Billie Jean KingRecensioni

I think this is an excellent history of women's sports and the importance of Title IX as well as the importance and value of women activists.

I appreciated learning about King's life before turning pro, but that part of the book lagged a little for me. My favorite parts of the book were the accounts of the first decade or two of the WTA, and the accounts of its formation. I loved the sense of camaraderie among the players. I wonder if that still exists today. I have to admit, I liked reading about her friendship with Elton John--it seems like a true friendship.

Some parts of the book are highly engaging like the Battle of the Sexes. Other parts are quite repetitive. The last couple chapters were just a summary of life in 2020-2021 and weren’t particularly unique to BJK. The book could use some editing, there is a lot of repetition and some grammar issues. Still it was interesting to read about BJK’s career and her activism.

I just finished Billie Jean King’s autobiography, “All In,” It’s also supposed to be good on audio.

She had quite a career, and I really learned or was reminded of so much history and how much things have changed. When she was outed; she lost all of her endorsements, and ended up having to work longer, playing tennis on rickety knees, partly for financial reasons. Then yesterday, we were at Macy’s, in the cosmetic section, and there was a big picture of pink-haired Megan Rapinoe, selling something or other. Things have really changed!

I'm not really interested in tennis as a sport but have always liked outspoken advocates for women's equality in any arena. This book is a fascinating and very readable account of tennis star Billie Jean King's growing awareness of injustice, not just in relation to sex, but also race and sexual orientation, and her determination to do something about it. It paints a clear picture of her drive and enthusiasm for tennis and willingness to encourage others to become involved in the sport she loves. Highly recommended.

Billie Jean Moffitt was ten years old when she first picked up a tennis racket and she instantly loved the game. She could run, jump, and hit balls: everything she liked to do. Only a few years later, she vowed to become number one and, as Billie Jean King, she did—racking up thirty-nine grand slam singles and doubles championships, including a record twenty wins at Wimbledon. She had to overcome physical pain and many obstacles placed in front of her by officials who penalized her for everything from not wearing a skirt to simply being a girl.

King’s autobiography is the story of how she and others elevated women’s tennis to an immensely popular sport, with hard-fought gains in the purses that these professional athletes could finally earn. But she wasn’t only “all in” on the tennis courts: she has also pursued equality throughout her life, for female athletes of all ages, for players of color, for abortion rights, and for LGBTQ people.

This book will interest tennis fans, of course, but also anyone interested in feminism and women’s history, and in learning how activists play the “long game” using strategy, tactic, and determination. The book is illustrated with photos from her career and personal life, and it’s told in the forthright and clear way you would expect from this champion.

( I received a gratis copy of this title in my role as reviewer.)

As a woman, and as a tennis fan, I lapped up this audiobook with tremendous enthusiasm. I've been a King fan since the 70s when she started defeating one tennis foe after another and her story was compelling, but the tennis was only part of her story. Fighting for the rights of women has been a job that King took on very early in her career and still is a prominent activist. Her sexuality, and the way in which it was publicly revealed, was more than a little distressing but her fight for Title IX may be her most important legacy. In her audio narration, she was very emotional about several parts of her history but especially when she talked about her parents and how they struggled to help her achieve success. Highly recommended.½

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, I was not that big a fan of Billie Jean King. I was more inclined to be a fan of Chris Evert, Tracy Austin or Evonne Goolagong. I became more of a fan of Billie Jean King after she defeated Bobby Riggs in a special challenge match held at the Houston Astrodome.

I have to give Billie Jean her props – – she was a great tennis player and maybe more importantly a great pioneer for women's sports in general and for the LBGT community. Her autobiography details the incredible pushback that she received in promoting women's tennis. I was very surprised and disappointed to read that Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith were two of the male players opposed to more equal pay for women.

This book details her moxie, courage, judgment and passion to not just be the number one tennis player in the world but to actually improve the fortunes of women both in sports and outside of it. Billie Jean also suffered because of her sexuality – – she had hidden her relationships with women so not to disrupt her tennis career and outside interests.

A very candid book. An ideal sports book for women. An ideal book on overcoming personal struggles for everyone.

Fascinating½

Quite good! I didn't know anything about Billie Jean King, but this autobiography shows her as someone who for her whole life has battled both in tennis matches, and for women's sports and LGBT rights. Her demons include binge-eating and her societally condemned sexuality. She shows poor judgement, not infrequently lies, and has multiple simultaneous affairs. Her openness about her mistakes helps make this a worthwhile story—and there is a lot to tell! (Certainly in comparison to the other tennis biography I've recently read, Clarey's "The Master" about solipsistic billionaire Roger Federer.)

King's "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match with Bobby Riggs was ridiculous. What I didn't understand before reading this is how ridiculous the context was, in particular the pervasive sexism battled by athletes like King. I still don't know that the match shows quite what King thinks. It is not surprising that the world's best female tennis player can defeat a washed-up huckster who (at least in King's portrayal) can barely even run. King took the match very seriously because she saw it as her duty to protect and grow women's tennis.

> When my parents took Randy and me to Los Angeles to watch our first Pacific Coast League baseball game between the L.A. Angels and the Hollywood Stars when I was nine I expected it to be a thrilling day—until I looked down on the field and it dawned on me for the first time that all the pro players were men. Before that day I had heard about the American Dream and thought it applied unconditionally to me.

> I’d be holding a glass of water in my hand, chatting with club members who were drinking highballs. One of the older men or women would inevitably lean over toward fifteen-year-old me and say, “So, tell me young lady, what are you really going to do with your life? Or are you going to be a tennis bum?” I am doing what I want with my life, was what I wanted to say. Instead, I’d smile politely and say nothing, or assure them that I planned to attend college and marry because I knew that’s what they wanted to hear.

> Althea [Gibson] quit amateur tennis in 1959 at the pinnacle of her career after having swept the singles titles at Wimbledon and Forest Hills in back-to-back years. As she memorably explained it, “You can’t eat trophies.” I would sometimes repeat her line later. Althea went on to break the color line in women’s golf, too, and chase the small purses on the fledgling LPGA tour. To make a living, she even played tennis as the opening act at Harlem Globetrotters’ games, a sight that was as painful to me as Jesse Owens racing a horse for money late in his career, or a broke Joe Louis—another African American icon—working as a casino greeter in Vegas.

> Arthur Ashe, the first president of the ATP, but he was backward on gender issues before he married his wife, Jeanne Moutoussamy, an exceptional photographer and strong professional woman. Arthur told The Boston Globe, “The women are going to disappear because they don’t draw flies.” Clark Graebner said, “I’m just as happy to never see the girls. They’re not very attractive. I wouldn’t want my daughter playing on tour.” The American star Stan Smith told The Daily Mirror of London, “These girls would be much happier if they settled down, got married, and had a family. Tennis is a rough life and it really isn’t good for them. It de-feminizes them…[They become] too independent and they can’t adapt to anyone else, they won’t be dependent on a man. They want to take charge, not only on the courts but at home.”

> The USLTA was the Establishment trying to flick us off before we got traction. I was the only multiple Grand Slam singles winner on the Slims tour. If a kid like Chrissie [Evert] ran away with the crown against our best player and then went back to playing against Margaret, Virginia Wade, and Evonne Goolagong on their rival tour, our circuit could be endangered. Evonne was only nineteen years old herself then, and she had just won Roland-Garros and Wimbledon. So, as much as I already liked Chrissie personally, I knew it was up to me to stop her. Now. After warming up for our semifinal, I felt so much pressure that I went into a shower in the women’s dressing room, blasted the water as high as it would go so no one would hear me, and began sobbing uncontrollably as I contemplated the stakes.

> I steamed off. Rosie was right behind me, her jaw clamped shut in anger too. I’m not proud of it—but it was hysterical when she blinked and told me that she forgot we weren’t playing doubles and she left because she was thinking we were a team. The crowd booed us on our way off and we deserved it. The press massacred us too. We were fined by the USLTA. And that’s how Rosie and I became an infamous footnote in tennis history: We’re still the only two singles players to default after we both took the court.

