Wilt, 1962: The Night Of 100 Points And The Dawn Of A New Era - Hardcover

Pomerantz, Gary M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400051606 ISBN 13: 9781400051601

Publisher: Crown Pub, 2005

Synopsis

A portrait of Wilt Chamberlain and his stunning 1962 achievement when he scored one hundred points in a single game examines the meaning of the event in terms of professional basketball, American sports, and a nation on the verge of social and cultural revolution. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"Gary Pomerantz's Wilt, 1962 is beautifully written, well reported, and compelling. But what's so special about this book, what causes it to linger, is the atmosphere that Pomerantz has captured through his words, so bittersweet and haunting. You love Wilt Chamberlain. You feel the aura of his isolation as he towered above the rest of us in life, and you wish more than ever he was still around because of his very individuality." --H. G. "Buzz" Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

"In his undeniable excellence and egotism, Wilt Chamberlain was America itself, inspiring worship, ambivalence, and downright awe." --Philadelphia Inquirer

"Genius is in the details, and Gary Pomerantz's Wilt, 1962 proves that." --John Feinstein, author of A Season on the Brink and A Good Walk Spoiled

"Meticulously researched and superbly crafted, Wilt, 1962 revisits and vividly re-creates a seminal but overlooked moment in American sports history. On that transformative evening in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Wilt Chamberlain scored one hundred points and staked a black man's claim to the city game. In Gary Pomerantz's deft possession-by-possession retelling, Chamberlain soars again. The gangly, uncompromising seven-footer who always seemed too big for the uniform he inhabited thunders back to life." --Jane Leavy, author of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

"Wilt, 1962 is not only a lively sports story about the record-setting performance of a larger-than-life athlete, it is also a wonderful chronicle of urban and social history, replete with colorful characters and situations from a bygone era of professional basketball, when the game changed from being dominated by white stars to being dominated by black ones." --Gerald L. Early, author of This Is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s

"In this age of instant everything, few people have any idea who Wilt Chamberlain really was and what he meant to sports. Gary Pomerantz shows us. In Wilt, 1962 he puts us courtside for one of the greatest unexamined moments in sports history, the night Wilt scored one hundred points. In a sweet return to his sportswriting roots, Pomerantz gives us Wilt in his realm, his rise to prominence and dominance, set against the backdrop of the NBA's coming of age. It's all irresistible." --Michael Wilbon, cohost of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption

From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author:

Gary M. Pomerantz earned acclaim with his two previous books. Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, a multigenerational biography of Atlanta and its racial conscience, was named a 1996 Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds (2001), the true story of an airplane crash, has been published in Britain, Germany, and China. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Pomerantz worked for nearly two decades as a journalist, first as a sportswriter for the Washington Post and then writing columns, editorials, and special projects for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He later served for two years as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at Emory University in Atlanta. He lives today in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and their three children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown Pub
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1400051606
• ISBN 13: 9781400051601
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 267