July 5, 2010
Black Jack: The Ballad of Jack Johnson
Charles R. Smith Jr. (Author), Shane W. Evans (Illustrator)
Roaring Brook Press
Available 06/22/10 in Hardcover
Born as Arthur John Johnson in the southern state of Texas, Jack Johnson was one of the most renowned boxers of the 20th century. Through hard work and persistence he climbed the ranks, taking a swing and a jab and eventually busting the color barrier. As the first black man to win the Heavyweight Championship, there was more than a title on the line. Published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this history-making bout (July 4, 1910), this is an extraordinary marriage of poetry, fabulous collage artwork, and a splendid achievement in its own right.
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June 29, 2010
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When Kim Hamilton rose to fame, she was anything but a typical world-class gymnast. She wasn’t white, she didn’t come from a middle-class family, and she was tall for a gymnast. But facing those obstacles was nothing compared to the challenges she faced at home. There, she tumbled in a secret world filled with drugs, violence, and financial strain. She met Unfavorable Odds but found hope by persevering through the pain. Here, Kim shares the techniques she learned to catapult herself from the past into the purpose God intended for her life.
Tate Publishing
Available February 2, 2010
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May 23, 2010
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Tiger: The Real Story by Steve Helling
Da Capo Press
Available May 4, 2010 in Hardcover
Before the scandal, the world knew very little about Tiger Woods. After the scandal, they knew him even less. He was born to a father who described him as the Chosen One, with the power to shape the fate of nations. His mother called him the Universal Child, with the ability to hold the races together. Selecting the unlikely avenue of golf, they groomed their son for the fame and influence that they always believed was his destiny. At age twenty, Tiger Woods made his debut in a Nike commercial. “Hello, World,” he said. “Are you ready for me?” The world was ready. For the next thirteen years, Tiger nearly lived up to his parents’ outsize expectations. He conquered the world of golf with skills the sport had never before seen. He became a global icon and a Madison Avenue darling, earning more for his squeaky clean persona than he earned for his sport. He settled down with a beautiful Swedish model and started a family. His net worth approached a billion dollars. Everything was going according to plan – until the scandal hit.
As the media breathlessly mixed news with speculation, Tiger became the poster boy for self-destruction. Corporate America exercised its fickle option and Tiger Woods was suddenly transformed from a commercial spokesman into a tabloid King. But for all the media reports on this or that revelation, Tiger’s true character remains a mystery. Steve Helling, a People magazine staff writer who has long covered Tiger Woods, draws on intimate sources, many speaking out for the first time, to create a never-before-seen portrait of the golfer – not the carefully groomed handlers’ image, not the media-maintained facade, but Tiger as he really is. Helling shows how the people closest to Tiger – an ambitious father, a fiercely protective mother, and a star-struck wife – have shaped him into a singularly complex and conflicted man. At the heart of the story is Tiger himself, an insecure and socially inept adolescent thrust into the spotlight, whose later sudden fall from grace has nearly destroyed his personal and professional life. Where does he go from here?
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Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger’s Most Tumultuous Season by Robert Lusetich
Atria
Available May 11, 2010 in Hardcover
The definitive chronicle of the most stunning year in the legendary career of Tiger Woods, when the world’s greatest golfer returned to competitive play following major knee surgery — only to have his personal life unravel in the public spotlight at year’s end.
Who is the real Tiger Woods? The unbeatable, indomitable, and ultimate competitor? The husband and father who cares more about his family than anything else? Or the supremely confident controller who thought fierce management of his image and those around him would allow him to lead a double life? In Unplayable, veteran journalist Robert Lusetich offers an in-depth look at the world’s most recognizable yet least known athlete, Tiger Woods. Lusetich, who first interviewed Woods in the late 1990s and has written about him since 1996, was the only writer to cover every PGA Tour event the world’s number one golfer played in 2009.
Unplayable tells of the unfolding of Tiger’s most pivotal season on the golf course — with his first ever hiatuses from professional play — and provides extensive reporting and the backstory to show who the most elusive man in all of sports really is. Lusetich peels away the layers of the Woods persona to create a portrait that is neither unsympathetic nor hesitant to shed light on Tiger’s shortcomings. This rich, insightful account reveals: what actually makes Woods the game’s dominant player; how his upbringing influenced who he is today and how he has changed over time; and the nature of his relationships with his family, former and current friends, celebrity athletes, peers, coaches, sports agents, sponsors, and the media and public itself.
Based on one-of-a-kind access, Unplayable is a gripping look at the man who changed golf and inspired more fans around the world than anyone else in the history of the sport.
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April 5, 2010
Simon & Schuster
Available 03/16/10 in Hardcover
Before Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball in 1947, black and white ballplayers had been playing against one another for decades — even, on rare occasions, playing with each other. Interracial contests took place during the off-season, when major leaguers and Negro Leaguers alike fattened their wallets by playing exhibitions in cities and towns across America. These barnstorming tours reached new heights, however, when Satchel Paige and other African-American stars took on white teams headlined by the irrepressible Dizzy Dean. Lippy and funny, a born showman, the native Arkansan saw no reason why he shouldn’t pitch against Negro Leaguers. Paige, who feared no one and chased a buck harder than any player alive, instantly recognized the box-office appeal of competing against Dizzy Dean’s “All-Stars.” Paige and Dean both featured soaring leg kicks and loved to mimic each other’s style to amuse fans. Skin color aside, the dirt-poor Southern pitchers had much in common.
Historian Timothy M. Gay has unearthed long-forgotten exhibitions where Paige and Dean dueled, and he tells the story of their pioneering escapades in this engaging book. Long before they ever heard of Robinson or Larry Doby, baseball fans from Brooklyn to Enid, Oklahoma, watched black and white players battle on the same diamond. With such Hall of Fame teammates as Josh Gibson, Turkey Stearnes, Mule Suttles, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, and Bullet Joe Rogan, Paige often had the upper hand against Diz. After arm troubles sidelined Dean, a new pitching phenom, Bob Feller — Rapid Robert — assembled his own teams to face Paige and other blackballers. By the time Paige became Feller’s teammate on the Cleveland Indians in 1948, a rookie at age forty-two, Satch and Feller had barnstormed against each other for more than a decade. These often obscure contests helped hasten the end of Jim Crow baseball, paving the way for the game’s integration. Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean, and Bob Feller never set out to make social history — but that’s precisely what happened. Tim Gay has brought this era to vivid and colorful life in a book that every baseball fan will embrace.
February 21, 2010
Pantheon
Available 05/11/10 in Hardcover
The first definitive biography of Henry Aaron — baseball’s great home-run champion and one of its most enduring legends.
As the steroid controversy has increasingly tarnished baseball’s image, Hank Aaron’s achievements have come to seem all the more remarkable: the first player to pass Babe Ruth in home runs, Aaron held that record for thirty-three years while shattering other records (RBIs, total bases, extra-base hits) and setting new ones (hitting at least thirty home runs per season fifteen times). But his achievements run much deeper than his stats. Chronicling the social upheavals of the years during which Aaron played (1954 to 1976), Howard Bryant shows us how the dignity and determination with which he stood against racism — on and off the field, and as one of the first blacks in baseball’s upper management — helped transform the role and significance of the professional black athlete and turn Aaron into an national icon.
Eloquently written, detailed, and penetrating, this is a revelatory portrait of both the great ballplayer and the complicated private man.
February 20, 2010
By HILLEL ITALIE,
AP National Writer
Fri Feb 12, 7:39 am ET
NEW YORK – Once again, it’s Willie Mays vs. Hank Aaron.
This time, in the book world.
Long, and long-awaited, biographies of the two iconic baseball sluggers come out this year, within three months of each other: James S. Hirsch’s 600-plus page “Willie Mays,” just released, and Howard Bryant’s 600-plus page book on Aaron, “The Last Hero,” scheduled for May.
Mays, who spent much of his career with the New York/San Francisco Giants and Aaron, a longtime star for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, are still endlessly compared, with Mays celebrated as the more dynamic on-field presence and Aaron honored for overtaking Babe Ruth as baseball’s home run king.
Both books are sympathetic accounts that cover not just Mays and Aaron but the era in which they played, especially how they responded — or didn’t — to the civil rights movement. Mays and Aaron, each of whom have published autobiographies, agreed to be interviewed by their respective biographers, although the relationships differed.
Mays was involved from the start and will share in the revenues from the Scribner release, billed as “authorized.” Aaron had not yet agreed to speak to Bryant when the author signed with Pantheon, in 2006. Aaron is not being paid and, Bryant said, didn’t even see the book before it was finished.
“Luckily, it turned out all right,” said Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN.com who has written books on steroids and the Boston Red Sox. “Had he not cooperated, it would have been a very different book.”
Biographies of living people generally are either authorized — written with the subject’s involvement and to the subject’s taste — or “Unauthorized,” written without the subject’s permission and often against the subject’s wishes. The most famous unauthorized biographies are Kitty Kelley’s best sellers about such celebrities as Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan. A Kelley book on Oprah Winfrey is due in April.
But in between stands a category you could call “cooperative,” in which the subject is available, but otherwise disengaged. “Cooperative” biographies in recent years have included Gerald Martin’s “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life” and Peter Biskind’s “Star,” about Warren Beatty. The Mays book fits partly because Hirsch says he was granted full editorial freedom and “The Last Hero” does entirely because Aaron’s participation was limited to talking to Bryant.
For more, see Yahoo News.
February 7, 2010
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend
by James S Hirsch
Scribner
Available 02/09/10 in Hardcover
Authorized by Willie Mays and written by a New York Times bestselling author, this is the definitive biography of one of baseball’s immortals.
Considered to be “as monumental — and enigmatic — a legend as American sport has ever seen” (Sports Illustrated), Willie Mays is arguably the greatest player in baseball history, still revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball’s bold expansion to California. With 3,283 hits, 660 home runs, and 338 stolen bases, he was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Now, in the first biography authorized by and written with the cooperation of Willie Mays, James Hirsch reveals the man behind the player.
Willie is perhaps best known for “The Catch” — his breathtaking over-the-shoulder grab in the 1954 World Series. But he was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. More than his records, his legacy is defined by the pure joy that he brought to fans and the loving memories that have been passed to future generations so they might know the magic and beauty of the game. With meticulous research, and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a complex portrait of one of America’s most significant cultural icons.
January 1, 2010
Harper
Available 05/01/09 in Hardcover
Red Auerbach, one of the greatest coaches in sports history, died on October 28, 2006. Bill Russell, the five-time MVP and star center on the Auerbach teams that won eleven championships in thirteen years, said little in public at the time. His relationship with his coach had been so deeply personal that he could not express it with a brief comment. In fact, little known to the public, Auerbach and Russell — one a short, brash Jew from Brooklyn, the other a tall, intense African-American from Louisiana and Oakland — were far more than just coach and player. Through thirteen years of building a sports dynasty together, one that remains among the greatest of all time, their relationship evolved into a rare, telling example of deep male friendship: confident, supportive, understanding, founded in common goals, even as their feelings remained largely unspoken.
They stayed close for the rest of Auerbach’s life, despite physical distance and far fewer chances to be together. True male friends are always there for each other, whenever the need or occasion arises. Red and Me is an extraordinary book: an homage to a peerless coach, showing how he produced results unlike any other; an inspiring story of mutual success, in which each man gave his all, and gained back even more; above all, it may be the best depiction of male friendship ever put on the page. Who would have guessed that such different men could have become such a tightly bonded pair? Few did guess it. Now Russell tells it.
November 15, 2009
Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game is Played
by Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, and Lonnie Wheeler
Doubleday
Available 09/22/09
Reggie Jackson and Bob Gibson offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to understand America’s pastime from their unique insider perspective.Legendary. Insightful. Uncompromising. Candid. Uncensored. Mr. October and Hoot Gibson unfortunately never faced each other on the field. But now, in Sixty Feet, Six Inches, these two legends open up in fascinating detail about the game they love and how it was, is, and should be played. Their one-of-a-kind insider stories recall a who’s who of baseball nobility, including Willie Mays, Alex Rodriguez, Hank Aaron, Albert Pujols, Billy Martin, and Joe Torre. This is an unforgettable baseball history by two of its most influential superstars.
November 1, 2009
Shooting Stars by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger
Penguin Audio
Available 09/08/09
Audio CD — Unabridged 7 CDs, 9 hours
From the ultimate team-basketball superstar LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August-a poignant, thrilling tale of the power of teamwork to transform young lives, including James’s own.
