A Sense of Where You Are: A Profile of Bill Bradley at Princeton

John McPhee's A Sense of Where You Are is an intelligent (but perhaps a bit too adulatory) profile of Bill Bradley, with underrated side details on the structure of 1960s American college/pro basketball. Bradley was an extraordinary individual, raised in privilege and seemingly destined from a young age for great success in either professional basketball or public service. It turns out he would do both, playing twelve years for the New York Knicks and later becoming a three-term US senator. To read McPhee’s profile today is to appreciate how he basically pioneered the narrative non-fiction style of journalism that would come to dominate the modern era. This is one of McPhee's very best books, however it is in many ways unnecessary since the original New Yorker essay is available online.