> In the five decades since, it is not an exaggeration to say not a day has gone by without someone talking to me about the Battle of the Sexes match. Women still tell me about where they were when they saw it, how happy and empowered they felt when I won. … the men who approach me often have tears in their eyes too. They say, “Billie Jean, I was very young when I saw that match and now I have a daughter. It changed me.” One of those men was Barack Obama. When I met him for the first time in the Oval Office after he became president, he told me, “You don’t realize it, but I saw that match at twelve. Now I have two daughters and it has made a difference in how I raise them.”

> To show Sir Brian how much leverage and unity we had, Jerry produced a contract that was signed by more than eighty women players, obligating us to compete the following summer in another tournament to be held the same time as Wimbledon. We told Sir Brian the contract for us to skip Wimbledon and play elsewhere would be binding only if the women didn’t receive at least 70 percent of the prize money the men were paid at Wimbledon in 1976. The second condition: Our percentage would have to be negotiated upward each succeeding year, until equal prize money was achieved.

> tennis remains the leader in women’s sports. Tennis has shown what’s possible, and remains a model that other sports emulate.

> I can’t remember dining in a restaurant until I was eleven years old. Even then, Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us order a milkshake and fries with our burgers; we had to choose one or the other because of the cost. Even at home, it wasn’t uncommon for my father to remark, “Boy, you kids really eat a lot,” or for my mother to shoot us a disapproving look when we reached for another portion. To this day, going to a restaurant and having everyone order whatever they want secretly thrills me.

> Once I held my own in softball games, my father’s coworkers always wanted me to play shortstop or third base on their teams at their fire department picnics. There, I learned an important lesson that applied later in life, in other contexts: Men and boys will accept you more easily when you excel at something they value.

> After I stopped competing, I wasn’t working out regularly and my weight occasionally hit 200 pounds. I became detached, almost remote, which isn’t like me at all. I couldn’t stop overeating, no matter how hard I tried.

Billie Jean King was one of my childhood heroes and role models, so I enjoyed this book alot. I remember watching the Battle of the Sexes on television as a 4th grader in the fall of 2003, and being so excited that she won! I liked learning more about the match in this book, as well as more women's tennis history mixed in with the advice King dispenses.

Billie Jean King's Big Game is all about the serve and volley. Written in 1970, any modern tennis player will generally say that is not the Big Game at all. This is a book written for the wooden racquet era.
Nevertheless, King has a number of good tips to keep in mind, including small bits on strategy, percentages, conditioning and strokes in general. This book won't teach you tennis, but it will reinforce ideas and give you something to mull over.
Personally, I appreciate the old-style game, and enjoyed reading about the mentality that went into it. I'm also a fan of Billie Jean King, so reading her personal perspective was rewarding.

An easy read, simplistic, but the advice is sound. And any glimpse into the mind of an icon is a privilege. An easy read, simplistic, but the advice is sound. And any glimpse into the mind of an icon is a privilege.

A lite and quick read. If you're looking for a tennis memoir, this is not exactly it, and if you're looking for a deep self-help book, this is not it either. BUT...in replaying the 1973 Battle of the Sexes with Bobby Riggs, this little gem of a book becomes a hybrid - of sorts - a self-help/quasi-memoir, with a little bit of business advice thrown in for good measure and some personal recollections and advice to sweeten the pot. This more of a motivational memoir with inspiration thrown in for good measure.

Kinda hard to place it in any particular category...but still a good read!

In commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the Battle of the Sexes, this motivational book was published which is a collection of life lessons framed through the match. I especially enjoyed her descriptions of how she prepared for the match and what goes through her mind during play. Some of the stories of her family life were also touching.

Note: I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

When I requested Pressure is a Privilege: Lessons I've Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers offerings I expected, and was looking forward to reading, an autobiography by the remarkable Billie Jean King. I was not at all expecting a motivational self-help book, and would have avoided requesting this title if I had known its content.

