Bradley, Bill

Related Category: U.S. History: Biographies

(William Warren Bradley), 1943–, American athlete and politician, b. Crystal City, Mo. He first gained wide attention as an All-America basketball player at Princeton. Graduating in 1965, he attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and in 1967–77 starred for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. In 1979 he became a U.S. senator from New Jersey. Before retiring from the Senate in 1997, he gained a reputation as a reform-minded Democrat, influential especially on environmental, labor, and income-tax issues. Often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, Bradley became (1999) a candidate for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, but he was defeated in the primaries by Al Gore. Bradley wrote about his visions for America's future in The Journey from Here (2000) and The New American Story (2007).

See his account of his Knicks years, Life on the Run (1976), and his memoir, Time Present, Time Past (1996).