Jeff Benedict — LeBron - with Timothy Bella

Watch author Jeff Benedict's book talk and reading at Politics and Prose book store in Washington, D.C.

LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century, and he's in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined-- the truth is vastly more interesting than that.

LeBron tells the full, riveting saga of how a child adrift found the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict, the most celebrated sports biographer of our time, paints a vivid picture of LeBron's epic origin story, showing the gradual rise of a star who, surrounded by a tight-knit group of teenage friends and adult mentors, accelerated into a speeding comet during high school. Today LeBron produces Hollywood films and television shows, has a social media presence that includes more than one hundred million followers, engages in political activism, takes outspoken stances on racism and social injustice, and transforms lives through his visionary philanthropy. He went from a lost boy in Akron to a beloved hero who uses his fortune to educate underprivileged children and lift up needy families--and brought home Cleveland's first NBA championship.

To capture LeBron's extraordinary life, Benedict conducted hundreds of interviews with the people who were involved with LeBron at different stages of his life. He also obtained thousands of pages of primary source documents and mined hundreds of hours of video footage. Destined to be the authoritative account of LeBron's life, LeBron is a gripping, inspiring, and unprecedented portrait of one of the world's most captivating figures.

Jeff Benedict is the bestselling author of seventeen non-fiction books and a former features writer for Sports Illustrated and the Los Angeles Times. He’s also a film and television producer. Benedict co-wrote the #1 New York Times bestselling biography of Tiger Woods. The book was the basis of HBO's Emmy-winning documentary “Tiger,” which Benedict executive produced. He is also executive producing "The Dynasty," the forthcoming 10-part documentary series on Apple TV+. The series is based on Benedict's national bestseller The Dynasty, the definitive inside story of the New England Patriots during the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick-Robert Kraft era. Benedict's critically acclaimed book Poisoned is the basis of a forthcoming Netflix documentary, which he produced. And his legal thriller Little Pink House was adapted into a motion picture starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Benedict also wrote Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young’s New York Times bestselling autobiography QB, which was the basis of an NFL Films documentary.

Benedict is in conversation with Timothy Bella. Bella is a staff writer and editor for The Washington Post, covering national news. He is the author of Barkley: A Biography, his critically acclaimed debut in 2022 on NBA legend Charles Barkley. His second book, a biography on Sylvester Stallone, is slated to be released in 2026. Bella's work has appeared in outlets like The New York Times, GQ, Esquire, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, Politico, CNN and ESPN. He is a graduate of TCU and has a masters from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He lives with his family in Northern Virginia.

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