Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss

Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe Reviews

• 
  TXGAL1

  Rated: 5 stars
  
  David Maraniss has written a fantastic book. One would expect that given his accomplishments as listed on the back cover of the book: “an associate editor of the Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University…has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times.”
  
  The flow of the book keeps the reader engaged and the writing is never dull. I have learned many nuggets of history as it pertains to sports that I might never have come across if not for this book. As you can tell from the rating, I really enjoyed reading this over 500-page tome.
  
  If one read this book thinking that it took 500 pages to tell the story of Jim Thorpe, “the greatest athlete in the whole world” (per King Gustav at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm), I think they would be misled. A lot of pages are about the sports happenings and historical events in the world during the time period being discussed.
  
  Jim Thorpe was an accomplished athlete that had outstanding natural ability. He excelled in track and field (medals won in these Olympic events), but he also was outstanding in and played professionally football, baseball and basketball, and he also played lacrosse and won the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing competition. He must have really been light on his feet!
  Thorpe played with or against notable persons such as Dwight D “Ike” Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Christy Mathewson, and Babe Ruth, to name just a few.
  
  A hero throughout his life to many, Thorpe was beset with many trials—some personal and many professional, but he struggled with alcoholism and the ability to make a decent living. The search for a living wage on which to support his family saw Thorpe always on the road hustling for the next dollar. Thorpe was known to give his money to anyone in need, even if it left empty his wallet or his pocket. He was often taken advantage of by those that wanted to use his celebrity to advance ticket sales in some scheme, but then Thorpe many times would be “stiffed” for money that he had earned.
  
  It's a shame that he rarely received the respect that he so dearly deserved and not just because he was a sports “star”; because, he was a human being and not someone to demean because of his background. Thorpe was a real human superman. I hope everyone will read this book.
  
  My thanks to Simon & Schuster and the author for the privilege of reading this ARC via a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an unbiased review.
  
• 
  Olive Fellows (abookolive)

  Jim Thorpe, a Native American, excelled at nearly every sport he took on, becoming one of the most gifted athletes of all time. His legendary status tipped over into mythology, partly abetted by Thorpe himself, and partly created by the media of his day, which also dealt in racist stereotypes about the prowess of Indigenous peoples.
  
  Separating the truth of Thorpe’s life from the many fictions is a task for only the most skilled of biographers. David Maraniss, associate editor at The Washington Post, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, and author of 12 previous books, including “
  When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi,” a biography of famed football coach Vince Lombardi, takes on that challenge. He aims to set the record straight in “Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe.”
  
  
  Click here to read the rest of my review in the Christian Science Monitor!
• 
  Bonnie DeMoss

  This was so long and detailed that I couldn't finish it. I was looking for an inspiring story of an amazing athlete, and wasn't expecting all the minutely detailed historical research and politics that were included. Jim Thorpe was not the centerpiece of this book. I will look for a lighter read that is more focused on Jim Thorpe.
• 
  Ed

  Insightful, well-told biography of Jim Thorpe who got screwed out of his Olympic medals. Lots of vivid sports descriptions of baseball and football games. The biographer has an easy-to-read prose style. I learned a lot about Jim Thorpe and admired him even more.
• 
  Matt

  GOODREADS FIRST READS REVIEW
  
  As sports became embedded within the American cultural zeitgeist at the turn of the 20th Century, one man’s raw athletic ability and accomplishments would make him a legend in his own time even while being described in disparaging language at the same time. Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss follows the wandering life of the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th Century who straddled the divide between White American culture and his Native roots that mirrored thousands of others who wasn’t as well known.
  
