About this item
From the author of the bestselling Kobe Bryant biography The Rise comes the legend of the most powerful shot in basketball: the slam dunk.. The evolution of basketball, and much of the social and cultural change in America, can be traced through one powerful act on the court: the slam dunk. The dunk's history is the story of a sport and a country changed by the most dominant act in basketball, and it makes Magic in the Air a rollicking and insightful piece of narrative history and a surefire classic of sports literature.. When basketball was the province of white men, the dunk acted as a revolutionary agent, a tool for players like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell to transform the sport into a Black man's game. The dunk has since been an expression of Black culture amid the righteous upheaval of the civil-rights movement, of the threat that Black people were considered to be to the establishment.
About the Author
Born in New Brunswick, N.J., and raised just outside Philadelphia, Mike Sielski (1975-) is the author of "Fading Echoes: A True Story of Rivalry and Brotherhood from the Football Field to the Fields of Honor." In 2005, he co-authored the book "How to Be Like Jackie Robinson: Life Lessons from Baseball's Greatest Hero" with Pat Williams. A 1997 graduate of La Salle University and a 1998 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Sielski has been the sports columnist for Calkins Media, a chain of daily newspapers in suburban Philadelphia, since 2003.