I am old enough to remember the world before Title IX. When I arrived at college, my chosen school had just opened a new athletic facility, and I joined the women’s swim team. The men’s locker rooms were carpeted, and were equipped with saunas, steam baths, massage tables, and a weight room. Our locker room was a bare bones affair, with metal lockers, wooden benches, and bare concrete floors. They practiced during prime early evening hours; we had to practice at 6 am, with our eyes burning from the overnight burst of high-concentration chlorine. They had 20 scholarships; we held bake sales to pay for our swimsuits, goggles, and travel to away meets. Title IX didn’t improve our locker room, but it did pay for our equipment and travel, and provided a few scholarships so we could recruit some talented swimmers.

Billie Jean King would be a hero (or “shero” as she puts it) if she had done nothing more than fight for equality of access to sports in schools, but of course she is also a world champion tennis player, an advocate for equal pay for female professional athletes, a human rights activist, and a coach, mentor, and role model to a younger generation of professional tennis players. She has always been a class act, even as younger (and more conventionally pretty) players got more attention from the sporting press, and more prize money due to King’s efforts. Unfortunately this book provides only tiny glimpses into King’s life and career.

The so-called Battle of the Sexes was quite a spectacle, with a very satisfying outcome, but this book obsesses about it ad infinitum. I can’t disagree with any of the advice King offers, but I am just not a fan of motivational writing. The chapters are brief, averaging only 12 small pages including photo and title page, and I found the “instant replays” at the end of each chapter to be an unnecessary distraction. In spite of all my complaints, someone more open to motivational books might enjoy King’s direct and down-to-earth style.½

An easy read, simplistic, but the advice is sound. And any glimpse into the mind of an icon is a privilege.

Pressure is a Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes by Billie Jean King is a quick read that addresses both the biography of Ms. King as well as her insightful perspective on life. I began reading this book not knowing much about her background, and left curious. While the central events in her personal history were used as anecdotes for her life lessons, she didn’t go too deep into actual biography. I would certainly like to know more about this woman and her impact on sports and society. I appreciate the work that she did on my behalf, as a woman of a younger generation who benefitted from equality in athletics. The writing of this book was very conversational. I was distracted by the side notes scattered throughout the chapters because they seemed to break up the flow of the book. The “Instant Replay” section at the end of each chapter was a little unnecessary in my mind, although it did draw out the life lessons further. All in all, I found it to be an informative read that will encourage me to learn more about Billie Jean King and consider her positive outlook on life.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, so of course I heard about the Battle of the Sexes. I don't have a strong appreciation for feminism in many ways; however, I feel so fortunate that I have reaped the benefits that Billie Jean King and others just a decade before me fought for and earned. I have been the "first" girl several times while I was growing up. Family told me that even as a girl, I could do anything I wanted. I didn't realize until I was much older how unique that message was and how many girls and women before me did not hear that message. Reading Pressure is A Privilege reminded me of how "cutting edge" I was growing up, but the book isn't just for women or people overcoming minority status. It's life's lessons learned succinctly stated and supported with examples.

It's a quick read -- I read it in a day when I finally got it back from my mother. She was visiting and asked to read it when I took it out of the package. She also found it useful and enjoyable. You should know what Billie Jean has to say, but it's a good reminder, and you'll probably pick up a new way of looking at an idea as you read. If you don't know it, you need to and will find the book enlightening.

Billie Jean King is a person of integrity and perspective. This book, consistent with prior books by Ms. King, captures some of that integrity and perspective. Through the metaphor of sports she helps us derive some key life and work lessons that can be applied in the interactions we have with others and in how we think about our situations.

In this book, Billie Jean King talks about the most important lessons she has learned in her life and illustrates those with examples from her life. I was interested in reading this book because her success in tennis and in promoting Title VI gives her genuine credibility in talking about life lessons, as opposed to self-help book writers who have never experienced that type of success. Her background was very helpful (and persuasive) in demonstrating her points, especially with respect to the "pressure is a privilege" and "bring all of yourself" lessons. One of my favorite points was in her section on "relationships are everything," where she discusses the support she received from her parents and says that everyone needs to be loved unconditionally by someone. I hope many parents will read that part.

