Enjoyable
I was a little predisposed to enjoying this book for a number of reasons, and I think I should describe them before getting too much into the review.

I am nearly the same age as the author, lost my Dad in 1974 and am a lifelong Steelers fan, who grew up well outside Pittsburgh, but followed the team religiously. My Mother was a religious and caring woman, and we were raised in relative poverty. I idolized Jack Lambert (another Steeler) and my own Mother passed away around the same time ... Read More

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Rating: - Not Just for Hero Worshippers
It's easy to get caught up in the little details of our lives, getting kids off to school, getting the car (or dog) fixed, paying the mortgage, raking the leaves, and doing the thousand other things that we do, so much that we forget or never get the big picture.

But it's impossible to get through even a chapter of Confessions of a Hero Worshipper, by Stephen J. Dubner, without stepping back taking a longer look at our own trajectories.

In fact, the book, which details a psychic ... Read More

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Rating: - Poignant and pleasant
Dubner's book had a special meaning to me when I read it. I had just come back from a trip where I met a childhood idol of mine. While the meeting was great, somehow I came home feeling a bit of emptiness.
Dubner's tale eventually delves into this emptiness. First, he relates the story of his childhood fascination with Franco Harris, a great running back with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970's. It is the tale of a typical boy's love of a sports hero. Then, Dubner goes through school and leaves ... Read More

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Rating: - Everybody Needs A Hero!
This book compares the Jewish view to that of Christians. With the Jewish ban on idolatry, there are no people -- only things and places in pictures. That's strange, as my photos are full of views, beautiful or unusual scenes and things of the past, but very few people. In the Bible, there are prophets in abundance, but in the New Testament, the pictures are most always a glorified Jesus and his apostles. A messiah is less a person than an idea, a hope, and the yearning for the world to have a happy ending. ... Read More

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Rating: - A GREAT read!
After reading Stephen Dubner's first book, Turbulent Souls, I couldn't wait to read his latest work. I thoroughly enjoyed Confessions of a Hero Worshiper. It is a poignant, beautifully-written story about Dubner, who as a ten-year-old boy, grasped on to his football hero to help him survive his loneliness and insecurity after his father died. Dubner's childhood hero was Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the "man of steel" becomes much more to the young, fatherless boy than anyone would ever imagine. In ... Read More

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