It is the best work that integrates three essential themes of the history of World War II.
In each chapter, I got a strong sense of the military and diplomatic contexts of this crucial year with moving segues into the tragic saga of the destruction of European Jewry amid the Holocaust while spending important time on the physical and mental status of an aging FDR. It is a troubling but important study by an eminent historian.
Tragically, in 1951, players on the City College basketball team – Jews and African Americans – were caught up in a point-shaving scandal that rocked the city and the Jewish community.
Goodman tells this sad story comprehensively and unsparingly, and took me back into the neighborhoods where these athletes grew up and detailed how organized crime figures seduced them. He also notes importantly how this corruption of basketball which was then seen as a “Jewish sport” fed antisemitic attitudes against Jews.
The powerful story of a college basketball team who carried an era’s brightest hopes—racial harmony, social mobility, and the triumph of the underdog—but whose success was soon followed by a shocking downfall
“A masterpiece of American storytelling.”—Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Devil in the Grove
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST SPORTS BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
The unlikeliest of champions, the 1949–50 City College Beavers were extraordinary by every measure. New York’s City College was a tuition-free, merit-based college in Harlem known far more for its intellectual achievements and political radicalism than its…
I love New York City and enjoy walking its streets and neighborhoods. Helmreich produced the consummate walking tour guide to the metropolis.
Helmreich, a great sociologist and a prolific writer was a dear friend and colleague. Sadly, I can no longer share my feelings about the city we love because of his untimely death during the pandemic. I read through this book with tears in my eyes and use it in my peregrinations through four of the five boroughs—I never get the Staten Island.
For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. To this very day, fans who listened to his coverage of Knicks basketball and Giants football recall fondly his play-by-plays. But Glickman was more than just a contributor to American popular culture. He has also been remembered as a Jewish athlete who at the 1936 Olympics was cynically barred from participating by pro-Nazi American Olympic officials who did not want to embarrass Hitler. This biography details this traumatic event and explores not only how he coped with that rejection but also how he dealt with other antisemitic and cultural obstacles that threatened his career. Glickman’s story underscores the complexities that faced his generation of American Jews who strove to make it in America.
