Howard Cosell Recalled: Icon and Irrritant
Sportscaster Howard Cosell was at once infuriating and insightful. A new book says he was identified in the popular mind as a prototypical New York Jew.
Hank Greenberg, Reluctant Jewish Hero
A new biography of Hank Greenberg explores how the slugger embodied Jewish masculinity and toughness, despite his reluctance to serve as a Jewish example.
A Eulogy for New York
Waterfront: A Journey Around ManhattanBy Phillip LopateCrown Publishers, 422 pages, $25.95.——–Writers love New York not for what it is, but for what it is in the writer’s imagination. Not even Paris intrigues us the way New York does, which is one of the reasons that the New York writer has become so distinct an American literary species,
Brownsville Striker: Rescuing the Reputation of a Jewish Fighter
Bummy Davis vs. Murder, Inc.: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Mafia and an Ill-Fated PrizefighterBy Ron Ross St. Martin’s Press, 418 pages, $26.95. * * *|All ethnic groups invariably must pay the price of the respectability they seek, a price that grows greater as the past recedes. Ron Ross’s “Bummy Davis vs. Murder, Inc.: The
A Literary Legend Spares Nothing in His Latest Memoir
First Loves: A Memoir By Ted Solotaroff Seven Stories Press, 299 pages, $24.95. * * *|Memoir demands the writer be committed to the truth about himself and the truth about others and, though all are ego-driven, the best reflect not merely the author’s life but the world that endowed that life. In his 1998 memoir, “Truth Comes in Blows”