  Maraniss, basing the book’s title on Thorpe’s given Sac-and-Fox name, gives a very detailed chronicle of Thorpe’s life from his childhood on the reservation to attending Carlisle Indian Industrial School where is athletic prowess in first track and field then football gained national attention before his Olympic triumph followed by ‘disgrace’ then sis long professional careers in baseball, football, and even a little basketball before wandering across the country looking to make a living and get by. Yet while Thorpe the man’s story is amazing, Maraniss uses him to highlight the plight of Native Americans within the larger text of mainstream White American culture from the military and government’s treatment of tribes over history to the benign sound but cultural devastating “Kill the Indian, save the man” philosophy of Carlisle and the casual racism that the press and organized sport’s white elitism who viewed amateurism as the ideal over professionalism thus causing a 110+ year injustice. This dual purpose was executed very well by Maraniss, though I will admit that he appeared to belabor some things like his critique on historical accuracy of the 1951 Hollywood biopic because at that point the reader was in 400 pages of a biography and could tell what the inaccuracies were already. And ironically mere weeks before it’s publication some information in the biography became dated when the IOC fully restored Thorpe as sole champion and his scores of his 1912 Olympic events.
  
  Path Lit by Lightning is not only a revealing look into the man who was head and shoulders the best athlete of his time, but also of the difficulty Native Americans dealt within as they tried to remain true to their culture while attempt to live in White American society. David Maraniss writes in a very good narrative style though at times belabors inaccuracies as if the readers didn’t pay attention in early portions of the book. Overall, highly recommend for those interested in sports biographies or Native Americans in the United States.
• 
  Richard Derus

  The inimitable
  Nancy Pearl (she of
  Book Lust et al.) interviewed Author
  David Maraniss about this wonderful book
  here.
• 
  Deacon Tom F

  A Complete Biography
  
  I thoroughly enjoyed the spoke about Jim Thorpe
  
  The author spend a credible amount of time researching to the smallest level of detail. This surprised me because it brings his entire life into the story, including his relationship with his Indian brothers and sisters.
  
  Exceptionally well written, and very enjoyable.
  
  I highly Recommend
• 
  Jen

  Ok, ever since I heard about Jim Thorpe, I wanted to learn more. I read a more kid/YA friendly biography of his life a few years back, before going to the town of Jim Thorpe in PA and learned quite a bit.
  
  This book was like the PhD version of his life. I learned SO MUCH it was not even funny. The scholarship that went into this book must have been insane. However, it is not written in a way to alienate the reader who doesn't know much about Jim Thorpe. It's high level in scholarship, but does not talk down to its audience.
  
  All I have to say after listening to this book is, poor Jim Thorpe. He not only HAD potential, he REALIZED it, but at such a young age, that everything else could be seen as less-than. Some of it was less-than, to be honest, but he never stopped hustling, he never gave up. He rubbed elbows with some of the BIG names of the day. Ran over some of them while playing football, lol.
  
  This book was really, REALLY good for learning about Jim Thorpe. However, I would NOT recommend listening to it. As amazing as the author is with his compilation of data and expressing it in a way that doesn't overwhelm or insult the reader, he is NOT a professional narrator and it shows.
  
  I listen to audio books on my insanely long commute, which takes place mostly in the dark of the morning and the dark of the night (thank you Winter), so both the time of day and the light coming down from the sky encourage sleepiness. So does the voice of this audio book. "DRYYYY EYEEEES" has NOTHING on this.
  
  Not just the tone of voice, but also the lack of clear enunciation and diction made me try to futilely rewind and crank the volume to hear the middle and end of sentences and even doing that, I wasn't able to hear it clearly some of the time. I gave up when I realized that wrestling with the rewind and volume while hurtling down the highway at a high rate of speed was not the best idea I've ever had and so I just gave up and decided I would try to catch what I could with context clues and gracefully let the rest go.
  
  The author is also fond of lists, which isn't a bad thing, but when the names of all of Jim Thorpe's teammates are being read in a voice that while pleasant for speaking, isn't professionally trained for reading out loud, it gets droning, very quickly.
  
  This is also a LOOOOONG audio book, clocking in at just over 27 hours. It took me longer than 27 hours of commuting to finish this book, as when I was falling asleep, I would have to stop the book and crank loud, angry music up in it's place so I could make it to where I was going as safely as possible.
  
  I try to be a safe driver, for both myself and the others who are on the road with me. This book made that difficult.
  
  So, if you listen to audio books while driving, this one might be a hard pass for you. If you listen while doing chores around the house or exercising, this might work for you.
  
  Other than that, this book is SO worth reading. I flipped through a finished copy in a brick and mortar store and the pictures were so great, I'm highly considering getting a copy for myself, which I rarely do, as shelf space is a premium in my home and this is a honker of a book.
  
  I would highly recommend this book. It's not just about Jim Thorpe. He didn't live in a vacuum, so it does go into the times he lived in, the story of how football evolved (did you know that Jim Thorpe was the first president of what would become the NFL!?!? That's just ONE of the awesome, amazing things he did in his life.), how Native Americans were treated in sports, Hollywood and by the United States Government (which I won't get into here, but let me tell you, made me LIVID.) and the Olympics, not just the one he competed in (which he ROCKED btw).
  
  4, this book is very well written and I highly recommend it (but maybe not the audio version), stars.
  
  My thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an eARC copy of this book to read and review. My thanks to Simon & Schuster Audio and libro.fm for an Advanced Audio copy of this to listen to and review.
• 
  Lance

  Jim Thorpe was unquestionably the greatest male American athlete in the first half of the 20th century. Having achieved success in both college and professional football as well as baseball and track and field, his life and career would seem to be one filled with glory. Sadly, that was not the case and this very good biography written by David Maraniss brings Thorpe’s life into focus complete with the many downfalls into the myths around the Sac and Fox indigenous American.
  
  Having read Maraniss’s excellent biography on Roberto Clemente, I expected more of the same in this book. Many sections lived up to that expectation, especially when it came to describing Thorpe’s baseball career. This was of particular interest for me since it was his participation in the lower levels of professional baseball that led to Thorpe being stripped of his gold medals for track and field in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. Maraniss’s writing on the part of the Games’ officials to ensure that the amateurism of the games remained was both brilliant and maddening as was the description of the responses by the football coach of the Carlisle School, Pop Warner.
  
  Other parts of the book that deserve special mention for their excellent writing and research were those on the Carlisle School, where Thorpe and other Native Americans were being taught how to live in the America that was being shaped by white leaders. It did not make for happy reading, nor did the sections on Thorpe’s personal struggles with alcoholism. Also troubling for Thorpe was trying to hold his marriage together with his first wife and their children. While life for any professional athlete’s family is hard, Thorpe’s life of playing both professional baseball and football made it even harder on that family. Especially for baseball, where Thorpe was often released from a team before the family had a chance to settle.
  
  The writing on his athletic career mirrors how Maraniss covered every other aspect of the book – very detailed and mostly informative, but at times it felt bogged down in too much detail. This was also the feeling I had while reading of the many injustices suffered by Thorpe and others at Carlisle. It needed to be told but at times it felt like just too much after understanding what was being said. This is not to say that it was bad, but just that the message came across easily without extra minutia.
  
  Even at this length, this is a book that is certainly worth the time to read if one has any interest in Thorpe, the history behind his loss of his Olympic winnings or even the treatment of Native Americans at that point in American history. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time with the book.
  
  I wish to thank Simon and Schuster for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
  
  
  https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
  
• 
  anklecemetery

  I'm not one for sports, but Thorpe's life is so epic and tragic and captures a pretty vivid moment in history. Maraniss keeps the book moving at a fast pace and portrays Thorpe as a realistic, whole person, never shying away from the ways racism affected his personal and professional life. Descriptions of how Thorpe influenced the sports of his day, including descriptions of several games, were accessible to me, a person who does not watch sports. It held my interest.
• 
  Roger DeBlanck

  Before the great Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams, before the great Muhammad Ali and Joe Namath, before the great Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, America had its greatest sports hero in Jim Thorpe. His unparalleled talents enabled him to excel at multiple sports, and Maraniss approaches Thorpe’s remarkable life through both a historical reckoning of the difficult eras he lived through and a thoughtful examination of the man encompassed within aspects of his own mythmaking. Although sometimes Maraniss made his narrative a labor to plow through, he had me eager to immerse in his admiration of Thorpe’s journey to survive.
  
  Born in 1887 as a member of the Sac and Fox nation in the Oklahoma territory, Thorpe’s Native American name was Wa-tho-Huk, meaning “path lit by lightning.” Orphaned in his teens, he was sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania where his legend began. He excelled on the football gridiron and at track and field under the coaching of the fabled figure himself, Pop Warner. In 1912 at the Stockholm Olympics, Thorpe elevated to worldwide fame with his record-shattering performances in taking the gold in the decathlon and pentathlon. Witnessing Thorpe’s athletic prowess, the King of Sweden declared him the “world’s greatest athlete.”
  
  He returned to America a celebrity, which only increased with his continued football dominance at Carlisle where he twice became a consensus All-American. However, controversy arose when the media revealed his playing minor league baseball, as many college students did in those days while still retaining their amateur status. Even after the unjust confiscation of his Olympic medals and trophies, Thorpe did not allow the setback to prevent him from forging his name as a pioneer of the NFL and a solid major league baseball player.
  
  In the early days of pro sports, Thorpe mirrored many athletes, constantly moving from team to team, city to city. For Thorpe, his itinerant and nomadic odyssey as a player had him struggling to stay afloat with stable income, even though he earned admiration from every player, coach, and sportswriter as the greatest football halfback and kicker the game had ever seen. But when asked about his favorite sport, he confessed his uncontested love for fishing and hunting.
  
  His constant movement prevented him from ever settling, which often kept him apart from his children, but not estranged. His nonstop lifestyle and lack of money strained him through three marriages. Soft-spoken, gentle, humble, and generous to a fault, Jim was transformative with fierceness and tenacity whether on a field or track, but he often became cantankerous, flinty, and volatile when inebriated due to his lifelong struggles with alcohol.
  
  Although he never gained financial stability, he demonstrated a resilience to keep hustling at what he did best: perform at athletics and move forward in the face of hardship. As a Native American, his entire life was marked by struggles against the forces of cruel assimilation tactics, white expectations, and outright bigotry and racism. In many ways, his remarkable ability to persevere offers a microcosm of countless Native Americans who faced unspeakable acts of genocide and still found strength to succeed and preserve their identity in a white world.
  
  Maraniss succeeds in giving us a comprehensive epic that honors America’s greatest sports hero by chronicling Thorpe’s peerless accomplishments and subsequent misfortunes and also separating fact from myth. Nothing about Thorpe’s athletic achievements is necessarily hyperbolic; it’s just how the legend developed that Maraniss offers clarification. His study of Thorpe’s life is fascinating and enlightening, even if at time his ornate sentences and odd syntactical choices made for some challenges in the narrative’s flow.
  
  Whatever his shortcomings, I loved how Maraniss captured the superhuman-like talents Thorpe possessed, but also showed him battling his human flaws like we all do. What impressed me most is how Maraniss offers perspective of the oftentimes insurmountable injustices Native Americans such as Thorpe faced, and yet they demonstrated their strength and fought back to demand their recognition as America’s first citizens and as rightful stewards of their tribal identities and hallowed lands.
• 
  Joseph Stieb

  I was excited for this one, as I taught about Thorpe a lot in various history classes, and I've always found the history of the Carlisle Indian School to be fascinating. However, this book is simply too long, and parts of it really drag. The core flaw of this book is one that many biographers fall into: it's too often a catalogue of the subject's life rather than a narrative the focus more on illustrative moments or periods and condenses less interesting or salient stuff. For instance, there's about as much on Jim's Olympic triumph and his period at the Carlisle school as there is on his far less interesting post-retirement jobs, including his participation in the making of an autobiographical movie about himself. I found myself frankly worn out by long sections of this book that simply chronicle his life. Also, while Thorpe was far from a simple man, I don't think he was particularly compelling as an individual. He didn't have a lot of big ideas or a super-strong mission for himself; even sports was something he kind of fell into rather than pursued as a career. So it's a long book about a person whose main goal for most of his life was to retire and raise hunting dogs on a lodge in Florida.
  
  That being said, there's still a lot of interesting stuff here, and the Thorpe story can be a great vehicle for studying Indian history in the 21st century. You learn a lot about the relatively short-lived Carlisle school, and Maraniss effectively demythologizes Pop Warner, who used up young Indian men but didn't help them much in life. For example, Warner feigned ignorance of Thorpe playing minor league ball (thereby violating standards of amateurism and costing him his gold medals) even though he definitely knew what Thorpe was doing, and he didn't do much to defend his star athlete. The point of this school as a whole was a somewhat brutal assimilation, or "killing the Indian to save the man."
  
  Jim never lost his pride in being a Native American though, and the strong suit of this book is its examination of Indian history in this period. Jim's early career spanned the end of the frontier and the signing of the Dawes Act, and most white Americans at the time viewed Indians as something between a novelty, an extinct species, a social problem, and a still dangerous threat. Maraniss shows that Indian stereotypes colored people's views of Jim to an almost blinding degree; this was particularly egregious with sportswriters' incessant references to "the warpath," "savage braves," "taking scalps," and so on. White Americans wanted to stare at Indians, watch them perform, romanticize them, lament their current state (especially alcoholism, a problem Jim suffered), but they rarely wanted to see them as full people and citizens. Jim fought against all of this throughout his life while at times leaning into these expectations to make money, and his loss of the gold medal probably had something to do with his background.
  
  The book also examines Thorpe the incredible, multi-faceted athlete, as well as the development of football at the time. These sections are interesting, but I was fairly familiar with the basic story. A huge chunk of the book is devoted to Jim's lackluster baseball career, which was largely spent in the minors. I thought it unfortunate that Jim didn't come along when pro football was a more robust career, as he spent his prime years playing what was probably his worst sport.
  
  I might be judging this book a little harshly in part because I knew some of the story already. If you don't know much about sport and Indian history in this time period, you may enjoy this. I didn't dislike it; I just found it fine, even a little sad, given that Jim's life remained unstable pretty much until he died.
• 
  Abby Epplett

  Note: I received this book as an advance copy from Goodreads.
  
  This is the first time I read a book by award winning author-editor
  David Maraniss, and the book did not disappoint.
  Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe is an incredibly detailed biography of an internationally renowned athlete whose reputation as a dominant figure in multiple sports was frequently overshadowed by his Native American ancestry. The book’s title emphasizes this overshadowing, as it is one translation of his Sac and Fox name, Wa-Tho-Huk.
  
  I won’t roll off additional facts about Jim Thorpe, as the book does this plenty, dispelling myths about his life while adding concrete dates and locations to the lore. Maraniss has clearly done his research, more so than any previous writer of a Thorpe biography. The information on Thorpe’s relatives, teammates, coaches, and failed business ventures clears up the mistruths floating around the internet, originally propagated by contemporaries of Thorpe and the man himself. At a certain point, the barrage of clarifications becomes too much.
  
  This book has everything. Dysfunctional families. Indian boarding schools. Football. Baseball. The 1912 Olympics. The King of Sweden. The Worcester Telegram (a newspaper that treated me much better as an athlete than it did to Thorpe). A honeymoon tour of Pompeii. Nazis. The founding of the NFL. Alcohol. Lots and lots of lying. NAGPRA. Muhammed Ali. Fifty pages of endnotes. If you are looking for a light expansion of Thorpe’s Wikipedia page, this is not your book.
  
  In summary, I appreciated the effort that went into this in-depth and comprehensive book. Maraniss is clearly a phenomenal researcher and deserving of his past awards. However, this book is not the best choice for all readers. Those looking for an intense, immersive experience will enjoy the ten or more hours spent with this book. Others with less interest would do better with a shorter read.
  
  
  Click here to view this review on my blog.
• 
  Drtaxsacto

  The author did a superb job of researching the life of Jim Thorpe who was an amazing athlete in multiple sports but who spent a good part of the rest of his life trying to scrape by. Thorpe got spun by lots of people. Perhaps the longest irritant in Thorpe's life was the removal of his Olympic medals where he set records in the Decathlon and Pentathlon and then was stripped of his honors. The IOC and the AAU penalized Thorpe after the 1912 Olympics for his supposed violation of amateur status in two seasons of a minor league baseball. In spite of the rules of the IOC which required a decision shortly after the medals were awarded, Thorpe's medals were yanked two years after the Olympics.
  
