Jeff Pearlman Releases The Last Folk Hero

Mariner Books is proud to publish THE LAST FOLK HERO: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson by acclaimed sportswriter Jeff Pearlman. Hailed as a "master storyteller" (NPR.org), Pearlman is the New York Times bestselling author of nine previous books on iconic subjects, including the '80s Los Angeles Lakers (Showtime, the basis for the hit 2022 HBO series Winning Time, directed by Adam McKay), the 1986 New York Mets (The Bad Guys Won), the '90s Dallas Cowboys (Boys Will Be Boys), and NFL legend Walter Payton (Sweetness). Now, Pearlman turns his remarkable talents to a figure he considers to be in a class of his own, indeed the greatest athlete of all time, who forever redefined the modern sports superstar. The first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports-and the only one to be named an All-Star in both baseball and football-Bo Jackson was a Heisman Trophy winner and a pop culture phenomenon. His strength, power, and speed were the stuff of legend, among fans and fellow athletes alike. From the mid-'80s until the early '90s, when injuries forced him into early retirement, he seemed to be everywhere, splashed across our television screens and magazine covers in those pre-internet days, as both a stellar athlete and the ubiquitous "Bo Knows" Nike spokesman.And yet what makes Jackson truly unique and immortal, Pearlman says, is the mythology that surrounds him. Pearlman calls him "the last folk hero" because Jackson is the last legendary athlete to do the multitude of impossible-to-conceive feats attributed to him before the age of YouTube and Twitter, when everything that happens in the world can be found online seconds later. In decades past, Pearlman reminds us, some of the most fabled deeds in the history of sports had an element of mystery to them. Did Babe Ruth really point into the distance before homering at Wrigley Field in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series? Did Earl Manigault really grab a quarter off the top of a backboard before dunking a basketball? "We don't know," Pearlman writes. "But the beauty is in the mystery. It's in the debate; in the descriptive adjectives; in having a cousin whose uncle's brother's sister's nephew's wife's maid of honor (from her second wedding, not her third) was at the game, and swears to God it happened."