Spinning the Globe
The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Before Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Julius Erving, or Michael Jordan––before Magic Johnson and Showtime––the Harlem Globetrotters revolutionized basketball and spread the game around the world. In Spinning the Globe, author Ben Green tells the story of this extraordinary franchise and iconic American institution. We follow the Globetrotters' rise from backwoods obscurity during the harsh years of the Great Depression to become the best basketball team in the country and, by the early 1950s, the most popular sports franchise in the world. Green brings to life their struggles with racism and segregation, and their influence upon a nation's views about race and sport. We witness the Globetrotters' fall from grace to the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1990s, and their ultimate rebirth under Mannie Jackson today, as they once again amaze kids and families around the world. Now in paperback, this is the true and complete story of their amazing eighty years as a team, told with lyrical prose and masterful storytelling by Ben Green.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For certain generations, the song "Sweet Georgia Brown" immediately brings to mind the Harlem Globetrotters and their on-court comedy. Long before they became the clown princes of basketball, however, the Trotters were America's most popular sports team. Green (Before His Time) traces the team's history back to its roots in Depression-era Chicago and its early barnstorming years. Fans who remember the team through their television appearances in the early 1970s are in for an education, as Green undercuts the reputation of Meadowlark Lemon, whom other Trotters openly criticize as a poor player, while celebrating legends from the '40s and '50s such as Marques Haynes and Goose Tatum. During those years, the team was already honing its gags, but the players were also regularly competing against the nation's best college players and even beating NBA squads before the league became racially integrated. Green's straightforward but respectful approach carries over into a balanced handling of the "minstrel show" reputation that dogged the Globetrotters almost from the beginning, as well as a brief account of the team's modern revival after being bought by a former player. The overall effect of this vividly rendered history is to make readers wish they could see the Globetrotters it describes in action. 16-page b&w photo insert.
