This is a non-fiction book that looks at the origins of basketball, exploring its religious, racial and political beginnings as a sport, culminating in it being played for the first time as an Olympic sport in Germany, 1936 when Hitler hosted the Olympic games.
It doesn't delve quite as deeply into the players' backgrounds as The Boys in the Boat does. But you do get a sense, albeit brief, of the white, Christian, prejudicial beginnings of the sport and the YMCA, where it took off.
You also get a pretty good sense of how some players who were chosen to go to the Olympics, early on, grappled with the anti-Semitism displayed by the US Olympic committee head and how he courted Hitler and his minions to get basketball included as a sport in the games. You learn of a team that refused to give their tacit endorsement of such prejudices via their participation in the games and voted not to compete in the qualifying games. And at least one of the US basketball team's players who did go was openly Jewish, unlike the US rowing crew, whose Jewish team member hid his belief and grappled with that decision.
It's one of those books I wish had a good educator's guide, or a publisher-offered free teaching guide, but it doesn't. Therefore I can't recommend it in Teachers. But it is a high-interest topic that many of your students may be interested in reading and would make a great addition to a classroom or home bookshelf.
