For over half a century Alistair Cooke has been reporting on and interpreting America to the rest of the world, both in print and on the air, bringing his unique blend of curiosity, wit, and perceptive analysis to bear on the sometimes glittering, often gritty, worlds of sports and entertainment. This volume brings together for the first time Alistair Cooke’s best writing on a wide variety of sports – tennis, baseball, cricket, sailing, horse racing, boxing, and above all, golf, about which no one writes more brilliantly and lovingly – as well as other areas of entertainment: movies, jazz, and the theater. He takes us on a whirlwind tour of famous people, exotic places, and key sporting events. He has covered every president since Hoover, was a friend of Charlie Chaplin, admired Duke Ellington and George Gershwin above all other American composers, and was fascinated by Sugar Ray Robinson (who he firmly believes was the best fighter pound for pound in the history of the ring). In these pages we come engagingly close to Greta Garbo and Arnold Palmer, Groucho Marx and Bobby Jones, Fred Mac Murray and Gabriela Sabatini, Gary Cooper and Max Cohe (who? you’ll find out). He takes us memorably ringside for the Robinson-Turpin and Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fights; to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby; to Augusta, Georgia, for the Masters golf tournament; to Wimbledon to ruminate on gamesmanship then and now. But of all the sports he has witnessed and covered, his first love is truly golf. Whether it is Arnold Palmer playing in 102-degree heat in San Antonio, dapper Gary Player winning the U.S. Open at Creve Coeur, Missouri, or Jack Nicklaus playing (and winning) almost anywhere, Alistair Cooke on his favorite sport is a rare and constant pleasure. Whether savored singly or read as a whole, Fun & Games with Alistair Cooke is a pure delight, leaving the reader constantly charmed, amused, and enlightened.
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