Kirjahaku

The true story behind Crispus Attucks High School and the all-Black basketball team loosely depicted as the championship opponent in the beloved classic sports movie Hoosiers, pulling back the curtain on the unheralded underdog playing the game at the highest level in the 1950s in a racially divided Indiana. For far too long the storyline of Indiana basketball has been dominated by Hoosiers. Framed as the ultimate underdog, feel-good story, there has also long been a cultural debate surrounding the film, and The Real Hoosiers sets out to illuminate the narrative absent from the film. This is the story of the real-life team that inspired the team that most have long assumed was Hickory High's championship opponent. They were Crispus Attucks, an all-Black team playing in the 1950s in a racially divided Indiana. Veteran sportswriter and the bestselling author of Dream Team, Jack McCallum, excavates the history of the Crispus Attucks Tigers. After a crushing loss to Milan High School (the real Indiana team Hickory High is based on) in the 1954 semi-final (not the final), Attucks went on to win back-to-back Indiana state championships led by a young Oscar Robertson and an African American coach who recognized the seemingly insurmountable challenges of playing basketball in a state that was a bastion not only for the game but also for the Ku Klux Klan. This is much more than a sports story. The history of Attucks is rich, far beyond the basketball court, and filled with cultural influence and importance. The Real Hoosiers replaces a lacuna in the history of Indiana while dissecting the myths and lore of basketball; placing the game in the context of migration, segregation, and integration; and enhancing our understanding of this country's struggle for Civil Rights.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic Men's Basketball Team. As a writer for Sports Illustrated, McCallum enjoyed a courtside seat for the most exciting basketball spectacle on earth, covering the Dream Team from its inception to the gold medal ceremony in Barcelona. Drawing on fresh interviews with the players, McCallum provides the definitive account of the Dream Team phenomenon. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at the controversial selection process. He takes us inside the team's Olympic suites for late-night card games and bull sessions where superstars like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird debated the finer points of basketball. And he narrates a riveting account of the legendary intrasquad scrimmage that pitted the Dream Teamers against one another in what may have been the greatest pickup game in history. In the twenty years since the Dream Team first captivated the world, its mystique has only grown. Dream Team vividly re-creates the moment when a once-in-a-millennium group of athletes came together and changed the future of sports--one perfectly executed fast break at a time. With a new Afterword by the author -The absolute definitive work on the subject, a perfectly wonderful once-you-pick-it-up-you-won't-be-able-to-put-it-down book.---The Boston Globe -An Olympic hoops dream.---Newsday -What makes this volume a must-read for nostalgic hoopsters are the robust portraits of the outsize personalities of the participants, all of whom were remarkably open with McCallum, both then and now.---Booklist (starred review)

Sports Illustrated's chief NBA writer Jack McCallum gets in the paint with the Phoenix Suns and takes a season-long look at the NBA's most exciting and controversial team.Jack McCallum—NBA writer for Sports Illustrated—only planned to spend the preseason with the Phoenix Suns as an "assistant coach" and then write a story about his experiences. Instead, he stayed on with the Suns throughout their exciting and controversial 2005 to 2006 season. McCallum describes in detail his year trying to keep up with the fast-breaking Suns on and off the court. He takes readers inside the heads of Steve Nash, the team's mercurial floor general; the maverick Mike D'Antoni; and dozens of others who make up the close-knit Suns family. On the court, there's excitement as the Suns overcome a rash of injuries to once again battle for a conference title. Off the court, controversy rages as the team endures a major front-office change in midseason. Throughout it all, the team continues to bedevil opponents and challenge the status quo with their throwback style. In the spirit of Buzz Bissinger's Three Nights in August and John Feinstein's A Season on the Brink, Seven Seconds or Less is an in-depth look at one of the greatest shows in sports.

One of the most fascinating but least remembered figures in modern American history, Major General Leonard Wood (1860-1927) was, with his close friend Theodore Roosevelt, an icon of U.S. imperialism as the nation evolved into a global power at the dawn of the twentieth century. The myriad of roles that Wood played in his extraordinary career offer a mirror image of the country's expansion from the urban Northeast to the western frontier to Latin America and the Far East. Boston surgeon, Indian fighter, U.S. Army Chief of Staff, Medal of Honor winner, commander of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, Governor General of the Philippines, and presidential candidate, Wood was one of a select cadre of men that transformed the American military at the turn of the century, turning it into a modern fighting force and the nation into a world power. Throughout his life, Wood tested the division between military and civilian power to its very limits. His 1920 presidential campaign and his conflicts with civilian politicians were harbingers of the struggles that Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower would face as they moved from the battlefield to Washington following World War II. Jack McCallum has mined Wood's extensive personal records—including diaries, correspondence, and photographs—to create a vivid portrait of a complex man and the legacy he left on U.S. imperialism. America's rapid conquest of Cuba and the Philippines and the subsequent political and economic reconstruction it imposed under Wood's military supervision in these regions have important parallels to current U.S. involvement in the Middle East, both in its successes and its failures.

The rollicking, rags-to-riches story of Rocky Aoki, prodigiously successful businessman and expert sportsman who founded the multimillion-dollar restaurant chain Benihana, forever changed Americans’ view of Japanese cuisine, and whose pursuits include wrestling at world-class level, power-boat racing, ballooning, and undersea exploration Rocky Aoki was a man who succeeded in everything that he undertook, and his range of interests were wild and exciting. His empire of restaurants put the name Benihana on the map and changed the way Americans viewed Japanese cuisine. The business of running and expanding them would be all-absorbing for most people, but not so for Rocky, whose energies had also attracted him to many sports in which he excelled, sometimes nearly to the point of death. At a young age, he was a world-class Olympic wrestler. Introduced to the dangerous world of offshore powerboat racing, he arranged for Benihana to sponsor the world’s largest offshore powerboat race, and was nearly killed in an accident, crushing both legs, while preparing for the Benihana Grand Prix. Then, seeking a new sport, he turned to ballooning, completing the first trans-Pacific flight from Japan to California in a manned balloon and breaking the previous long-distance record for a manned balloon flight. Then, there was flying ultra-light aircraft, collecting and driving fast cars, and exploring under the sea in a specially designed two-man submarine, with future dreams of winning the America’s Cup for Japan. But Aoki also served the common good, acting as Commissioner on the Mayor’s Council on Youth and Physical Fitness in New York City, and campaigning for the advancement, both physical and cultural, of youth everywhere. He was actively involved in promoting the cultural exchanges between the country of his birth and his US home and sponsored sporting and cultural events such as the first professional heavyweight boxing match in the Far East between Muhammad Ali and Mac Foster, becoming Broadway’s first Japanese angel, acting as patron to young Japanese artists in the US, and producing films about them. Rocky Aoki’s wild, capitalistic interpretation of the American dream is one for the ages, was a modern champion, in business, sports, and in life.