The Stacks Chat: Glenn Stout

By Alex Belth Bronx Banter July 15, 2009 Glenn Stout, a longtime favorite here at Bronx Banter, is most famous around these parts for his historical writing, particularly Yankees Century and Red Sox Century. Stout also serves as the series editor for The Best American...

Getting Naked with Harry

By Steve Oney The Atlanta Journal Constitution Magazine May 15, 1977 It was all of two o’clock on a sultry, Thursday afternoon, and Harry Crews was poured into a corner booth at an ersatz nautical bar in Gainesville, Florida, called the Winnjammer. Bits of sailing...

Muhammad Ali in Excelsis

By Peter Richmond GQ April 1998 On the table in front of him sit a copy of the holy Koran and a plate holding three frosted raspberry coffee cakes, and when he leans forward on the couch and reaches out it is not for enlightenment. It is for a piece of pastry. With...

My Trip to Las Vegas

By Jack Richardson The New York Review of Books August 12, 1971 Morning makes a timid entrance into Las Vegas, insinuating itself with silver modesty among the thousand-watt spires, signs, and billboards, waiting until the master switches of the hotels are thrown,...

Sam Peckinpah in Mexico: Overlearning with El Jefe

By Grover Lewis Rolling Stone October 12, 1972 Limping delicately as if his boots are a couple of sizes too tight, so rockinghorse loaded on Juarez tequila he’d flunk a knee-walking test, Roy Jenson, one of the neo-Wild Bunch of characters and character actors that...

Redneck Rock

By Robert Ward New Times June 25, 1976 The out-of-work mechanic with the beer gut, and the four turquoise rings, and the Gene Autry (pink and lime green) cowboy shirt with real pearl buttons, and the mutton chops, and the straight-back greased-down hair, and the big...

Bear Bryant’s Miracles

By Richard Price Playboy October 1979 Because I grew up in a multiethnic environment in New York City, the South has always conjured up some bad news reactions on word-association tests for me: Klan, lynch, redneck, moonshine, speed-trap towns and death … lots...

My Father’s War

By Peter Richmond GQ December 1993 It’s a reflex action. I kick the grenade without thinking. My brain shouts out in panic, but it’s too late. The grenade feels heavy against the toe of my boot. l see that the pin is missing. I can hear the sound it makes as it rolls...

Yesterday’s Hero

By Paul Hemphill Sport January 1972 “A week never passes that the Alumni Office fails to receive news highlighting the good works of former football players. So many of them reflect credit on our University.” —University of Tennessee Football Guide, 1970   What...

That Damn Yankee

By Tony Kornheiser The New York Times Magazine April 9, 1978 The old man was rigid. Dinner was at 5:45 each evening, and it was “Please, sir” and “Thank you, sir” and “May I be excused, sir?” He was a perfectionist. He was an intercollegiate hurdles champion, and he...

Down and Out at Wrigley Field

By Rich Cohen Harper’s August 2001 When the Chicago Cubs last won a World Series, the automobile was still a new and untrusted invention and the electric light was not yet twenty years old. In the years since the fifth game of that series, most of the European...