The Assist: Hoops, Hope, and the Game of Their Lives

Jack O'Brien, the impossibly demanding basketball coach at Charlestown High School in Boston, has led his team...
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SKU: 9781586486662
Product Type: Books
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Author: Neil Swidey
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Subtotal: $44.90
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The Assist: Hoops, Hope, and the Game of Their Lives by Swidey, Neil

The Assist: Hoops, Hope, and the Game of Their Lives

$44.90

The Assist: Hoops, Hope, and the Game of Their Lives

$44.90
Author: Neil Swidey
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Jack O'Brien, the impossibly demanding basketball coach at Charlestown High School in Boston, has led his team to five state championship titles in six years. Less talked about is O'Brien's other winning record: Nearly every one of the players who stuck with his program -- poor kids growing up in high-crime neighborhoods and saddled with the lousy educational system available in urban America -- managed to get to college. But O'Brien is no saint. Saints give without expecting anything in return. O'Brien needs his players and their problems as much as they need him.

Revolving around fascinating, complex characters, The Assist is a captivating narrative of a basketball team in pursuit of a championship that also drills down into the legacy of desegregation and explores issues of education, family, and race. O'Brien is a middle-aged white guy coaching an all-black team playing in an all-white neighborhood that three decades ago was at the center of the busing wars dividing cities across the country -- a time and place indelibly described in J. Anthony Lukas's powerful book Common Ground. It's the inspiring story of a man who makes a difference, and of boys surmounting nearly impossible odds; it is also the story of the ones who don't make it, and why.

Author: Neil Swidey
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 11/11/2008
Pages: 392
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781586486662


Award: Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award - Nominee
Award: Iowa High School Book Award - Nominee

About the Author
Neil Swidey is a staff writer for the Boston Globe Magazine. His writing has won the National Headliner Award and been featured in The Best American Science Writing, The Best American Crime Reporting, and The Best American Political Writing. He lives outside Boston with his wife and three daughters.

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