5 ratings | 0 reviews | avg rating:5.00

Alexander Wolff’s Followers (39)

Alexander’s Bookshelves

to-read (0)
currently-reading (0)
read (5)

Alexander’s Friends

Alexander hasn't connected with their friends on Goodreads, yet.

Alexander Wolff

Goodreads Author

Website

http://www.AlexanderWolff.com

Twitter

alexander_wolff

Genre

Nonfiction, Sports, History

Member Since

October 2015

edit data

Thanks for your interest in my books and me!
I spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, leaving in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. Besides covering basketball at all levels, I filed from the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France. SI story assignments took me to China, Cuba, and Iran, and dealt with such issues at the intersection of sport and society as race, ethnicity, gender, drugs, the environment, education, youth development, business, armed conflict, and ethics, as well as cultural themes like art, style, food, and the media.
I’m the author or co-author of seven books about basketball. They include Raw Recruits, a New York Times bestseller that examined college Thanks for your interest in my books and me!
I spent 36 years at Sports Illustrated, leaving in 2016 as the longest-tenured writer on staff. Besides covering basketball at all levels, I filed from the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, the World Series, every Grand Slam tennis event, and the Tour de France. SI story assignments took me to China, Cuba, and Iran, and dealt with such issues at the intersection of sport and society as race, ethnicity, gender, drugs, the environment, education, youth development, business, armed conflict, and ethics, as well as cultural themes like art, style, food, and the media.
I’m the author or co-author of seven books about basketball. They include Raw Recruits, a New York Times bestseller that examined college basketball recruiting; Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, an account of a year spent chasing the game around the globe to take the measure of its impact, which was named a 2002 New York Times Book Review Notable Book; and The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama. I also edited and introduced a collection of basketball writing for the Library of America, Basketball: Great Writing About America’s Game, published in 2018.
In March 2021 Atlantic Monthly Press and Grove UK will publish Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home, with DuMont Buchverlag of Cologne releasing a German edition in Fall 2021. The book explores the lives of my grandfather and father, both German-born men who became American citizens. Kurt Wolff, a book publisher of Jewish descent, went into exile to escape the Nazis and founded Pantheon Books in New York in 1941; his son, who because of a divorce remained behind in Germany, was left to fight in Hitler’s army before landing in the U.S. in 1948.
My writing for Sports Illustrated includes three pieces that appeared in The Best American Sports Writing. In 1996, with Hoop Dreams filmmakers Steve James and Peter Gilbert, I collaborated on Team of Broken Dreams, an Emmy-nominated documentary short that detailed the impact of the Yugoslav crisis on basketball players from the Balkans. Broadcast on NBC and based on one of my SI articles, the film won the International Olympic Committee’s Media Award.
As a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton in 2002, I taught a seminar called Writing About Sports and the Wider World. In 2010 I served as commencement speaker at Springfield College, and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame honored me in 2011 with its Curt Gowdy Media Award for contributions to the game as a print journalist.
At Brighton High School in Rochester, N.Y., I co-captained the varsity basketball team. In 1980 I earned a B.A. in History with honors from Princeton after having taken a leave to play basketball with a club team in Switzerland. In 2006 my wife Vanessa and I founded the Vermont Frost Heaves of the American Basketball Association, whose birth and life I chronicled in SI and on SI.com.
I love hearing from readers and am happy to speak with book clubs, collaborate with bookstores, libraries, and festivals on events, and otherwise affirm and spread literary culture. Books are in the family blood! ...more

Learn more
Ask the Author

To ask Alexander Wolff questions, please sign up.

Combine Editions
Alexander Wolff’s books

Average rating: 4.02 · 642 ratings · 95 reviews · 24 distinct works • Similar authors

	Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home 3.97 avg rating — 273 ratings — published 2021 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure 4.15 avg rating — 103 ratings — published 2002 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Raw Recruits by Alexander Wolff (Goodreads Author), Armen Keteyian 3.77 avg rating — 87 ratings — published 1990 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Basketball: Great Writing About America's Game: A Library of America Special Publication by Alexander Wolff (Goodreads Author) (editor), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Foreword) 4.33 avg rating — 67 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama 4.10 avg rating — 49 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sports Illustrated 100 Years of Hoops 3.78 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1995	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	100 Years of Hoops 2.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1991 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A March for Honor: How a Small Indiana Town and its Team Helped Save Hoosier Hysteria (Fan Series of Sports Books) by Alexander Wolff (Goodreads Author), Damian Strohmeyer it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1997	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Das Land meiner Väter: Die deutsch-amerikanische Geschichte meines Großvaters Kurt Wolff really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Basketball: A history of the game did not like it 1.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Alexander Wolff…

7 posts
Alexander Wolff's Blog: ENDPAPERS Shelfies

ENDPAPERS Shelfies: Ferriday

My cousin Caroline Ferriday, hero of the bestseller Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, has a cameo in ENDPAPERS. So does the eponymous Louisiana town from which our slaveholder ancestors came. I extend thanks to the authors of each of these books, who helped me tell the Caroline part of the larger story.

Ravensbrück Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm

Devils Walking Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s by Stanley Nelson

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Horror Aficionados : Track the Short Fiction You've Read in 2019!	54	155	Jan 09, 2020 05:56AM
Wholesome History...: What I'm Reading	557	129	Jul 03, 2025 04:22PM