A well-constructed but hagiographic account of the Big Ten.
A history of the Big Ten athletic conference of Midwestern schools.
The Big Ten, the subject of Sherman’s lavishly illustrated volume, is an intramural sports conference that includes the universities of Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska and Maryland; Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan State; and Purdue, Northwestern, and Rutgers University. Since its founding in 1896, it’s provided entertainment to generations of fans. In words and plentiful photos, the author—who also wrote Babe Ruth’s Big Shot: The Myth and Mystery of Baseball’s Greatest Home Run (2014), among other works—takes readers through the Big Ten’s centurylong history of achievements, which included several firsts both on and off the playing field. The giants of Big Ten history each get their time in the spotlight, including such figures as University of Illinois halfback Red Grange, University of Iowa halfback Nile Kinnick, or former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. Sherman also includes lovingly detailed features on trailblazers such as Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first Black athlete to compete in the conference, back in 1882; and Phyllis Howlett, who became the Big Ten’s first female assistant commissioner in 1982 and helped “to give thousands of young women the chance to be athletes at the college level.” Famous alumni, such as golf superstar and Ohio State grad Jack Nicklaus and President Gerald Ford—shown here during his time as a scowling University of Michigan football player—appear alongside the University of Iowa’s famously ruthless wrestling coach Dan Gable: “He came up with the ‘Iowa style’ of wrestling,” Sherman writes. “The Hawkeyes didn't want to just beat opponents. They wanted them to give up completely.” The author also mentions University of Indiana swim coach Doc Counsilman and his motto, “Hurt, pain, agony.”
As might be expected from a volume like this, the author’s emphasis is on boosterism; it’s a work for Big Ten fans by a Big Ten fan. At one point, Sherman writes, “That’s the Big Ten. Exceptional student-athletes, renowned universities and academic pursuit that knows no bounds,” and it’s true that, as the author points out, “As leading research universities, the Big Ten schools have changed the course of medicine, science, business and social studies.” However, quotes such as these paper over some less appealing facts. Some of these teams bring in millions of dollars to their universities, which has, in turn, been a factor in scandals that have occurred over the past few years, including some that involve allegations of player abuse. Instead, it’s quite clear that the author intends his book as an uncritical celebration of the Big Ten—and as this, it succeeds completely. The author has an impressive talent for providing the perfect quote, the perfect scenario, and the perfect statistic to illustrate his various points. As a result, any reader who’s even been a small part of Big 10 history—by streaming into a big stadium on a beautiful autumn afternoon to cheer on their champions and razz their rivals—is likely to treasure this celebratory volume.
A well-constructed but hagiographic account of the Big Ten.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Big Ten Conference, Inc.
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Toole won't dazzle anyone with footwork, but there's a core of integrity to his fiction that can rivet a reader, patches of...
A debut collection of six stories about the world of boxing, from an insider who finds beauty in its ugliness, sweetness in its savagery.
The title piece is a prime example: veteran trainer Mac McGee loves his young fighter, loves him for his talent and boundless willingness, but perhaps even more for the goodness as natural to him as the grace and power of his punches. Mac is white, “Puddin’” Pye, the boy, black, but from the day they met the relationship was transcendently father and son, color an irrelevance. The beginning of the story deals with that warmth and caring between them. A bit too predictably—nuance is not Toole's strength—the mood darkens, foreshadowing the kind of extravagant violence that links all six of the tales. In “Frozen Water,” a naïve country boy is beaten almost to death by a conscienceless bully. In “Million $$$ Baby,” a young woman boxer, sucker-punched by her treacherous opponent, has a freak fall and breaks her neck. “The Monkey Look” is about a fighter who's taken far too many merciless shots to the head and eyes. And so on. Worthwhile people suffer terrible punishment from no-goods, who often as not get away with it. In Toole's world, justice is at best an in and outer. He'd like it to be different, but this long-time, real-life corner man has stanched too much blood from too many illegal blows to believe in fantasy. Instead, he'll settle for the “magic” so vividly depicted here—the iron magic “of will, skill, and pain.”
Toole won't dazzle anyone with footwork, but there's a core of integrity to his fiction that can rivet a reader, patches of awkwardness notwithstanding. The wallop is in the details.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019820-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizingly kaleidoscopic look at an event that altered its witnesses’ lives forever.
Six witnesses relate their divergent interpretations of a violent incident that took place during the Civil War in this novel based on true stories.
Caroline Anderson lives in Greenbrier County, Virginia, at the Elmhurst house, a “magnificent place” before the Civil War erupted. President Martin Van Buren once picnicked there, but it has since decayed into ruins from neglect. Caroline’s husband, John, suddenly joins the Confederate Army, never to be seen or heard from again, leaving her to fend for herself and her two stepchildren, 8-year-old Sally and glum teenager Samuel. When bedraggled Union soldiers come marching through town, a group of them forcibly enters Caroline’s home, first looking for medical supplies and then for a reprieve from their nomadic discomfort. On May 22, 1863, while Elmhurst is occupied by “horrid Yankees,” a “dreadful incident” occurs, one that leaves two men, one of them a Union soldier, dead. Years later, the incident is investigated by Gen. George L. Scarborough, under the authority of the Department of State. This ingeniously inventive novel by Smith is largely composed of the records of the testimony culled by Scarborough, collected from interviews with six witnesses, including Caroline and two of the soldiers who were in her home that day. The plot is bewitching—the author slowly, with aching suspense, inches toward the incident in question. Meanwhile, a romantic tension and rivalry brews between Caroline and Capt. James Tobin, a “sweet talking” and “handsome” soldier who will be among those who witness the event. Smith cleverly juxtaposes the different accounts, illuminating the paradoxical nature of storytelling, which reveals and conceals simultaneously. As Caroline explains, “What I mean to say is: the information you are after cannot be told in one simple story since it is actually many tales stitched up with each other.”
A tantalizingly kaleidoscopic look at an event that altered its witnesses’ lives forever.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942294-09-2
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Quarrier Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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