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As a boy, Stephen J. Dubner's hero was Franco Harris, the famed and mysterious running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers. When Dubner's father died, he became obsessed -- he dreamed of his hero every night; he signed his school papers “Franco Dubner.” Though they never met, it was Franco Harris who shepherded Dubner through a fatherless boyhood.

Twenty years later, Dubner, an accomplished writer, sees Harris on a magazine cover. His long-dormant obsession comes roaring back. He journeys to Pittsburgh, certain that Harris will embrace him. And he is...well, wrong.

Told with the grit of a journalist and the grace of a memoirist, Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper is a breathtaking, heartbreaking, and often humorous story of astonishing developments. It is also a sparkling meditation on the nature of hero worship -- which, like religion and love, tells us as much about ourselves as about the object of our desire.

"Dubner seems confused about what to put into his memoir....Anything goes. In the mix are good points about his parents that would have been valuable in the first memoir and some first-class sportswriting. In the end one suspects that Dubner's desperation is not driven by his need to understand Franco Harris or even his father or himself, but by an ill-conceived literary project that had spun out of control."

Fred Waitzkin, New York Times Book Review, 02/23/2003

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