  There are some evil people in the narrative especially Avery Brundage, the AAU and IOC official who consistently frustrated attempts to gain justice for Thorpe. But a host of others including his third wife Patsy - exploited Thorpe. Even after his death Thorpe's remains were fought over and eventually interred in a town he had never visited.
  
  The other overlay for this story is the varying interpretations how to treat Native American rights. Thorpe started to be noticed while a student as the Carlisle Indian School where he played multiple sports. Was the purpose of the school to assimilate Native Americans? The first superintendent was for assimilation. The next took an opposite position.
  
  This is a very long book. I think as a result of all the myths surrounding Thorpe's numerous accomplishments even after this long book we see a tragic figure of great abilities but with uncertainties about both his real record and the effects of his life.
• 
  MSGTV

  The story of America’s greatest athlete shows all the promise and faults of the man and country before, like Thorpe himself, slowing at the end.
• 
  Alma

  Sympathetic to Thorpe’s plight and other Native Americans, Maraniss’ well-researched biography draws on rich primary source materials to supply information on Thorpe as well as important figures and events of the time. One hundred and ten years after Jim Thorpe’s victories plans are still under way to restore his records because, though the IOC finally gave medals to his family in 1983, Thorpe’s results are still not part of the Olympic record. Read more details about this important book on my blog:
  https://shouldireaditornot.wordpress....
• 
  Richard Bankey

  Thanks to the author, Simon & Schuster, and Goodreads for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
  I have to admit that I didn't know much about Jim Thorpe before reading this book. The book is very thorough and tells you all about him from his birth right up until the present. I highly recommend this book especially for people that enjoy biographies. 4.25 🌟
• 
  Stephan Benzkofer

  Path Lit by Lightning is a fascinating examination of Jim Thorpe's life and a thorough indictment of U.S. mistreatment of Native Americans. It also provides a lively picture of the brutal early days of professional football (Thorpe was the president of the NFL's precursor group) and the already-hypocritical and tone-deaf world of amateur athletics.
  
  The biography is also an impressive bit of story telling in that Jim Thorpe's greatest athletic accomplishments (i.e. most of the heroics and drama) occurred in his 20s and 30s, but Maraniss weaves a compelling story of Thorpe's life up to and beyond his death in 1953 at the age of 66.
  
  The author does a fine job narrating his own work here, but I wonder what a professional could have done with this rich material!
• 
  Anthony

  Path Lit by Lightning will surely reward any student of American history. Maraniss's style is both personable and sympathetic to Thorpe, who seemed to have spent his entire life in varying states of exploitation.
  
  With his first title since the race riots of mid-2020, Maraniss cannot resist the impulse persistently to bang his readers over the head with how not racist he is. Mainly he does this by plucking the low-hanging fruit of racial attitudes of a century ago and exposing them to the unsparing light of 2022, with its positive obsession with race. An otherwise outstanding volume suffers for it.
  
  There are two ironies to these ham-handed lectures. First, there is an inconsistency between, on the one hand, castigating early-20th-century American society for keeping "the Indian" at a distance by assuming his fascination with totem poles, teepees, and war whoops, and on the other hand, setting Indian names in italics — Thorpe's was Wa-tho-Huk, "path lit by lightning" — throughout the entire book. It is hard to blame an author for what may have been a publisher's stylistic decision, but it grates all the same. And Maraniss compromises his message about Thorpe's endless exploitation by himself exploiting Thorpe, who in this too-long book often seems like a vehicle for the author to display his antiracist bona fides.
  
  On occasion, the demand for racism exceeds the supply, and Maraniss overreaches. He quotes part of a Philadelphia Inquirer column: “The Indians are a strong drawing card wherever they go. They are not held down by any eligibility code or amateur rules. They are just Indians, and the best team possible is gotten together respective from where the material comes. Thus to be beaten by the red men is not counted as a blemish upon a college team’s escutcheon.” The column's author was rehearsing the gripe, common in that time, that the Carlisle School's football team on which Thorpe played, despite competing against other college teams, did not consider itself bound by typical eligibility rules, resulting in the use of some players in their mid-20s who often played for more than four years. There surely were examples of degradation printed in widely circulated media back then, but this column was not one of them.
  
  In a speech, Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle School, said, “United States, united people. How can we be made and keep our people united if we educate and train them to differences?” A century later, with Brown v. Board of Education and its rejection of the loathsome doctrine of “separate but equal” all but forgotten, we have returned to educating and training American citizens to identify themselves primarily by their differences at the expense of an American identity.
  
  What would Jim Thorpe, who represented the United States of America in Stockholm before he became a citizen, have to say about the extraordinary story of his life being used to divide rather than to unite?
• 
  Sean Kinch

  See David Maraniss at Parnassus in Nashville, in conversation with his son Andrew, on Aug. 25
• 
  Dasha

  I am very mixed about this book. On one hand, Maraniss, as he notes in his epilogue, spent a long time consulting Indigenous activists and experts alongside librarians and archivists in order to complete this book, and there are references in the back which is appreciated. The book is nearly 600 pages and Maraniss goes to great lengths to contextualize a lot of the events Thrope went through. Some are more important than others (i.e. which football team first began using the forward pass!). But, on the other hand, I think Thorpe's own life, voice, and place get lost - with the exception of two chapters that are largely just letters he wrote to a partner. My final issue is that while this book goes to lengths to point out the racism and stereotypes Thorpe faced, it still very much is a western narrative of an Indigenous man in America. Perhaps other books or authors provide an Indigenous worldview on Thorpe's life that this book does not engage with - indeed, Thorpe's Indigenity sometimes falls to the wayside as Maraniss focuses on other tangents and topics.
• 
  Casey Wheeler

  This is an excellent biography of Jim Thorpe who is considered by many to be the greatest and most gifted athlete in our country’s history. It covers in detail the highs and lows of his life while giving a good understanding through background information of why he lived the life that he did. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a better understanding of the man, the myth and the legend that is Jim Thorpe.
  
  I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Facebook and my nonfiction book review blog.
• 
  Steve's Book Stuff

  Path Lit by Lightning, David Maraniss’ latest book, is a biography of the legendary athlete Jim Thorpe. The book takes its name from a translation of Thorpe’s Indian name Wa-tho-Huk, which refers to the lightning storm gathering outside as Jim Thorpe and his twin brother Charlie were born.
  
  The story of Thorpe’s Indian name is the first of many tales about his life that Maraniss takes us through. The author does his best to separate fact from myth, but it’s not always easy given the legendary nature of Thorpe’s life, and the fact that those around him, and Thorpe himself, had their own reasons to sometimes shade the truth.
  
  Maraniss gives us all of Thorpe’s life. We learn about Thorpe’s early days born into the Sac and Fox tribe in Oklahoma. Then on to his time at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, and his performance on the football field and at the 1912 Olympics.
  
  Maraniss spends quite a bit of time exploring Jim’s Olympic experience, and then showing how his medals were stripped from him. Though Thorpe himself was not blameless, other famous sports figures like Pop Warner and Avery Brundage come in for their share of blame for the circumstances surrounding Thorpe’s Olympic fall from amateur sports grace, and deservedly so.
  
  We also see Thorpe meet his first wife Iva Miller at Carlisle and marry her after a long (and mostly long distance) relationship in 1913. We see him as a professional baseball player, and as president of the newly formed American Professional Football Association, forerunner to the NFL. And there is much more after that about his professional career, his later loves, his carousing, the movie made of his life, and the end of his days in 1953.
  
  Also well documented in this book is the racism and abuse aimed at Native Americans. Much of Thorpe’s early experiences were of forced assimilation (“Kill the Indian, Save the Man” was the philosophy of the founder of the Carlisle School). He dealt with white people’s preconceptions of native people all through his life. It’s a testament to Thorpe’s amazing athletic abilities that he achieved so much under such circumstances.
  
  I liked this book a lot. It’s mostly chronological, but it's not dry and avoids the trap of being a “this happened, then this happened” account of Thorpe’s life. However, Maraniss can and does take some deep dives - some sections of the book go into A LOT of detail. So I found myself getting bogged down in places.
  
