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Red: A Biography of Red Smith
Profiles the Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter whose career spanned decades and whose peers included such literary and sports legends as Damon Runyon, Babe Ruth, Ernest Hemingway, and Muhammad Ali
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
12 people want to read
About the author
Ira Berkow
41 books8 followersIra Berkow was a sports columnist and feature writer for THE NEW YORK TIMES for more than 25 years. He won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer for commentary. He is the author of numerous books, including THE CORPORAL WAS A PITCHER, ROCKIN' STEADY, and SUMMERS IN THE BRONX, the bestsellers MAXWELL STREET: SURVIVAL IN A BAZAAR and RED: A BIOGRAPHY OF RED SMITH, as well as two memoirs, FULL SWING and TO THE HOOP. He was the coauthor and editor of HANK GREENBERG: THE STORY OF MY LIFE, which was a primary source for the award-winning documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. He lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 30, 2011
The life and career of one of America's great sportswriters....Berkow does a great job of describing not only Red Smith's career but also his personal life and the two families who were an integral part of his life.
September 28, 2013
This book does the one thing that biographies tend to fail to do: show the extent and to some degree of the genius that makes the subject an attractive study.
Usually a god biography will contain funny anecdotes and unknown facts about what happened to a person. But rare is the biography that gets into the subject's mind. Here, Berkow frequently seems to be able to channel what it was that made Smith so beloved.
On the other hand, even at its reasonable length, it seems too long. And Berkow seems to be going out of his way to protect Red Smith who was clearly, just from the stuff that Berkow retells, an alcoholic who put his career well ahead of his family and who could be very hostile and competitive to his colleagues.
I think the thing most clearly missing from this book, though, is Smith's perspective. Berkow lauds Smith for his late-in-life liberalism and his apparent emphasis that sports were just a game. Is that it? He wrote for fifty years and he sometimes stuck up for the little guy and didn't seem to take his subject seriously? Is Smith lauded for style but, like almost every sportwriter, forgotten because the substance was just an interesting way of relating time-bound minutia?
Usually a god biography will contain funny anecdotes and unknown facts about what happened to a person. But rare is the biography that gets into the subject's mind. Here, Berkow frequently seems to be able to channel what it was that made Smith so beloved.
On the other hand, even at its reasonable length, it seems too long. And Berkow seems to be going out of his way to protect Red Smith who was clearly, just from the stuff that Berkow retells, an alcoholic who put his career well ahead of his family and who could be very hostile and competitive to his colleagues.
I think the thing most clearly missing from this book, though, is Smith's perspective. Berkow lauds Smith for his late-in-life liberalism and his apparent emphasis that sports were just a game. Is that it? He wrote for fifty years and he sometimes stuck up for the little guy and didn't seem to take his subject seriously? Is Smith lauded for style but, like almost every sportwriter, forgotten because the substance was just an interesting way of relating time-bound minutia?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews