The Ring Cycle The Ring Cycle
When Joe Louis defeated Nazi sympathizer Max Schmeling in 1938, it was the boxing match that reverberated across the world. Three new books chronicle the match and all the racial a...
Nov 16, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Gerald Early
The Soccer Star and the President The Soccer Star and the President
Who is Diego Maradona, and how did a former Argentinian soccer star become the nemesis of an American President?
Nov 8, 2005 / Feature / Dave Zirin
Sheryl Swoopes: Out of the Closet–and Ignored Sheryl Swoopes: Out of the Closet–and Ignored
WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes has just come out of the closet. But why didn't anyone care?
Nov 4, 2005 / Dave Zirin
Say It Ain’t So, Big Leagues Say It Ain’t So, Big Leagues
Strip-mining the Dominican Republic for talent, Major League Baseball periodically plucks one lucky boy from his home and family and gives him a dream for a better life. But what h...
Oct 26, 2005 / Feature / Dave Zirin
Pat Tillman, Our Hero Pat Tillman, Our Hero
War hero and former NFL star Pat Tillman was not the GI Joe icon created by Pentagon spinmeisters. He was a fiercely independent thinker convinced that the war in Iraq was illegal....
Oct 6, 2005 / Dave Zirin
Etan Thomas Rises to the Occasion Etan Thomas Rises to the Occasion
Washington Wizards power forward Etan Thomas is using his swoosh-adorned status as a sports star to speak out on the gross negligence of the Bush Administration.
Sep 14, 2005 / Feature / Dave Zirin
What’s My Name, Fool? What’s My Name, Fool?
In The Godfather, Part II, dying mob boss Hyman Roth wheezes the obscene truth to young Don Michael Corleone.
Aug 2, 2005 / Feature / Dave Zirin
Visible Man Visible Man
The Jack Johnson story is about many things, but none more emphatically than the meaning of manhood to the Anglo-Saxon imagination at the turn of the century.
Feb 10, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Greg Tate
Show Me the Money! Show Me the Money!
Toward the end of the undervalued 1979 movie adaptation of former pro football receiver Peter Gent's undervalued 1973 novel, North Dallas Forty, a beat, bent lineman, played by t...
Feb 10, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Gene Seymour
Blood Simple Blood Simple
Half a century has passed since Manny Farber wrote in these pages about underground films, by which he meant the urban crime movies watched by male loiterers near the Greyhound s...
Jan 20, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans