By Alex Belth Bronx Banter February 23, 2012 The Knicks are in Miami tonight to play the Heat. What better time to hear from Scott Raab, the Esquire writer and author of The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of LeBron James. The Whore of Akron is a funny,...
By Alex Belth SI.com September 4, 2009 BRONX, N.Y.—I asked the first guy I saw if he knew Chuck, the counterman at a local Jewish Deli who collapsed and died on one of the nearby handball courts six years ago. We’re in Van Cortlandt Park, in the West Bronx, where...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader I’ve never read Conversations with Wilder, the hell is wrong with me? Man, I need to correct that. I’m grateful that I tuned in to Alec Baldwin’s Here’s The Thing interview with Cameron Crowe, who put the book together, and has some...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader May 22, 2016 Rich Cohen writes books that are hard to put down. From Tough Jews and The Record Men to his hilarious memoir, Sweet and Low: A Family Story, to the hearty—and heartfelt—appreciation of the 1985 Chicago Bears, Cohen is...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter June 15, 2011 My father was an incorrigible name dropper. He called famous actors and directors by their first names, suggesting an intimacy that didn’t always exist. He had met a lot of celebrities when he worked as a unit production...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter April 24, 2012 Mark Kram Jr. is one of the finest practitioners we have of long-form newspaper journalism, better known as the bonus or takeout piece. He has been with the Philadelphia Daily News since 1987 and his work has appeared in The...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader Is James Brown the most influential American musician of the 20th Century? He’s certainly in the conversation along with Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson. His story—the undeniable musical legacy as well as the catastrophic...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader Here is something I have noticed about reprinting material that was previously published but not available to us online—it ain’t for everyone. Why? Well, say I reprint a story that was published 40 years ago. Some folks will be turned...
By Alex Belth The Daily Beast November 14, 2014 Marilyn Johnson is a writer with a terrific capacity for learning. She’s endlessly curious and she also has a wonderful gift for turning her curiosity into writing that’s engaging and approachable. Her enthusiasm is...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter July 28, 2003 The author of Moneyball was in Boston to throw out the first pitch last Friday night. (David Halberstam, eat your heart out.) A week earlier, Michael Lewis was in New York, putting the finishing touches on the press tour for...
By Alex Belth Introduction from Southwest Passage 2013 When he went off to cover the war in the Pacific in January 1943, John Lardner was twenty-nine years old and, thanks to his weekly column in Newsweek, already a major figure in sportswriting. Nothing at Madison...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader Ray Robinson died last November at the age of 96. He was born and raised in New York, spent pretty much his whole life here and he died here. Ray wrote about sports and worked as an editor for magazines like Pageant, Good Housekeeping...
