American Pastimes The Very Best Of Red Smith The Library Of America

Author : Red Smith
Publisher : Library of America
ISBN 13 : 1598532766
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith (The Library of America) written by Red Smith and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith was the most widely read sportswriter of the last century and the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. From the 1940s to the 1980s, his nationally syndicated columns for the New York Herald Tribune and later for The New York Times traversed the world of sports with literary panache and wry humor. “I’ve always had the notion,” Smith once said, “that people go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun again.” Now, writer and editor (and inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball) Daniel Okrent presents the best of Smith’s inimitable columns—miniature masterpieces that remain the gold standard in sportswriting. Here are Smith’s indelible profiles of sports luminaries, which show his gift for distilling a career’s essence in a single column. Unforgettable accounts of historic occasions—Bobby Thompson’s Shot Heard ’Round the World, Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, the first Ali-Frazier fight—are joined by more offbeat stories that display Smith’s unmistakable wit, intelligence, and breadth of feeling. Here, too, are more personal glimpses into Smith’s life and work, revealed in stories about his lifelong passion for fishing and in “My Press-Box Memoirs,” a 1975 reminiscence for Esquire collected here for the first time. A Special Publication of The Library of America.

Author : W. C. Heinz
Publisher : Library of America
ISBN 13 : 159853419X
Total Pages : 787 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Top of His Game: The Best Sportswriting of W. C. Heinz written by W. C. Heinz and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 787 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Littlefield (NPR's Only a Game) presents the second installment in the Library of America series devoted to classic American sportswriters, a defintive collector’s edition of the pathbreaking writer who invented the long-form sports story. Like his friend and admirer Red Smith, W. C. Heinz (1915–2008) was one of the most distinctive and influential sportswriters of the last century. Though he began his career as a newspaper reporter, Heinz soon moved beyond the confines of the daily column, turning freelance and becoming the first sportwriter to make his living writing for magazines. In doing so he effectively invented the long-form sports story, perfecting a style that paved the way for the New Journalism of the 1960s. His profiles of the top athletes of his day still feel remarkably current, written with a freshness of perception, a gift for characterization, and a finely tuned ear for dialogue. Jimmy Breslin named Heinz’s “Brownsville Bum”—a brief life of Al “Bummy” Davis, Brooklyn street tough and onetime welterweight champion of the world—“the greatest magazine sports story I’ve ever read, bar none.” His spare and powerful 1949 column, “Death of a Race Horse,” has been called a literary classic, a work of clarity and precision comparable to Hemingway at his best. Now, for this essential writer’s centennial, Bill Littlefield, the host of NPR’s Only A Game, presents the essential Heinz: thirty-eight columns, profiles, and memoirs from the author’s personal archive, including eighteen pieces never collected during his lifetime. Though Heinz’s great passion was boxing—the golden era of Rocky Graziano, Floyd Patterson, and Sugar Ray Robinson—his interests extended to the wide world of sports, with indelible profiles of baseball players (Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio), jockeys (George Woolf, Eddie Arcaro), hockey players, football coaches, scouts and trainers and rodeo riders.

Author : Lee Congdon
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442277521
Total Pages : 171 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Legendary Sports Writers of the Golden Age written by Lee Congdon and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-05 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1920s—the Golden Age of sports—sports writers gained their own recognition while covering such athletes as Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey, and Red Grange. The top journalists of the era were the primary means by which fans learned about their favorite teams and athletes, and their popularity and importance in the sports world continued for decades. Legendary Sports Writers of the Golden Age: Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Shirley Povich, and W. C. Heinz details the lives and careers of four sports-writing greats and the iconic athletes and events they covered. Although these writers established themselves during the 1920s, their careers extended well into the decades that followed. They reported on Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Sandy Koufax, Arnold Palmer, and many other stars from the 1920s and beyond. Lee Congdon examines not only the lives and careers of Rice, Smith, Povich, and Heinz, but the distinctive writing style that each of them developed. Taken together, these four writers lifted sports reporting to heights that it is unlikely to reach again. This book brings to life the greatest era in sports history, as seen through the eyes of four legendary sports writers. Sports fans, historians, and those interested in sports journalism will all find this a fascinating and informative look at a time when the sports world was at its peak.

Author : David Foster Wallace
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316284823
Total Pages : 106 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book On Tennis written by David Foster Wallace and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: a collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time. This lively and entertaining collection begins with Wallace's own experience as a prodigious tennis player ("Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley"). He also challenges the sports memoir genre ("How Tracy Austen Broke My Heart"), takes us to the US Open ("Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open"), and profiles of two of the world's greatest tennis players ("Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" and "Federer Both Flesh and Not"). With infectious enthusiasm and enormous heart, Wallace's writing shows us the beauty, complexity, and brilliance of the game he loved best.

