About
Imagine Mad Men set not in the advertising world but at 1960s Sports Illustrated, a place where the finest sports staff of any generation was attended by an open bar and almost unlimited expense account. This was the world Mark Kram lived and wrote in, along with his peers including Frank Deford, Dan Jenkins and other major talents. A high school graduate with a gift for revealing the hearts of his subjects, Kram would become one of the greatest sports writers of all time, covering the famed rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Negro League baseball star Cool Papa Bell, doomed soccer legend George Best, Olympic gold medal sprinter Edwin Moses, and others.
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Reviews
"[Kram] understood the history and the strategy of the ring, and he could describe a jab or a roundhouse right with the precision that made you feel it...his prose was energetic, inventive...and enormously fun to read."
The New York Times
"Richly created stories...[Kram's] writing forever elevated sports reporting to an art form."
The Washington Review of Books
"Mark Kram's best pieces can only be described as literature. His elevation of American vernacular and jaundiced native lyricism combined to produce essays that will endure as long as anyone cares to read about sports."
Thomas McGuane