books about: sportswriter

books about: sportswriter

books:

Sportswriter

The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness, and Baseball

Nicholas Dawidoff

Pantheon, 2008

A Grand Slam in the "Growing Up with Baseball" genre
Among my all time favorites in the personal memoir about growing up with baseball are those of Doris Kearns Goodwin and Wilfrid Sheed. Nicholas DaWidoff's recent entry in this category has topped them all. It's not the usual "fathers playing catch with sons" story, ...

The Sportswriter

Richard Ford

Vintage, 1995

sports for the mind
Last night I finished reading Richard Ford's The Sportswriter. I read it a couple years after reading Independence Day. Although I didn't love Independence Day, I was curious to get back to the main character of both books, Frank Bascombe, and see what he had done ...

Browns Scrapbook: A Fond Look Back at Five Decades of Football, from a Legendary Cleveland Sportswriter

Chuck Heaton

Gray & Co., Publishers, 2007

Those Were The Days
Chuck Heaton covered the Cleveland Browns from their beginnings in 1946 in the upstart All-America Football Conference through 1993 for The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. These were years when local print journalism dominated team coverage and columnists mostly painted ...

A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL

Stefan Fatsis

Penguin Press HC, The, 2008

Two Stories: One Interesting, One Excellent
The first story this book tells is about the author's attempt to become a passable kicker. There is some success and some failure in this, and it is interesting (even if you don't care about kicking). The second story is about what it is like to be a player in the ...

Beyond the Sports Huddle: Mona on Minnesota

Dave Mona

Voyageur Press, 2008

Great Storytelling
Reading Beyond the Sports Huddle: Mona on Minnesota is like listening to a good speaker. Author Dave Mona is a natural storyteller. The stories he tells span three decades of Minnesota sports history. Dave describes growing up in south Minneapolis, becoming a sports ...

Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Football

Adam Jones

Thomas Dunne Books, 2008

Can I get an Amen?
Where else can you mix Shakespeare and football, Bloody Caesars and longnecks, playbooks and hymnals? Adam Jones weaves a lyrical tapestry out of what is essentially many large men fighting over a pigskin, and you don't even notice when the action moves from the ...

The Franchise Babe: A Novel

Dan Jenkins

Doubleday, 2008

Fun,Truth,Sex&Laughter on the LPGAtour...Pure Jenkins Joy
One more very funny,suitably sexist,terrifically politically incorrect, bit of DeadSolidPerfection...on the LPGA tour. Cynical Sportswriter finds enlightenment via TeenGolfGoddess & her mom, with the richly portrayed wacked characters,real tour insight,golf ...

The Boys of Summer

Roger Kahn

Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006

The Book That Made Me A Baseball Fan
Never really a dedicated sports fan, but a voracious and eclectic reader familiar with its reputation, I approached THE BOYS OF SUMMER fully expecting an excellent book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, but unprepared for what I found. Less a team history than a memoir ...

Bloody Confused!: A Clueless American Sportswriter Seeks Solace in English Soccer

Chuck Culpepper

Broadway, 2008

Great insight into EPL Fandom
I thought this was a great book to read. Even though i've been following the EPL for several years, this book brought a bird's eye view of the weekly grind of being a professional sports fan. Great bar stories as well! I also found it helpful to get a few tips on ...

Two Years in St. Andrews: At Home on the 18th Hole

George Peper

Simon & Schuster, 2006

If you love Golf you'll love this Book.
This has to be one of the "Gems" of Golf Travel books. From start of finish I found this book well written, humorous, sophisticated and wonderfully self-effacing. I would like to meet George Peper; I'm sure we would get along very well. Maybe a game on the Old ...

Of Wee Sweetie Mice and Men

Colin Bateman

Arcade Publishing, 1997

Black humour with a heart.
A wonderful sequel to Divorcing Jack, still with the same black humour, but a little bit more sentimentality thrown in. It has you laughing, it has you crying, and you will enjoy every second of it. My favourite Bateman book by far.

One Last Read: The Collected Works of the World's Slowest Sportswriter

Ray Didinger

Temple University Press, 2007

Fantastic Collection
This is a must read for Philadelphia sports fans but also for anyone who appreciates well written articles and thoughtful opinions. Mr Didinger is in the writer's wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame for a reason. And because it is a collection of articles ...

The Unfortunates

B. S. Johnson

New Directions, 2008

A Great Experiment
B.S. Johnson's The Unfortunates is a remarkable book. The novel is broken into 27 pamphlet-sized sections. Except for the first and last sections, the remaining 25 sections are intended to be read in random order. The Unfortunates tells the story of a sportswriter ...

Guys, Dolls, and Curveballs: Runyon on Baseball

Da Capo Press, 2005

Guys, Dolls, and Curveballs is a delightful collection of ballpark dispatches from one of the game's most unique chroniclers?Damon Runyon, the legendary reporter and creator of such mythic gangster icons as Nathan Detroit and the Lemon Drop Kid. Best known as the bard of Broadway for turning two-bit hustlers and deadbeat horseplayers of Jazz Age ...

No Cheering in the Press Box

Henry Holt & Co (P), 1995

Tales of Dempsey, Jones, Rockne, Ruth
In the early 1970s, Jerome Holtzman interviewed 44 fellow sportswriters from the previous generation. He asked each to talk about his experiences covering sports. 18 of those reminiscences were published as NCITPB in 1973. Holtzman published a new edition, with 6 ...