Author : Paul Beston
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442272902
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Boxing Kings written by Paul Beston and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of the twentieth century, boxing was one of America’s most popular sports, and the heavyweight champions were figures known to all. Their exploits were reported regularly in the newspapers—often outside the sports pages—and their fame and wealth dwarfed those of other athletes. Long after their heyday, these icons continue to be synonymous with the “sweet science.” In The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring, Paul Beston profiles these larger-than-life men who held a central place in American culture. Among the figures covered are John L. Sullivan, who made the heavyweight championship a commercial property; Jack Johnson, who became the first black man to claim the title; Jack Dempsey, a sporting symbol of the Roaring Twenties; Joe Louis, whose contributions to racial tolerance and social progress transcended even his greatness in the ring; Rocky Marciano, who became an embodiment of the American Dream; Muhammad Ali, who took on the U.S. government and revolutionized professional sports with his showmanship; and Mike Tyson, a hard-punching dynamo who typified the modern celebrity. This gallery of flawed but sympathetic men also includes comics, dandies, bookworms, divas, ex-cons, workingmen, and even a tough-guy-turned-preacher. As the heavyweight title passed from one claimant to another, their stories opened a window into the larger history of the United States. Boxing fans, sports historians, and those interested in U.S. race relations as it intersects with sports will find this book a fascinating exploration into how engrained boxing once was in America’s social and cultural fabric.

Author : Jim Murray
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803283261
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Jim Murray Reader written by Jim Murray and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: Dallas, Texas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1988.

Author : Stephen Norwood
Publisher : University of Arkansas Press
ISBN 13 : 1610756355
Total Pages : 410 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book New York Sports written by Stephen Norwood and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York has long been both America’s leading cultural center and its sports capital, with far more championship teams, intracity World Series, and major prizefights than any other city. Pro football’s “Greatest Game Ever Played” took place in New York, along with what was arguably history’s most significant boxing match, the 1938 title bout between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling. As the nation’s most crowded city, basketball proved to be an ideal sport, and for many years it was the site of the country’s most prestigious college basketball tournament. New York boasts storied stadiums, arenas, and gymnasiums and is the home of one of the world’s two leading marathons as well as the Belmont Stakes, the third event in horse racing’s Triple Crown. New York sportswriters also wield national influence and have done much to connect sports to larger social and cultural issues, and the vitality and distinctiveness of New York’s street games, its ethnic institutions, and its sports-centered restaurants and drinking establishments all contribute to the city’s uniqueness. New York Sports collects the work of fourteen leading sport historians, providing new insight into the social and cultural history of America’s major metropolis and of the United States. These writers address the topics of changing conceptions of manhood and violence, leisure and social class, urban night life and entertainment, women and athletics, ethnicity and assimilation, and more.

Author : Randy Roberts
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 046509323X
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blood Brothers written by Randy Roberts and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “engrossing and important book" (Wall Street Journal) that brings to life the fateful friendship between Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali In 1962, boxing writers and fans considered Cassius Clay an obnoxious self-promoter, and few believed that he would become the heavyweight champion of the world. But Malcolm X, the most famous minister in the Nation of Islam, saw the potential in Clay, not just for boxing greatness, but as a means of spreading the Nation’s message. The two became fast friends, keeping their interactions secret from the press for fear of jeopardizing Clay’s career. Clay began living a double life—a patriotic “good negro” in public, and a radical reformer behind the scenes. Soon, however, their friendship would sour, with disastrous and far-reaching consequences. Based on previously untapped sources, from Malcolm’s personal papers to FBI records, Blood Brothers is the first book to offer an in-depth portrait of this complex bond. An extraordinary narrative of love and deep affection, as well as deceit, betrayal, and violence, this story is a window into the public and private lives of two of our greatest national icons, and the tumultuous period in American history that they helped to shape.

Author : Jack Gilden
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1496210409
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Collision of Wills written by Jack Gilden and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their seven years together, quarterback Johnny Unitas and coach Don Shula, kings of the fabled Baltimore Colts of the 1960s, created one of the most successful franchises in sports. Unitas and Shula had a higher winning percentage than Lombardi’s Packers, but together they never won the championship. Baltimore lost the big game to the Browns in 1964 and to Joe Namath and the Jets in Super Bowl III—both in stunning upsets. The Colts’ near misses in the Shula era were among the most confounding losses any sports franchise ever suffered. Rarely had a team in any league performed so well, over such an extended period, only to come up empty. The two men had a complex relationship stretching back to their time as young teammates competing for their professional lives. Their personal conflict mirrored their tumultuous times. As they elevated the brutal game of football, the world around them clashed about Vietnam, civil rights, and sex. Collision of Wills looks at the complicated relationship between Don Shula, the league’s winningest coach of all time, and his star player Johnny Unitas, and how their secret animosity fueled the Colts in an era when their losses were as memorable as their victories. Purchase the audio edition.

Author : David Krell
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476619735
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book "Our Bums" written by David Krell and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball fans may know the story of the Brooklyn Dodgers, but they don't know the whole story. With a foreword by Branch Barrett Rickey (grandson of Branch Rickey), this book fills the void in Dodgers scholarship, exploring their impact on popular culture and revealing lesser-known details of the team's history. Personal stories are included from the fans who embraced Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Erskine, Roy Campanella and other icons of Ebbets Field. Drawing on archival documents, contemporary press accounts and fan interviews, the author brings to life the magic of the Dodgers, chronicling in detail the genesis, glory and demise of the team that changed baseball--and America.