Full Swing - by Ira Berkow (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The path from Springfield Avenue on Chicago's West Side--where Ira Berkow once sold stockings at the old Maxwell Street marketplace--to a career at The New York Times and a share of the Pulitzer Prize was anything but predictable. Yet that is the remarkable journey Berkow recounts in this lively, heartfelt, and frequently humorous memoir. Along the way, he became far more than a sportswriter, emerging as one of America's most perceptive chroniclers of sports, equally drawn to human character as to box scores and standings.

Central to that evolution was his father, whose influence helped instill in Ira a lasting respect for truth, justice, and moral clarity. But he was also shaped by a series of mentors and inspirations who helped steer a young man still searching for his purpose. Among them was the legendary columnist Red Smith, who patiently critiqued Berkow's early work, and Red Holzman, the Hall of Fame coach of the New York Knicks, whose example resonated well beyond the basketball court.

Woven throughout Full Swing is an extraordinary lineup of figures--E. B. White, Muhammad Ali, Saul Bellow, Ted Williams, P. G. Wodehouse, Michael Jordan--whose presence reflects the breadth of Berkow's interests and the lessons he drew from them. Honest, insightful, and richly entertaining, this memoir captures both triumphs and missteps, offering readers the wit, wisdom, and grace they have long associated with his writing.

Review Quotes

Praise for Full Swing

"If there's anyone doing sports who is even close, I haven't read him." --Mike Royko

"Full Swing is like a great ballpark conversation, where everything and anything is fair game." --Allen St. John, New York TimesBook Review

"Ira Berkow belongs to that rare breed personified by the late Red Smith: a writer who specializes in sports but whose subjects represent a broad range in human aspiration and challenges." --Gay Talese

"Sports at its best is a kind of music, and sportswriting is a kind of libretto. Ira Berkow is among the best--a Sondheim of the sports page." --George F. Will

Praise for Ira Berkow

"Nearly twenty years ago in the Tribune magazine, I wrote a story in an attempt to answer a question posed in the headline: 'Does Baseball Still Matter?' Berkow's book Baseball's Best Ever shouts, 'Yes!' even though most of its characters and heroes are long gone. There are plenty of them in this book's nearly 500 pages....There is so much to enjoy here, to savor." --Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune

". . . Berkow can turn a phrase like an all-star second baseman turning a double play . . . . [a] collection well worth reading." --Steven V. Roberts, Washington Post (for Baseball's Best Ever)

"In How Life Imitates Sports, Ira Berkow [does] remind us how great sportswriters have enriched us by writing about the world, on and off the court." --George Vecsey, author of Baseball: History of America's Favorite Game (for How Life Imitates Sports)

"Ira Berkow gets inside people. It can be stated as a law that the sports writer whose horizons are no wider than the outfield fences is a bad sports writer because he has no sense of proportion and no awareness of the real world around him. Ira Berkow knows that what is important about a game is not the score but the people who play it." --Red Smith, from the foreword to Beyond the Dream

"Ira Berkow is one of the best sportswriters around, so it is no surprise that his basketball odyssey is one of the best sports books of this or any other year....Very few sports columnists have the genius to produce a timely piece that is also timeless. Ira Berkow has that ability in spades." --George Plimpton (for To the Hoop: The Seasons of a Basketball Life)

"With the keen eye of a reporter, the literary touch of a highly skilled writer, and above all a feel for the humanity in every story, Ira takes his readers to a place beyond and above what even competent sports writing generally delivers." --Bob Costas

"Ira Berkow over the years has regularly given us sports writing of the most elegant kind--his work glistens with intelligence and sensitivity." --David Halberstam

"Like anyone else who I think is good, Ira Berkow can write just as well about things other than sports as he can about sports." --Dick Schaap

"Ira Berkow is simply one of America's best writers, sports or otherwise." --Jim Bouton (for Pitchers Do Get Lonely: And Other Sports Stories)

About the Author

Ira Berkow is both a Pulitzer-prize winner for national reporting and a Pulitzer-prize finalist for distinguished commentary, and the author of twenty-six books, including the bestsellers Red: A Biography of Red Smith, Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar, and Rockin' Steady: A Guide to Basketball and Cool (with Walt Frazier), as well as nine anthologies of his journalism. A sports reporter and columnist for the New York Times for over two decades, his work has regularly been reprinted in literary anthologies, college rhetoric textbooks, in the prestigious annual anthology Best American Sports Writing, as well as The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. He resides in New York City.