  That means that I found myself reading a few chapters at a time, both to soak in all that was being covered, and to avoid being dissuaded from continuing if the going got too “boggy”. In the end, because I love Maraniss’ writing style, I always looked forward to picking the book back up.
  
  Maraniss is a gifted writer. I’ve read several of his previous books and reviewed one of them here on my blog -
  A Good American Family. What you expect from a book by Maraniss is a good story, thoroughly told, with thoughtfulness and a touch of humanity. This latest book does not disappoint.
  
  RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  
  NOTE: I received an advanced copy of this book from Simon & Schuster and NetGalley, and am voluntarily providing this review.
• 
  Joe

  Sad story about the decline of American Indian institutions, with the specific case of how Jim Thorpe couldn’t get his feet under him after becoming the undisputed "greatest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century."
  
  The first half of the book covers the institution of the Carlisle Indian School as much as it covers Thorpe himself. The second half covers Thorpe's victories (which sadly seemed to be a peak of a few years at most), followed by repeated personal tragedies (losing a son, two divorces, estranged children, demeaning jobs, etc.).
  
  Anyone interested in early football history will find a lot to enjoy. Thorpe was all over it, meeting several important people in early football history (Grantland Rice in particular gets a lot of coverage; others like
  Amos Alonzo Stagg appear as well). He also meets several other famous people in his colorful life that intersected with sports or entertainment before going on to something else (Eisenhower, Patton, and Reagan probably the most important among them).
  
  The author compares Thorpe to
  Black Hawk, one of his possible ancestors. I liked the comparison, showing how major events in their lives were defined by how white Americans viewed them, with their happiest periods in their lives surrounded by Indians.
  
  This is a sad story but a good place to start if you want to understand American Indians in the early twentieth century.
• 
  Melanie

  Jim Thorpe was a once in a lifetime athlete. He was an Olympian in Track and Field, a professional baseball player, and a professional football player. Reading this biography makes me wonder if we should be so specialized. Maraniss also had perfect timing for this very detailed book as it was announced July 2022 - 110 years later - that Thorpe was being reinstated as the sole winner of the pentathlon and the decathlon from the 1912 Stockholm games. It only took 110 years with people constantly pushing to make it happen. There are many stories on Thorpe and it can be questionable about what is truth and what is fictional legend. However, it seems that many that have greatness contain a flaw that prevents them from their full potential and Thorpe did not allude this. Thorpe's weakness seems to be alcohol and maybe women. Not only is this a biography on Thorpe, but this goes into racism and politics of the time to give the reader an understanding of that Thorpe had to navigate.
  
  How did this book find me? I had been seeing it quite a bit on line and just seemed to be directed to read it. Also the news of his reinstatement as the sole winner of the 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon has recently made the news. I also got to meet Billy Mills, another Native American that won the 10,ooo meter run in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Mills is a very kind man and has been quoted many times talking about Thorpe.
• 
  Evelyn Petschek

  4 1/2 stars rounded up. A fascinating biography of the great athlete Jim Thorpe, written by an expert biographer, drawing its title from Thorpe’s given name on the Sac and Fox Nation. Yes it is long, but it is highly readable, well-written and well-researched. A life of incredible victories and disappointments. And a good recount of the injustices Native Americans have endured. Themes of prejudice and racism, optimism in the face of loss, perseverance and survival. Well narrated by the author.
• 
  Bob

  An amazing work by Maraniss on one of the more complicated and somewhat tragic stories in American sports. Thorpe represented so much about what was right and wrong about America as it related to its original inhabitants.
  
  (One note: the book went to press after Thorpe was fully reinstated as a double gold medalist in 1912. He had previously been reinstated as a co-champion, but that is no longer the case.)
• 
  Adam Burton

  David Maraniss managed to balance the nuance of a story filled with historical narratives into something informative and enlightening. Jim Thorpe’s life is filled with a series of highs and lows and strength and perseverance. History is filled with unreliable narrators, folklore, and legend and this story manages to show respect while unraveling these threads.