This book would have benefited, though, from more about her life. At times I felt like she was beating the reader over the head with one of her lessons instead of letting her life experiences illuminate the point. She has had such an interesting life that more of a focus on that could only have made the book better. Also, like many books of this nature, the writing was often stilted and bland. The writing style could have reflected more of her personality.½

Here's a book written by a competitor and a champion. What made the book interesting to me is the recollection of how important the King/Riggs match was back in the day, how much we girls hung on the outcome, how rotten the boys were about the whole thing ( I was in middle school and everyone is pretty hard to take at that age anyway).

Pressure is a Privilege brings back a time that has been forgotten, an important and pivotal moment in women's history in the United States. it's hard to remember that there was a time when girls couldn't play sports, didn't have access to gyms and equipment, and though I can't play games worth a darn, I realize through this book how much Billie Jean has given us all.

However, I gave the book 3 stars because I found the "lessons" to be on the tedious side to read, no matter how true or important they are. They just didn't equal the replay of the King/Riggs match. Still, we could all use advice from champions.

Pressure is a Privilege: Lessons I've Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes is a combination autobiography/inspirational tome. Ms. King focuses on her historic tennis match with Bobby Riggs in 1973, the Battle of the Sexes, and shares the lessons she learned from this and other important points in her life.

Ms. King writes in a straightforward down-to-earth style, sharing her feelings and experiences that made her the number one female tennis player in the world, activist, successful businesswoman and mentor that she is. The book is divided into lessons ranging from relationships to leaving a legacy. In each lesson she shares insight into her family, her coaches, and especially, preparing for her match with Bobby Riggs which opened the door for equal treatment of women in sport. Each chapter ends with an “instant replay” of the important points of the lesson.

If you’re looking for an in-depth autobiography of Billie Jean King, this isn’t the book for you. While she talks about her life, tennis, her family, and her sexuality, she doesn’t delve deeply. It’s more like how Maria Sharapova describes it on the back of the book: a “personal conversation” where Ms. King shares some of what she’s learned in her groundbreaking life. A positive, enthusiastic book perfect for a light summer read. I wish my outlook on life was this good.

Pressure is a privilege, according to Billie Jean King, and perspective is priceless. It feels wrong to belittle statements like that, especially coming from someone who has obviously made a success of more than one career, and who has unquestionably made the world a better place for women in general, and for women in the world of sports in particular. It’s just that I have such a low tolerance for motivational bushwa. Ms. King’s book, subtitled “Lessons I’ve Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes” is full of good advice, for athletes, or for anyone. Cultivate your relationships with the important people in your life, bring all of yourself to everything you do, never underestimate your opponent, be true to your values. You can’t argue with any of that. The trouble with encapsulating life’s lessons that way is, it reduces winning to a formula and suggests that if you follow all the rules, you can’t fail. Billie Jean King knows better, I’m sure. What makes this tiny book worth reading, in my view, is not the “inspirational” advice touted by the title and highlighted throughout the book in so-called Instant Replay boxes, but rather the up- close-and-personal, participant’s view of the super-hyped tennis match between Billie Jean and Bobby Riggs, and glimpses behind the scenes of world-class tennis. Practicing the integrity she preaches, Ms. King has not written one unkind or unflattering word about Bobby Riggs or any of the young competitors who were itching to take her place at the top in women’s tennis. In fact, she repeatedly expresses her admiration and respect for the champions who came before her, and her commitment to mentoring those who came after. As a role model, there is so much more to Billie Jean King than can be expressed in the platitudes that constitute so much of this book. I wish she had written something a bit deeper, more fully autobiographical, and left the motivational rhetoric to the cheerleaders.

This is an inspirational book that highlights the strong personal values and beliefs of the legendary tennis great Billie Jean King. It's a good book but it's built around her experience related to her famous "Battle of the Sexes" with Bobby Riggs. As she even states if you're not in your forties you probably never heard of it. It becomes a little redundent going back again and again to that staged circus event especially when she has won so many of the great tennis championships like Wimbeldon. Still she is a great role model for young athletes and a genuine nice person. I think I would like my daughter to read this book.