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1 of 1 persons found the following review helpful.
A Major Disappointment
By mawidad
I had high expected values for this publication, exceptionally so with a title that offers such awful potential. I am a product of the K-12 Chicago Public School system, former varsity basketball player and multi-sport athlete at a Chicago public high school in the early 1960′s, so I have more than a vested interest in the author’s subject matter. I enthusiastically purchased various copies of this book with the aim of sending copies to the life-long friends that I met through my high school basketball days and are now scattered around the country. Instead, what I found was a text that was written at the level of a high school term paper. There are historical inaccuracies, punctuation errors, annoying amounts of self-promotion by the author (including an beside the point photo of himself on the cover), and a painful lack of any significant exploration prior to the teams and stars of the 1950′s. For example, the author drops a few names of stars from the 1920′s and 1930′s and then completely jumps over the 1940′s altogether omitting the great South Shore HS teams from the 1940′s, coached by Tony Malfia, that went to the state tourney a lot of times. Further, if this is the “History of Chicago Basketball” as the cover’s subtitle says, why is there NO mention at all of the Chicago Catholic League and it is outstanding players (ever listen of Art Hicks, Corey Magette and Tom Kleinschmidt?)? To top it off, the book is printed in a style that’s double-spaced – meaning that there could without apparent effort be less pages in this publication. I can’t believe that an editor in truth passed this “book” through for publication. If you want more data with regards to the history of Chicago High School basketball, I commend any of author Taylor Bell’s related publications and books. I consider myself a comparatively positive person, and have never written a negative book review before…but I felt compelled to post one here for this personally very disappointing buy and read.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Don’t Waste your Money!
By Robert L. Dennison
I eagerly purchased this book as a package with four other basketball books with regards to Illinois high school basketball history. After reading the initial sentence I quickly realized that this was poorly written and poorly edited. I was stunned to find out that the author was asociated with the Chicago Board of Education and had gone to an Ivy League University (Penn). Throughout the book there were so some grammatical errors and misusage of upper and lower case letters that it serves as an example of how not to write or publish a book. I instruct at a downstate community college and when I showed this book to my colleagues they were horrified that this was published and concerned that this was an example of what goes on within the Chicago public school systems.
1 of 2 humans found the following review helpful.
Great read
By S. Davis
The author portrays a realistic view of the history of Chicago basketball. The author discusses the evolution of basketball on the southside of Chicago. This s a ought to read for basketball fans and Chicago fans.
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