Good evening.

Welcome to Inside the Cover.

I am your host, Ted Ayres.

And I want to thank you for letting me join you this evening.

As always, we will do our best to make these next few minutes a positive addition to your world.

Tonight's book is Path Lit by Lightning by David Maraniss.

I finished this book on November 8, 2022, and I found it to be a monumental and magnificent read monumental because of the extensive and exhaustive research obviously accomplished by the author and the comprehensive nature of his writing.

The book is magnificent because of the quality of writing and because of Maraniss scrupulous attention to detail.

Subtitled The Life of Jim Thorpe.

It seems clear that Maraniss worked hard to provide a true, honest, balanced and fair picture of a man who was a genuine American hero who accomplished so much under difficult and trying circumstances.

But also a man with demons.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

David Maraniss is an American journalist and author who currently serves as an associate editor for The Washington Post.

This was my first book by Mr. Maraniss, and I don't think it will be my last.

Jim Thorpe's life arced between triumph and tragedy.

He fathered a children.

His first son, Jim Junior, died at age three during the 1918 influenza pandemic.

But he was not a good father.

He was married three times, but he was not a good husband.

He loved where he was born, then Oklahoma territory.

But he lived a nomadic life, living and working all over the United States.

He had great plans for financial success, but he died penniless.

His family wanted him to be laid to rest in Oklahoma, but he ended up in the East because two small villages decided to change their name to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.

He won two gold medals and set records in the 1912 Olympics, but the medals and trophies were unceremoniously taken away, and the records quietly erased.

Yet Jim Thorpe persevered, as he often noted.

A man has to keep hustling.

Jim Thorpe, one of two twin boys, was born on May 22, 1887, in a log house on the SAC and Fox Reservation in the tiny town of Belmont.

Jim was given an Indian name, Wa-Tho-Huk.

Among variations of how that name can be translated into English, the most poetic is “path lit by lightning ”, thus the title of the book.

Thorpe died of a heart attack in a trailer park in southern California in 1953 at the age of 65.

Thorpe was the quintessential underdog who rose from nowhere to become the greatest athlete in the world.

The natural who could do anything on the fields of play.

He was an Olympic champion, decathlete and track and field, a football all-American, a star pro and first president of what became the NFL and a major League Baseball player, a seemingly indestructible force who ran like a wild horse thundering downhill.

Yet he was also a graceful ballroom dancer, gifted swimmer and ice skater.

In an AP poll, Thorpe was voted the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century, and he was one of the initial inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Perhaps most importantly, for all of Thorpe's troubles, the Thorpe family did not wither, but thrived from one generation to the next.

Producing military officers, government workers, college graduates and Native American activists.

Tonight's book has been Path Lit by Lightning, by David Maraniss.

I learned so much from this book and I have only scratched the surface in that regard in our program tonight.

I highly recommend this book to you, particularly if you enjoy American history.

Good night.

And I look forward to our next time together here on PBS Kansas, home of seriously good TV.