Book Description
Letrell Sprewell. Allen Iverson. John McEnroe. Even Mohammed Ali and Mike Schmidt and Michael Jordan. These are characters of our national imagination, athletes who stand as symbols of our complex relationship with professional sport. In this erudite and captivating book, bestselling author Larry Platt takes us on a tour through American sports. Offering profiles of the athletes we love (and love to hate), Platt shows that sport, more than any other nationwide pastime, is the way we come to understand—and alter—race relations, gender, and, most profoundly, how we communicate with each other in ways that are often given too little credit in the minds of intellectuals. Thought provoking and richly written, New Jack Jocks offers a textured picture of how athletes live their lives and how we live out and define American culture by the way we come to understand their lives in and out of the halls of play.

From the Publisher
The hero and anti-hero in contemporary sport, from a bestselling journalist

From the Inside Flap
"Larry Platt's writing flies two places at once: inside America's sports heroes and high above them, gazing down on the strange dynamic between us and them. You won't be able to look at our athletes or our society the same after you've read Platt." —Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated "Larry Platt's view of the sports world reads like fiction—but it's fact! Writers of sitcoms and soap operas could use New Jack Jocks as a source of great content." —Pat Croce, part owner and former president, Philadelphia 76ers

About the Author
Larry Platt is an editor-at-large for Philadelphia magazine. His work has been published in The New York Times, GQ, and many other publications. The author of Keeping It Real: A Turbulent Season at the Crossroads with the NBA, he lives in the Philadelphia area.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Latrell Sprewell. Allen Iverson. John McEnroe. Even Muhammed Ali, Mike Schmidt, and Michael Jordan. These are characters of our national imagination, athletes who symbolize our complex relationships with professional sports." In this book, author Larry Platt takes us on his own unique tour through American sports. Culled from a decade of writing about our games and the people who play them, Platt offers exclusive profiles of the athletes we love - and love to hate. Here is McEnroe, still haunted by his incendiary artistic temperament at middle age; here is Magic Johnson, striving to enact his "Black Plan" to save inner-cities; here is Sprewell, speeding along in his turbo-charged sports car, perplexed by just how he came to be considered a villain in our daily sports narrative. In these and other profiles, Platt shows that sport, more than any other nationwide pastime, is the way we come to understand - and alter - race relations, gender, and, most profoundly, how we communicate with each other in ways often ignored by social commentators.

FROM THE CRITICS

Gary Smith

Larry Platt's writing flies two places at once: inside America's sports heroes and high above them, gazing down on the strange dynamic between us and them. You won't be able to look at our athletes or our society the same after you've read Platt.

Pat Croce