Full Swing ─ Hits, Runs and Errors in a Writer's Life

It was a long way from the gritty streets of Springfield Avenue on Chicago's West Side, and hawking stockings in the old Maxwell Street marketplace, to a position as sports columnist and feature writer for the New York Times, and a share in the Pulitzer Prize. But Ira Berkow made that improbable journey. In this joyful, moving, and often funny memoir, he describes how he climbed up to become not just a sportswriter but a writer.

Ira Berkow has been a sports columnist and feature writer for the New York Times for more than twenty years. In 2001 he shared the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with his article on "The Minority Quarterback," later published by Ivan R. Dee in a book of the same name. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the best-sellersRed: A Biography of Red Smith and Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar. He lives in New York City.