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.

This colorful portrait ranges from Rice's childhood in Nashville to his days as a star athlete at Vanderbilt to his first jobs in Atlanta, Nashville, and New York. Filled with stories of Rice's many friends, including Babe Ruth, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyon, Jack Dempsey, and many others. Halftones.

For nearly sixty years, Bud Furillo wrote and talked about sports in Southern California. For fifteen of those years, he authored a popular column for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called The Steam Room, which gave him the nickname that lasted him for the rest of his life: “the Steamer.” As a reporter, columnist, editor, and pioneer of sports talk radio, the Steamer dished out insight and understanding to Southern California sports fans while Los Angeles grew into a sports empire. On his watch, L.A. acquired the Rams from Cleveland, the Dodgers from Brooklyn, and the Lakers from Minneapolis. He covered them all while they won championships for the city. In The Steamer: Bud Furillo and the Golden Age of L.A. Sports, Furillo’s son, Andy, himself a longtime newspaperman, uses his father’s lens to give focus to the city’s rise as a sports empire. The Steamer is a history of a great sports town at its most dynamic, told from the point of view of a legendary reporter who used his phenomenal access to reveal the inside story of the greatest athletes and teams to ever play in Los Angeles.

With no way for fans to verify their facts, the sportswriters of the 1920s enjoyed a near monopoly on sports news. Journalist Mark Inabinett explores the incomparable Grantland Rice's role in creating the legends that surrounded six sports stars--Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Bill Tilden, Red Grange, and Knute Rockne. Photographs.

Featuring a half-Chinese detective protagonist, A GENTLEMAN'S MURDER is a must for those who love mysteries and reads like a Christie-esque whodunit with a modern eye toward the historical treatment of Chinese veterans and post-war racism.

In 1953, seven universities seceded from the NCAA's Southern Conference to form the Atlantic Coast Conference. Founding members Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina and Wake Forest were soon joined by Virginia. Inspired by national academic and gambling scandals, and a bowl game crisis in 1951, the ACC's leaders hoped to reduce the commercialism and professionalism that permeated college athletics in the 1950s. This first ever full-length history examines founding of the ACC, the star athletes and coaches and football and basketball season highlights, along with the negotiations that led to the creation one of America's most successful athletic conferences.

On June 10, 1948, the eyes of the sporting world were focused on a minor league ballpark in Newark, New Jersey--the unlikely venue of a much-anticipated rubber match between the two men at the top of boxing's prestigious middleweight division, Tony Zale and Rocky Graziano. They had met in the ring twice before, each winning one bout. In their third fight, Zale, a clever and powerful puncher, hoped to regain his title from Graziano, a knock-out artist six years his junior. This book tells the story of the greatest middleweight trilogy of boxing's Golden Age, a championship battle Newark hoped would catalyze brighter days for a city rife with political corruption and organized crime and grappling with the beginning of deindustrialization.