cover image Pressure Is a Privilege: Lessons I've Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes

Pressure Is a Privilege: Lessons I've Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes

Billie Jean King. Lifetime Media, $19.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-9816368-0-1

Tennis champion King uses her 1973 Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs as a foil to illuminate 13 life lessons in this self-help quasi-memoir. Part business advice, part personal advice and all motivation, King's insights aren't novel (seize opportunities whenever they arise, do your best and visualize success), and her advice (shared family meals with all cell phones turned off) is standard but sound. For a radical figure in sports and women's equality, King treads the safe and narrow throughout the brief book (her first since the 1982 autobiography Billie Jean), and coasts on repeated references to an important but particularly dated match. Tennis fans may want to give it a perusal, but those seeking fresh inspiration can pass.