Glenn Stout has been the series editor of The Best American Sports Writing since its inception and has written
three illustrated biographies with Richard A. Johnson: Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures, Joe DiMaggio:
An Illustrated Life, and Jackie Robinson: Between the Baselines. He is a columnist for Boston Baseball, and his
work has appeared in many regional and national magazines and newspapers. He lives in Uxbridge, Massachusetts
Review
"...there is much to surprise and delight the sports reader among the 59 pieces here."
--Boston Globe
"Making the choices for the annual edition of this series is daunting enough; picking the century's best seems
impossible. However, what's here is universally excellent. There's late Chicagoan Mike Royko's jingoistic review
of a book by a reviled New York Met; Al Stump's now-infamous, still disturbing account of baseball legend Ty Cobb's
last days; Gay Talese's revealing mid-sixties profile of recently deceased icon Joe DiMaggio; and a 1975 remembrance
of Casey Stengel by Wells Twombly that reveals more about the baseball manager than a half-dozen biographies. Other
highlights include Hunter S. Thompson's predictably outrageous take on the Kentucky Derby; an insightful portrait
of boxer Billy Conn by Frank Deford; and Jimmy Breslin's 1960 profile of jockey Billy Hartack. In addition, a section
on Muhammad Ali offers some great writing by Dick Schaap, Murray Kempton, Norman Mailer, Jim Murray, and Davis
Miller. Biographical sketches of each contributor as well as a list of the century's other notable sportswriters
are included. This wonderful, delightfully eclectic volume is a must for every library."
--Booklist, ALA
"People who love sports...will have more fun with The Best American Sports Writing of the Century than anyone
is supposed to have with a book."
--Bill Littlefield, host of NPR's "Only a Game"
"...a strong collection that will send readers on a captivating trip through the diversity of styles and subjects
that developed as sports became big business and big news."
--Publishers Weekly
"This book...gives a lot of pleasure."
--Library Journal
"Given the overall vigor and volume of sports writing in America throughout the 20th century, the idea of
compiling a single collection dubbed the "best" requires a daring balancing act of boldness and delicacy.
And that's just what it is. Sports fans--but why limit this sparkling, spirited, passionate prose to just sports
fans?--will revel in the equilibrium of David Halberstam's and Glenn Stout's wide range of selections..."
--Amazon.com
"For those who love sports, and care about good writing, this is your collection."
--The Seattle Times
"Superb Sportswriting."
--The Arizona Daily Star
"[The Best American Sports Writing of the Century] demonstrates in a single, very large volume that sports
writing is often much more than a trade for arrested adolescents. It has room, too, for poets and wits, for sharp-eyed
reporters and world-weary wise men, for gifted stylists with a keen sense of the way we lived then and the way
we live now. A lot of this stuff is as good as nonfiction writing ever gets."
--Fortune
"At last, the predictable millennial/centennial summing-up--our understandable urge to quantify human experience
into silly best-of listings now that the end is near--has produced something of value. I speak, naturally, of The
Best American Sports Writing of the Century."
--The Las Vegas Sun
Houghton Mifflin Company Web Site, April, 2001
Summary
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Halberstam selects the fifty best pieces of sports writing of this century.
The Best American Sports Writing of the Century showcases the best sports journalists of the twentieth century,
from Jimmy Cannon, Red Smith, William Mack, Gary Smith, and Frank Deford to A. J. Liebling, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter
S. Thompson, and includes such classics as "What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?" by Richard Ben Cramer,
"Louis Knocks Out Schmeling" by Bob Considine, and "The Rocky Road of Pistol Pete" by W. C.
Heinz. This outstanding collection captures not only the century's greatest moments in baseball, boxing, horseracing,
golf, and tennis, but some of the finest writing of our time. Guest editor David Halberstam is the author of The
Reckoning, The Summer of Forty-Nine, The Breaks of the Game, and, most recently, The Children. Series editor Glenn
Stout has written biographies of Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson.