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Andre Agassi looks at his life through collaborator JR Moehringer's Pulitzer Prize-winning lens(Rating: 5)
On the day after I finished this 'brutally honest' book, I encountered the following passage from Robert Harris' The Ghost: A Novel. With some substitutions, it perfectly describes what makes 'Open' so compelling:

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"Why don't we try to make this book unlike any other [sports] memoir that's ever been written? Why don't we try to tell the truth?"

He laughed. "Now that would be a first."

"I mean it. Let's tell people what it really feels like to be [Andre Agassi]. Not just the [sports] stuff -- any old bore can write about that. Let's stick to what no one except you knows - the day-to-day experience of actually [being the top-ranked tennis player in the world]. What do you feel like in the mornings? What are the strains? What's it like to be so cut off from ordinary life? What's it like to be hated?"

"Thanks a lot."

"What fascinates people isn't [sports] -- who cares about [sports]? What fascinates people is always people -- the detail of another person's life. But because the detail is naturally all so familiar to YOU, you can't sort out what it is the reader wants to know. It has to be drawn out of you. That's why you need [JR Moehringer]. This shouldn't be a book for [sports junkies]. This should be book for everyone."
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That's this book. Even if you've never read a sports biography, read this book. Even if you don't care about tennis, read this book. Even if you think you didn't care about Andre Agassi, read this book.

Andre Agassi looks at his life through collaborator JR Moehringer's Pulitzer Prize-winning lens and emerges with one of the finest memoirs on record.

A Captivating Memoir(Rating: 5)
I do not have enough superlatives in my vocabulary to adequately describe this book. Just looking at the dust jacket tells you that this memoir is aptly named. On the front cover, Andre meets your gaze directly with eyes that tell you that he is vulnerable and wanting to hold nothing back. The photo on the back shows a sad little boy keeping his eye on the ball, perfecting his backhand but hating and fearing the sport into which his father drafted him. In the 388 pages in between, Andre bares his soul. It's all there--the drug and alcohol abuse, the wear and tear on his body, his lack of a high school education, his victories and defeats, the lie that he concocted when he tested positive for crystal meth, the story of his hair falling out, on and on, related with almost perfect recall. Andre was much more candid than you would expect a celebrity to be, if perhaps a little too hard on himself. I only sensed that he held back in talking about his romantic life, not wanting to dish out the dirt on Brooke Shields and describing his current wife Steffi Graf in nothing but glowing terms. But you can hardly fault him for that, right? (No pun intended.) Andre's story "ends" well, although at age 36 in this book he is still far from his final chapter. He is happily married, with the proverbial boy and girl to raise, retired from tennis, and founder of an educational foundation for underprivileged children that funds a school in his name. And not until the very end do we find out that Andre paired his eidetic memory with the elegant wordsmithing of a supremely talented ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer. He begins the book with a phrase that could just as easily conclude it: "I open my eyes and don't know where I am or who I am." While Andre's identity crisis is very real and perhaps the dominant theme of Open, by the book's conclusion the reader senses that he is well on his way to finding out and this gives me hope that he has at least one more book in him for us to look forward to. Game, set , and match--Agassi.

One of the best books I've read, hands down. Awesome. Loved it.(Rating: 5)
I am not into tennis nor did I know anything more of Andre Agassi other than he was a tennis player when I began reading his online book reviews while searching for a good book to read. I was drawn to read Agassi's story by all the positive reviews and was not disappointed when I picked up the book and began reading. I couldn't put it down. Agassi says something we can all learn from. I have jotted down lines from "Open" to read and re-read, reminding myself that choosing your life changes everything. This was not just a story of a boy who had no choices, but of a man who powered through those youthful years and his career with amazing fortitude, with a vision in mind. He was surrounded by people who believed in him, his character and his strength, and from that love and support he selflessly chose to help better the future for others. I didn't want this book to end. It was sweet irony that Agassi's childhood passion was literature and poetry, and that he was finally able to put down his tennis racquet and allow us into his private life, encouraging us to choose our destinies by sharing his own personal story, through his passion for literature.

Every Sports Fan and Serious Athlete should READ this!(Rating: 5)
I loved the kindle edition of this book. It discusses both the value and pitfalls of competition. Andre allowed us to see inside his soul. He explained the reasons behinnd many of his actions, both professional and personal.

Exciting autobiography(Rating: 3)
This autobiography can also interest those readers who are not tennis fans because the author writes a great deal about his parents, the people who helped make him into a tennis champion and about his relationships with the three important women in his life. Once you start reading, it is difficult to put the book down.