# The Akron Origin *A Biography of Lebron James* — Legendary Biographies No. 126 - **Subject:** LeBron Raymone James Sr. - **Written by:** Devon Marable - **Shelf:** Sport / Basketball - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 193 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 193 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-115-4) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Eric Whitfield (ISBN 979-8-90623-230-4) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/126-the-akron-origin.html ## About this book He was born on December 30, 1984, in Akron, Ohio, the only child of a sixteen-year-old single mother named Gloria James. He moved through twelve different Akron apartments before his ninth birthday, was taken in by the Walker family in fourth grade for a year of stability, played AAU basketball with Maverick Carter and Dru Joyce II, attended St. Vincent-St. Mary High School where he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated at seventeen, and was drafted first overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers in June 2003. He has played 22 NBA seasons. He has won four NBA championships (Miami 2012, Miami 2013, Cleveland 2016, Lakers 2020), four NBA Most Valuable Player awards, four Finals MVP awards, and has scored, on the night of February 7, 2023, more career points than any player in NBA history. Devon Marable's biography opens earlier and follows the arc with the procedural rigour the subject's twenty-three-year career demands. The book covers the Akron childhood and the long Gloria-and-LeBron narrative, the St. Vincent-St. Mary years and the SI cover, the 2003 draft, the seven Cleveland years and the 2010 Decision television broadcast and the move to Miami, the four Miami years and the two Heat championships, the 2014 I'm Coming Home SI Sports Illustrated essay and the Cleveland return, the 2016 NBA Finals comeback from a 3-1 deficit, the 2018 move to the Lakers, the COVID-bubble 2020 championship for Kobe, the long career-points accumulation, the 2023 Father's Day Bronny commitment to USC, the 2024 LeBron-Bronny father-son first NBA appearance at Crypto.com Arena. What emerges is a portrait of the most consequential American basketball player of the second half of the twentieth century's endgame and the first quarter of the twenty-first century — and the structural-equity media empire he has built in parallel. ## Contents 1. Gloria 2. The Chosen One 3. The Hummer 4. The Draft 5. The Burden 6. The Decision 7. Miami 8. The Return 9. After 10. Shut Up and Dribble 11. The Lakers 12. Forty Thousand 13. China 14. Bronny's Heart 15. The Game 16. The Body 17. Savannah 18. The GOAT Debate 19. The Decision ## Questions **Who is The Akron Origin about?** LeBron Raymone James Sr.. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Akron Origin — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 4,216 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 61,500 words, 19 chapters, 193 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Devon Marable spent a decade as a reporter for ESPN The Magazine before turning his attention to book-length biography. His writing focuses on the complex personal realities of athletes whose public careers dominated headlines while their private struggles and triumphs remained largely unrecorded by the daily press. Through meticulous archival research and deep interviewing, he reconstructs the quiet, human moments behind monumental sports histories. His published titles include The Chicago Compound, The Akron Origin, The Crumlin Plumber, and The Stolen Bicycle. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he spends his free time restoring vintage road bicycles and volunteering at a local youth community center.