Known as the "Man in the Brown Suit" and the "Baron of the Bluegrass," Adolph Rupp (1901--1977) is a towering figure in the history of college athletics. In Adolph Rupp and the Rise of Kentucky Basketball, historian James Duane Bolin goes beyond the wins and losses to present the fullest account of Rupp's life to date based on more than one-hundred interviews with Rupp, his assistant coaches, former players, University of Kentucky presidents and faculty members, and his admirers and critics, as well as court transcripts, newspaper accounts, and other archival materials. His teams won four NCAA championships (1948, 1949, 1951, and 1958), the 1946 National Invitation Tournament title, and twenty-seven Southeastern Conference regular season titles. Rupp's influence on the game of college basketball and his impact on Kentucky culture are both much broader than his impressive record on the court. Bolin covers Rupp's early years -- from his rural upbringing in a German Mennonite family in Halstead, Kansas, through his undergraduate years at the University of Kansas playing on teams coached by Phog Allen and taking classes with James Naismith, the inventor of basketball -- to his success at Kentucky. This revealing portrait of a pivotal figure in American sports also exposes how college basketball changed, for better or worse, in the twentieth century.

William Frederick "Billy" Klair (1875-1937) was the undisputed czar of Lexington, Kentucky, for decades. As political boss in a mid-sized, southern city, he faced problems strikingly similar to those of large cities in the North. As he watched the city grow from a sleepy market town of 16,000 residents to a bustling, active urban center of over 50,000, Klair saw changes that altered not just Lexington but the nation and the world: urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. But Klair did not merely watch these changes; like other political bosses and social reformers, he actively participated in the transformation of his city.

As a political boss and a practitioner of what George Washington Plunkitt of Tammany Hall referred to as "honest graft," Klair applied lessons of organization, innovation, manipulation, power, and control from the machine age to bring together diverse groups of Lexingtonians and Kentuckians as supporters of a powerful political machine. James Duane Bolin also examines the underside of the city, once known as the Athens of the West. He balances the postcard view of Bluegrass mansions and horse farms with the city's well-known vice district, housing problems, racial tensions, and corrupt politics. With the reality of life in Lexington as a backdrop, the career of Billy Klair provides as a valuable and engaging case study of the inner workings of a southern political machine.

Known as the "Man in the Brown Suit" and the "Baron of the Bluegrass," Adolph Rupp (1901--1977) is a towering figure in the history of college athletics. In Adolph Rupp and the Rise of Kentucky Basketball, historian James Duane Bolin goes beyond the wins and losses to present the fullest account of Rupp's life to date based on more than one-hundred interviews with Rupp, his assistant coaches, former players, University of Kentucky presidents and faculty members, and his admirers and critics, as well as court transcripts, newspaper accounts, and other archival materials. His teams won four NCAA championships (1948, 1949, 1951, and 1958), the 1946 National Invitation Tournament title, and twenty-seven Southeastern Conference regular season titles. Rupp's influence on the game of college basketball and his impact on Kentucky culture are both much broader than his impressive record on the court. Bolin covers Rupp's early years -- from his rural upbringing in a German Mennonite family in Halstead, Kansas, through his undergraduate years at the University of Kansas playing on teams coached by Phog Allen and taking classes with James Naismith, the inventor of basketball -- to his success at Kentucky. This revealing portrait of a pivotal figure in American sports also exposes how college basketball changed, for better or worse, in the twentieth century.