Former NFL Cincinnati Bengals’ Gary S. Burley, children’s author Ralph V. Brooks, and award-winning journalist Donna T. Francavilla combined efforts to reveal the challenges and achievements of 5 outstanding football players who broke the color barrier around the turn of the century.Enjoy rarely-seen photographs and read real-life stories about these brave athletes. Hall of Famer, Burl A. Toler, the first African-American to serve as a field official in a major American professiona...

A provocative and revelatory new biography of the legendary UCLA coach John Wooden, by one of America's top college basketball writers.No college basketball coach has ever dominated the sport like John Wooden. His UCLA teams reached unprecedented heights in the 1960s and '70s capped by a run of ten NCAA championships in twelve seasons and an eighty-eight-game winning streak, records that stand to this day. Wooden also became a renowned motivational speaker and writ...

The first major biography of an American icon, comedian Bill Cosby. Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with Cosby and more than sixty of his closest friends and associates, it is a frank, fun and fascinating account of his life and historic legacy.Far from the gentle worlds of his routines or TV shows, Cosby grew up in a Philadelphia housing project, the son of an alcoholic, largely absent father and a loving but overworked mother. With novelistic ...

"The best baseball book I've read in years." — Sam Walker • "An exhilarating story of innovation." — Ben Reiter • " Swing Kings feels like a spiritual successor to Moneyball." — Baseball ProspectusFrom the Wall Street Journal's national baseball writer, the captivating story of the home run boom, following a group of players who rose from obscurity to stardom and the rogue swing coaches who helped them usher the game into...

From Mike Pesca, host of the popular Slate podcast The Gist, comes the greatest sports minds imagining how the world would change if a play, trade, injury, or referee's call had just gone the other way."Intriguing...thought provoking...delightful." --The Washington PostNo announcer ever proclaimed: "Up Rises Frazier!" "Havlicek commits the foul, trying to steal the ball!" or "The Giants Lose the Pennant, The Giants Lose The Pennant...

"Charley Rosen has undertaken the challenge of documenting the latest and greatest history of the game professionally--and has done so to great success. . . . . When I finished the book it seemed as if I had gone through another season, injuries and all. . . . Rosen skillfully leads readers through the NBA's first steps along its journey toward what it has become today.”--Phil Jackson, from the Foreword"Rosen, a wonderful sportswriter . . . had forgotten mor...

Today basketball is played above the rim” by athletes of all backgrounds and colors. But 50 years ago it was a floor-bound game, and the opportunities it offered for African-Americans were severely limited.A key turning point was 1963, when the Loyola Ramblers of Chicago took the NCAA men’s basketball title from Cincinnati, the two-time defending champions. It was one of Chicago’s most memorable sports victories, but Ramblers reveals it was also a game for the history boo...

And in this corner, hailing from Black Bottom, Detroit by way of Harlem, with more victories than Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali combined, the greatest fighter-pound for pound-of all time: Sugar Ray Robinson. If imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery then there should be little doubt Sugar Ray Robinson is the greatest and most influential American boxer of all time. Fighters (and the occasional alt-rock band) have been adopting his name, and trying to imitate his inimitable...

Attucks! is true story of the all-black high school basketball team that broke the color barrier in segregated 1950s Indiana, masterfully told by National Book Award winner Phil Hoose.By winning the state high school basketball championship in 1955, ten teens from an Indianapolis school meant to be the centerpiece of racially segregated education in the state shattered the myth of their inferiority. Their brilliant coach had fashioned an unbeatable team fr...

A memoir of hard lessons learned in the racially segregated and sometimes outright racist NBA of the early ‘60s by celebrated NBA player and the first Black Coach of the Year, Ray Scott. Introduced by Earl "the Pearl" Monroe.“There’s a basic insecurity with Black guys my size,” Scott writes. “We can’t hide and everybody turns to stare when we walk down the street. … Whites believe that their culture is superior to African-American culture. ... We don’t accept many ...

Foreword by George F. WillWith a new Preface by Carla Hayden, Librarian of CongressA lavishly illustrated history of America's game, from the unparalleled collections of the Library of Congress.“One of the most seductively designed books about the sport to come our way. … A book like this, so rich and deep in material. … brings baseball history to multifaceted life and reminds us that baseball is the sport that celebrates it...

Advance Praise for Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot?"Aron has found the Rosetta stone to all of baseball's enduring mysteries, and he skips it along the pond with utter disregard for the ducks. His fortunate readers will have so much fun they may not even notice that they are becoming, page by page, real experts. Here is surefire water-cooler ammo."--JOHN THORN, editor of Total Baseball"Paul Aron puts a distant replay on the most famous controversies in baseball history. ...