We can learn about resilience from three books
These days, some of us may find ourselves increasingly overwhelmed, trying to keep our families secure, economically and perhaps even physically.
Three recent books — two memoirs and a history — show that with luck, pluck and collective imagination, we can prevail.
Misunderstood: A Memoir, by Allen Iverson and Ray Beauchamp, 352 pages, Gallery/13A, 2025
Local basketball fans remember Allen Iverson’s glory years with the Georgetown Hoyas and his outstanding career in the NBA, mostly in Philadelphia.
A six-foot-tall guard, he revolutionized the position into a mainstay of offense. He introduced tattoos (inadvertently) to the NBA scene and had a tumultuous side.
In the pros, he vociferously refused to attend practice. He clashed with coaches and accused referees of picking on him. He stood out.
Born into squalor in Hampton, Virginia, Iverson experienced a rough childhood, losing friends to drugs and prison. He was incarcerated at 17 for a fight that white supremacists instigated and that occurred after he had left the scene. Fortunately, Gov. Douglas Wilder granted him clemency.
Iverson’s creative talent allowed him to conceptualize plays in football (his preferred sport) and basketball (as a scorer and playmaker).
That grit and an iron will led legendary coach John Thompson to take a chance on him despite his conviction. Thompson became a mentor, not just a college coach, and “saved his life,” Iverson said, paving the way to his many successes.
Now a peripatetic businessman, Iverson paints a fuller and riveting picture of his life in his memoir. Co-written by Ray Beauchamp, a Philadelphia native who is now a criminal defense attorney in New York, the memoir explores Iverson’s determination to live a decent life and the role of luck, both good and bad, in the journey.
Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, by Mary Annette Pember, 304 pages, Penguin Random House, 2025
The basics of the tragic history of relations between the United States government and Native American tribes in the 19th and early 20th centuries have become well known. U.S. Supreme Court decisions have acknowledged the government’s deliberate attempt to annihilate Native Americans through broken treaties, land usurpations and death marches to inhospitable territories (the Trail of Tears).
In Medicine River, Mary Annette Pember, a member of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Tribe and correspondent for ICT News, reveals new horrors Indian schools inflicted on Native children.
Pember reviews the history at the flagship Carlisle School, focusing on her mother, Bernice Rabideaux, who attended St. Mary’s Catholic Indian Boarding School in Wisconsin. Although Rabideaux enrolled voluntarily, others were kidnapped and sent to the school.
Administrators severed contact with families, abused the students, forbade Native languages, cut their hair short (verboten for Native Americans) and gave the children Christian names. Pember underscores this particular insult, noting that Ojibwe believe that, to enter Heaven, souls must recite their Native names.
While her mother never recovered, Pember transcended her legacy of trauma and, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, won numerous awards for her writing.
Gotham at War: A History of New York City from 1933 to 1945, by Mike Wallace, 976 pages, Oxford University Press, 2025
This page-turner depicts the crosscurrents that buffeted the city that never sleeps during the Depression and World War II and the colorful characters — FDR and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia — who managed the maelstrom.
Somehow New York always emerged stronger. In Gotham at War, Mike Wallace, a history professor at CUNY, describes how the city creatively adapted to changing economic times. When slums proliferated, the city enabled clothing workers’ unions to build affordable housing to supplement government projects.
When World War II drove industries southward and westward, a city program enticed corporations to build their headquarters in the city, resulting in better-paying jobs. In fact, when the U.N. did not want to establish its headquarters in New York City, John D. Rockefeller Jr. decided otherwise, and the city became the de facto capital of the world.
