Willie Mays is arguably the greatest player in baseball history, still revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball's bold expansion to California. He was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Now James Hirsch reveals the man behind the player.
Mays was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. More than his records, his legacy is defined by the pure joy that he brought to fans and the loving memories that have been passed to future generations so they might know the magic and beauty of the game. With meticulous research and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a brilliant portrait of one of America's most significant cultural icons.

Before Rodney King, before the riots in Cincinnati, before Newark and Detroit and Watts, there was the Tulsa race war. On May 30, 1921, a misunderstanding between a white elevator operator and a black delivery boy escalated into the worst race riot in U.S. history. In this compelling and deeply human account, James Hirsch investigates how it erupted, how it was covered up, and how the survivors and their descendants are fighting for belated justice. "Superbly researched and engagingly written" (Fort Worth Morning Star), Riot and Remembrance powerfully chronicles one community's effort to overcome a horrific legacy, revealing how the segregation of history and memory affects all Americans.

A candid, provocative, and moving account of one of America's fastest-growing health issues
If you or someone you love has diabetes, you are not alone -- more than twenty million Americans now live with the disease. In Cheating Destiny, the best-selling author James S. Hirsch offers an incisive, sometimes surprising portrait of diabetes in America. Hirsch is intimately familiar with the disease: he has lived with type 1 diabetes for three decades. His brother, Irl, also a diabetic, is one of the country's leading diabetologists. Most poignantly, his son Garrett was diagnosed at age three.
Hirsch draws on his unique expertise to provide an engaging blend of reportage, memoir, history, and advocacy. He offers revealing views of life with diabetes: the urge toward secrecy that many diabetics feel, the everyday psychological and emotional hurdles, and the perseverance -- even heroism -- required for survival. Hirsch takes a look at the science behind the disease and its treatment, and lays bare the impact on our economy, society, and our families. Anyone who lives with diabetes -- or loves a diabetic -- will find this book essential reading.

An unforgettable true story, Two Souls Indivisible stirringly recounts the forging of a legendary, heroic bond between two soldiers. Fred Cherry and Porter Halyburton first met in their shared cell in a brutal POW camp in Vietnam. Cherry, an air force pilot, was badly injured after his plane crashed; he became the first black officer to be captured by the North Vietnamese. Halyburton, a young navy flier, was a naive white southerner thrown in as Cherry's cellmate. Their captors hoped close quarters would inflame American-bred racial tensions and break both men. Instead, American integrity and honor flourished, and as Cherry was nursed back to health, a friendship grew strong. The intense connection, powerfully reported by James S. Hirsch, would sustain both men through the war and throughout their lives. Inspiring, heartbreaking, remarkable, and never more timely, Two Souls Indivisible shows how good people can achieve greatness in the most hellish of circumstances.

In 1967, the black boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and a young acquaintance, John Artis, were wrongly convicted of triple murder by an all-white jury in Paterson, New Jersey. Over the next decade, Carter gradually amassed convincing evidence of his innocence and the vocal support of celebrities from Bob Dylan to Muhammad Ali. He was freed in 1976 pending a new trial, but he lost his appeal -- to the amazement of many -- and landed back in prison. Carter, bereft, shunned almost all human contact until he received a letter from Lesra Martin, a teenager raised in a Brooklyn ghetto. Against his bitter instincts, Carter agreed to meet with Martin, thus taking the first step on a tortuous path back to the world. Martin introduced him to an enigmatic group of Canadians who helped wage a successful battle to free him. As Carter orchestrated this effort from his cell, he also embarked on a singular intellectual journey, which led ultimately to a freedom more profound than any that could be granted by a legal authority.