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BOOK REVIEWS

Autobiography

All In

Billie Jean King

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BOOK SYNOPSIS

An inspiring and intimate self-portrait of the champion of equality that encompasses her brilliant tennis career, unwavering activism, and an ongoing commitment to fairness and social justice. In this spirited account, Billie Jean King details her life's journey to find her true self.

Billie Jean King was the first of her kind, a women athlete that became a global cultural icon, as much for her pioneering activism as her spectacular playing career. She was the first female athlete to outwardly rebel and then carry the fight for women as a group. Her watershed "Battle of the Sexes" match against Bobby Riggs in 1973, was watched by an estimated 90 million people worldwide. What started for King as a young girl's request for individual freedom expanded into broader issues over time.

In this spirited account, King describes the rollicking early days of the pro tennis world she pushed to create, and her evolution into a thirty-nine time Grand Slam champion, an activist, a feminist, a political influencer and a public figure who was at first so fearful of admitting her sexual identity, and then so closeted once she did, that her physical and emotional health suffered. Against a vivid cultural backdrop of these years, she poignantly describes her often submerged struggle to be her "authentic self" - the hard won place where her public and private lives converged, though not until the age of fifty-one, after she narrowly averted financial peril when she was outed and sought treatment for an eating disorder fourteen years later.

All In, is a bracingly candid and complex biography of an athlete-activist that reminds us of the scale her challenges and triumphs, vision and courage. All In situates King in a new context - the here and now - looking backward (and forward) with the benefit of her newly accumulated wisdom and grace. The result is the story of a women with an indomitable spirit who continues to advocate for equity and inclusion today.

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