Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary

by David L. Porter

Overview

African Americans and Latino Americans have played an increasingly significant role in the ongoing saga of American sports—and not just in popular sports like basketball and baseball. This is the first comprehensive, multisport biographical resource to concentrate exclusively on the accomplishments, achievements, and personal struggles of notable African American and Latino American athletes of the last quarter century. A total of 175 important contemporary athletes—113 African Americans and 62 Latino Americans—are profiled. Most made significant contributions to their sport since 1990. Athletes include Roberto Alomar, Oscar De La Hoya, Forence Griffith Joyner, Evander Holyfield, Michael Johnson, Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Ray Lewis, Sammy Sosa, Serena and Venus Williams, Tiger Woods, and many more.

Eighteen sports, from baseball to bobsledding, are covered. The profiles of the men and women include personal background information and athletic career achievements through 2002. Each athletic career is traced, including entrance into sport, major accomplishments, records set, awards and honors, and overall impact. Quotations from the athletes enrich each profile. Bibliographies and photos complement the entries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313320484
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/30/2004
Pages:	472
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.06(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

DAVID L. PORTER is Shangle Professor of History at William Penn University, Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Table of Contents

ContentsIntroductionviiAlphabetical List of Entries with SportxiAlphabetical List of Entries with Sport by HeritagexvList of Entries by Major SportxixList of Entries on Women with SportxxiiiThe Dictionary1Index425About the Editor and Contributors447

Editorial Reviews

The first multisport reference devoted exclusively to African American and Latino American athletes, this work features one- to two-page signed essays on some 175 athletes (e.g., Oscar de la Hoya, Tiger Woods, Serena and Venus Williams) representing 18 different sports. Complemented by black-and-white photos of the athletes and bibliographies, the essays focus on all aspects of the their careers, from their entrance into sport to their biggest accomplishments. Although this work is pricey, and some may question the need for such a focus, its accessible language and sufficient amount of information is suitable for public libraries. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Gr 5-9-Twenty-four contributors, most from academia, profile an arbitrary selection of about 175 athletes who made at least a brief splash in one or more of 17 sports within the past 25 years. However, the book is likely to score a clean miss with its target audience: baseball players outnumber basketball players two-to-one; several entrants, such as Bo Jackson, Evelyn Ashford, and underachieving (at least in the pros) running back Ron Dayne are either retired long enough to be out of public view or barely more than faces in the crowd. Only about a third of the entries rate a photo-all of which are murky black-and-white portraits, often a head shot rather than an action scene. Furthermore, 10 of the sports are represented by just 1 or 2 names. Rehashing information drawn from magazine articles and other previously published sources, the pieces combine barrages of unanalyzed stats with superficial to inane sound bites and standard-issue platitudes, e.g., Yankee star Derek Jeter of Yankee superstar Mariano Rivera: "When Mo's pitching, you don't field nothing, he strikes out a lot of guys." There are no tables of career statistics, nor guides to updated information on currently active figures. The particular focus of this biographical encyclopedia may fill a niche in some collections, but strictly as a placeholder until a more systematic, appealingly presented work comes along.-John Peters, New York Public Library Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal