{"product_id":"the-great-american-sports-page-a-century-of-classic-columns-from-ring-lardner-to-sally-jenkins-isbn-9781598536126","title":"The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns from Ring Lardner  to Sally Jenkins","description":"\u003cb\u003eA first-of-its-kind celebration of the newspaper scribes who made sportswriting a glorious popular art, and immortalized America's greatest games and athletes\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpanning nearly a century, \u003ci\u003eThe Great American Sports Page\u003c\/i\u003e presents essential columns from more than three dozen masters of the press-box craft. These unforgettable dispatches from World Series, Super Bowls, and title bouts for the ages were written on deadline with passion, spontaneity, humor, and a gift for the memorable phrase. Read avidly day in and day out by a sports-mad public, these columnists became journalistic celebrities in their home cities, their coverage trusted and savored, their opinions hotly debated. Some even helped change the games they wrote about. Gathered here in a groundbreaking anthology, their writings capture some of sport's most enduring moments and many of its all-time greats: Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jordan among them. But the best American sportswriters also found ways to write powerfully about lesser-known athletes and to convey, often with heartbreaking honesty and insight, the less glamorous and more tragic facets of the games we love. In its survey of the finest American sportswriting from Ring Lardner to Thomas Boswell, from Red Smith and Jimmy Cannon to Bob Ryan and Michael Wilbon, \u003ci\u003eThe Great American Sports Page\u003c\/i\u003e takes the measure of the human richness, complexity, and competitive spirit of sports and the athletes who continue to fascinate and inspire us.\"To read the book is to be astonished, again and again, by the ingenuity and flair of the writers who thrived in this medium. Stories written in two hours for the next day’s newspaper shouldn’t hold up decades later, but the best work here is indelible, even when it describes the heroism of long-forgotten racehorses and prizefighters.\" \u003cb\u003e— John Swansburg, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Thrilling. . . . The surprise and delight of \u003ci\u003eThe Great American Sports Page\u003c\/i\u003e, John Schulian’s selections from a century’s worth of newspaper columns about baseball, boxing, football, gymnastics, and (in one case) swimming the English Channel, is how \u003ci\u003eoften\u003c\/i\u003e it happens—how often the writers connect, how often the prose approaches the condition of flat-out poetry.\"  \u003cb\u003e—James Parker, \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The entries from the first 50 or 60 years exhibit the boisterous hyperbole, epic mood, circumlocution, simile and metaphor that once made sports writing a sport in itself. . . . This is the kind of book that makes you a social nuisance and sleeve plucker, a persistent spouter of quotation: Just one more, you keep saying.”  \u003cb\u003e— Katherine A. Powers, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Outstanding, powerful and poetic. . . .  Most of the work in the book was written under intense deadline pressure — no time for primping and polishing — which makes the power of the prose all the more remarkable.\" — \u003cb\u003eRick Kogan, \u003ci\u003eThe Chicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Great American Sports Page\u003c\/i\u003e, an anthology of the best sports columns by the best sports columnists, and it belongs in your den next to the television remote. Think of it as a highlight film in hardback. There isn’t a loser between its bound covers.\" —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Who better than John Schulian--columnist, novelist, critic, screenwriter, and the recipient of the PEN ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing--to appreciate great sportswriters? Going back to the early twentieth century, \u003ci\u003eThe Great American Sports Page\u003c\/i\u003e gives us the sportswriters who had no greater aspiration than to write the best they could about something they loved and valued in the columns of their daily newspapers. An unforgettable line-up of heavy-hitting writers delivers a collection that deserves a standing ovation from sports fans.\" \u003cb\u003e--Pat Jordan, sportswriter and author of \u003ci\u003eA False Spring\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Schulian\u003c\/b\u003e was a sports columnist for the \u003ci\u003eChicago Sun-Times\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePhiladelphia Daily News\u003c\/i\u003e before moving to Hollywood, where he was, among other things, the co-creator of \u003ci\u003eXena: Warrior Princess\u003c\/i\u003e. In 2016 he was awarded the PEN\/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. He is the editor of the Library of America anthologies \u003ci\u003eFootball: Great Writing about the National Sport\u003c\/i\u003e and, with George Kimball, \u003ci\u003eAt the Fights: American Writers on Boxing\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eSometimes They Even Shook Your Hand: Portraits of Champions Who Walked Among Us\u003c\/i\u003e and, most recently, the novel \u003ci\u003eA Better Goodbye\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCharles P. Pierce \u003c\/b\u003e(b. 1953) has written about sports and politics for numerous publications, including \u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGrantland\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eSports Illustrated\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eSports Guy\u003c\/i\u003e (200) and \u003ci\u003eMoving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything\u003c\/i\u003e (2006).The greatest writers. The greatest games. All on a deadline.","brand":"Library of America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305051803877,"sku":"NP9781598536126","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781598536126.jpg?v=1767739622","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-great-american-sports-page-a-century-of-classic-columns-from-ring-lardner-to-sally-jenkins-isbn-9781598536126","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}