Titles by Howard Megdal

<p><strong>Combining modern reportage with historical revelations, a multifaceted portrait of Caitlin Clark&#39;s game-changing superstardom and the cultural foundation it was built upon</strong><br /><br />Caitlin Clark has established herself as one of the global faces of the WNBA and has ignited popular interest in women&#39;s sports. Her ascent to dominance and international celebrity represents the continuation of a surprisingly deep lineage for women&#39;s basketball in the state of Iowa where Clark was born and raised, and where she wrote her name throughout the NCAA history books as a Hawkeye.<br /><br />Spanning 100 years and several generations, <em>Becoming Caitlin Clark</em> traces the arc between the revered women who played the wildly popular game of 6-on-6 basketball in the 1920s and Clark in the 2020s, examining her fame and style of play in the context of her predecessors, while telling the story of the basketball-loving community that rallied behind her in college and beyond.<br /><br />Howard Megdal&#39;s storytelling incorporates exclusive conversations with Clark; her coach Lisa Bluder; the top assistant coach at Iowa, Jan Jensen; the Caitlin Clark of the 1970s, Molly Bolin; and even Jensen&#39;s grandmother Dorcas Andersen, who scored 89 points in a state title game in 1921 and participated in oral histories that are brought to light for the first time.<br /><br /><strong>From rural auditoriums to the Indiana Fever&#39;s&nbsp;Gainbridge Fieldhouse, this intimate yet kaleidoscopic perspective on the modern game and its newest icon makes this an essential read for WNBA and college basketball fans.</strong></p>

<b>An expansive and compelling chronicle tracing the rise of modern women&#39;s basketball</b><br /><br />Elvera &ldquo;Peps&rdquo; Neuman got lost in the sounds and rhythms of basketball, dribbling and shooting on a hoop affixed to her family&#39;s barn in Eden Valley, Minnesota. In the years preceding Title IX, Neuman&#39;s dreams of playing the game professionally meant a life away from home on barnstorming tours and even forming a team of her own, the Arkansas Gems.<br /><br />Sixty years later, she got to witness&nbsp;what a sold-out Target Center in downtown Minneapolis looked like on the Friday night of the 2022 Women&rsquo;s Final Four. Neuman&rsquo;s cheers joined with a crowd of 18,268 to send a wall of sound toward the Twin Cities&#39; own Paige Bueckers and her Connecticut teammates.&nbsp;The 5&rsquo;11 Bueckers may have worn her ponytail a little differently than Neuman, but Neuman certainly saw something of herself in the young superstar.<br /><br />This is the story&nbsp;of the pioneers who shaped so much of the modern infrastructure for women&#39;s basketball, whose histories intersect and wind their way through the state of Minnesota.&nbsp;It is the story of forcing open doors&mdash;to ensure teams even existed, to allow those teams to play in conditions resembling those men could take for granted, to ensure that the color of your skin or who you love would not be a barrier to building a life centered around basketball. To end the double-standard that treats every undeniable success by women as a one-off, but every setback as a referendum.&nbsp;<br /><br />Four generations of women have played essential and diverse roles: Neuman and her friend and collaborator of a half-century, Vicky Nelson; Cheryl Reeve and her wife, Carley Knox; Lindsay Whalen, Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, and WNBA&#39;s Minnesota Lynx; right through to the future of the game in Bueckers and the stars of tomorrow.<br /><br />Through meticulous research and evocative storytelling, this captivating narrative gives due recognition to the luminaries who ushered in women&#39;s basketball&#39;s modern era.

<strong>Updated and expanded edition!</strong><br /><br />From the icons of the game to the players who got their big break but never quite broke through, <em>The Baseball Talmud</em> provides a wonderful historical narration of Major League Jewish Baseball in America. All the stats, the facts, the stories, and the (often unheralded) glory. This delightful compmendium reveals that there is far more to Jewish baseball than Hank Greenberg&#39;s powerful slugging and Sandy Koufax&#39;s masterful control.<br /><br />From Ausmus to Zinn, Berg to Kinsler, Holtzman to Yeager, and many others, Howard Megdal draws upon the lore and the little-known details that increase our enjoyment of the game.<br /><br /><strong>This new, expanded edition of <em>The Baseball Talmud</em> rewrites the history of Jewish baseball and is a book that every baseball fan should own.</strong>