I Beat the Odds

With the release of his memoir...Oher finally takes ownership, filling the gaps in the familiar narrative and somehow managing to make his journey from the streets to stardom seem even more amazing and compelling...I Beat the Odds is thoughtful and heartfelt, a young man coming to grips with an amazing journey that required the distance of years and perspective to fully grasp. -- The Washington Post The real Michael Oher just might be the first person with more sparkle and good looks than his movie counterpart...the book offers a harrowing first-person account from a child's point of view of the Dickensian conditions many American kids endure. -- USA Today With the release of his memoir...Oher finally takes ownership, filling the gaps in the familiar narrative and somehow managing to make his journey from the streets to stardom seem even more amazing and compelling...I Beat the Odds is thoughtful and heartfelt, a young man coming to grips with an amazing journey that required the distance of years and perspective to fully grasp. -- The Washington Post I'd understand if some people out there felt like another re-telling of the Oher story was flogging a dead horse, but personally, I feel like there's a need for Oher's own opus. -Yahoo Sports In a development I actually think is really great, Michael Oher will be publishing his own memoir now that his parents' story, The Blind Side , has been so thoroughly covered. It's long been my position that some of the uncomfortable things about the way that story gets covered are the simple result of the fact that he hasn't chosen to talk very much -- as this article points out, he contributed little in the way of interviews to either the book or the movie -- and I'll be happy to hear what the guy's got to say. -Linda Holmes, NPR blogger.