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Summary: Not Just For Skateboarders !
Review: This book is spectacular! Well written, engaging, informative, funny, and most of all, human. Tony Hawk's honesty shines through on every subject. I've never been on a skateboard in my life but this book is a *must read* for anyone who has even the slightest interest in Tony Hawk's incredible career and skating talents.
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Summary: Tony Hawk - a true inspiration
Review: Tony Hawk was already a hero to many, years before he landed what seemed to be an impossible trick - the 9. While growing up during the 80's, Tony Hawk's pictures were plastered all over my walls alongside pictures of other skateboarding greats, including Mike Vallely, Steve Caballero, Mark Gonzales and Rodney Mullen. I knew in 1986 that Tony Hawk was perhaps the greatest skateboarder known to man. This book reveals a side of Tony that I and many others never knew. A boy who was harder on himself than anyone else could be. A person who never let the "rock-star mentality" ruin his career and a person who believed in the future of skateboarding enough to venture out on his own, not knowing what would happen. This book is extremely funny and warm. It shows Tony as just another human being, even though no matter what happens, he'll always remain a hero to some of us.
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Summary: great book: for anyone
Review: This is a great book not only is Tony Hawk the worlds most accomplished skaterboarder. He has also lived a great and interestinig life. This book tells of all he had to do and worked towards to make his career as a professional skateboarder come to life. This book is not only one for skaters, but can be enjoyed by all especially adults who are interested in good buisness men and what it takes to become one.
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Summary: Best skateboarding book EVER!!!!
Review: Skateboarding books are Definetly exiting, but when the birdman writes one it's ausome. Tony Hawk is the best Skateboarder ever, and if you are looking to become a pro or even a hobbiest you should purchase this book. It tells you the way of his life and how he got to where he is today. This book is the perfect gift for any skateboarder or even something for yourself!
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Summary: Hawk : Occupation : Skateboarder
Review: this is the best book I have ever read. An in depth look at the life of tony hawk. buy it now!
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Summary: Thanks, Tony . . .
Review: Since seeing Adam Rich sporting Ocean Pacific shirts on "Eight is Enough" as an impressionable 7 year old, I knew I was growing up on the wrong coast. I had such a fierce attraction to California and the way life was lived over there, and that interest has followed me for most of my life - the films of Paul Thomas Anderson, the proliferation of late-70s & early 80s era E! True Hollywood Stories, and now the autobiography of my lifelong idol & hero Tony Hawk. For 15 years I have admired Hawk, both as an amazing individual and as a link to my past. "Hawk - Occupation: Skateboarder" is a well written memoir that illustrates both the man and the when/where/how of his growth as both a person and a legend of his sport. Hawk's involvement in the Big 80s boom of skateboarding cannot be understated - and the fact that he weathered the subsequent Great Depression of the sport and emerged a better skater *and* a better person for it illustrates his great character. The book is lots of fun too, because it serves as an inadvertent time capsule of what life was like in the 80s for Tony and dozens of other skaters: bleached bangs hanging over their eyes while crashing into the popular conscience, riding the back bumper of the Hollywood-mobile and onto movie screens across America, and jet-setting across Europe & Japan - all the while sporting 2 Swatches on one arm and decked out in hot pink Jams shorts. Awesome! But just as important as the movie sets, the demos in Tokyo and the goofing off in Switzerland is *the* picture of 80s California skate culture: the backyard ramp jams. Half a dozen friends hanging out in the hot sun, cooling off with cold Cokes and chowing on some good BBQ. At the age of 25, I will still admit to being very very jealous. And hell, when those friends happen to all have their names on T-Shirts, their own signature skate decks and are mobbed at shopping malls . . well that makes for an interesting life and times. "Hawk - Occupation: Skateboarder" does a wonderful job of showing this life, as well as the bottoming out of that mentality and lifestyle in the early 90s - skating's Dark Ages. Tony's - and skateboarding's - slow and wildly successful recovery from that period is every bit as interesting and meaningful as the Big Years (albeit with more lessons learned and hardships endured). All great heroes need to suffer a little to battle back, and Tony's reflections on his various personal and professional setbacks are honest and real. Today, in the Here and Now, I have the great pleasure of watching my boyhood idol live a happy and successful life - at the top of his career and with the love of a beautiful family. Starting my own little family has given me the pleasure of sharing one more cool thing with my hero - marriage and fatherhood. "Hawk - Occupation: Skateboarder" is an intelligent, well done biography that will satisfy fans and enlighten those who may not realize that a Legend (aka: Cool, Normal Guy) walks among us - when he's not floating and spinning several feet above , that is.
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Summary: Tony Hawk: Worlds Best Skateboarder
Review: This is in my opinion the greatest book ever writin about a skateboarder. Tony Hawk is the worlds greatest skateboarder and deserves a book talking about is like as a skateboarder and how hard it is to succed in the skateboarding world. This I know for a fact because i skateboard and it is one of the most difficult sports in the world. I hope Tony comes out with more books about his triumphs in the skateboarding world.
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Summary: Tony Hawk is Amazing!
Review: Though, I have only a chapter of this book, I can already tell that it is going to be great. Tony Hawk lead an amazing life and he tells it well.
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Summary: this book is the best!!!!!!!
Review: i LOVE this book!! it is about Tony Hawk and his life. I would recommend this book to any aspiring skateboarder because it shows that when you work hard for things that work pays off in the end!
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Summary: This is the official Tony Hawk autobiography.
Review: For Tony Hawk, it wasn't enough to skate for two decades, to invent more than eighty tricks, and to win more than twice as many professional contests as any other skater. It wasn't enough to knock himself unconscious more than ten times, fracture several ribs, break his elbow, knock out his teeth twice, compress the vertebrae in his back, pop his bursa sack, get more than fifty stitches laced into his shins, rip apart the cartilage in his knee, bruise his tailbone, and sprain his ankles and tear his ligaments too many times to count. No. He had to land the 900. And after thirteen years of failed attempts, he nailed it. It had never been done before. In Hawk,Tony goes behind the scenes of competitions, demos, and movies and shares the less glamorous demands of being a skateboarder-from skating on Italian TV wearing see-through plastic shorts to doing a demo in Brazil after throwing up for five days straight from food poisoning. He's dealt with teammates who lit themselves and other objects on fire, driving down the freeway as the dashboard of their van burned. He's gone through the unpredictable ride of the skateboard industry during which, in the span of a few years, his annual income shrank to what he had made in a single month and then rebounded into seven figures. But Tony's greatest difficulty was dealing with the loss of his number one fan and supporter-his dad, Frank Hawk. With brutal honesty, Tony recalls the stories of love, loss, bad hairdos, embarrassing '80s clothes, and determination that have shaped his life. As he takes a look back at his experiences with the skateboarding legends of the '70s, '80s, and '90s, like Stacy Peralta, Eddie Elguera, Lance Mountain, Mark Gonzalez, Bob Burnquist, and Colin McKay, he tells the real history of skateboarding-and also what the future has in store for the sport and for him.
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