Books by David Margolick
Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink
Nothing in the annals of sports has aroused more passion than the heavyweight fights in New York in 1936 and 1938 between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling–bouts that symbolized and galvanized the hopes, hatreds, and fears of a world moving toward total war.
David Margolick takes us into the careers of both men. We see Louis in his boyhood and amateur days in Detroit and Chicago, and the blossoming of his boxing genius. We see him, already a near-mythical figure, taking New York by storm in the 1930s, fighting before record crowds, the savior of a sport that had fallen into decline and a long sought after symbol of redemption for black America after the scandalous reign of Jack Johnson two decades earlier. And we witness how with talent, a gentle personality, and shrewd management, Louis managed to trump the brutal racism directed at him and came to dominate what had been primarily a white man’s sport, becoming a hero of unprecedented power and influence in black America.
Schmeling, we learn, was a kind of chameleon, a cultural icon in Weimar Germany who seamlessly, disconcertingly, maintained his privileged status after the Nazi takeover. He pulled off a remarkable feat, relying on a Jewish manager and a Jewish promoter in New York while being extolled at home as a model of “racial superiority.” Margolick meticulously examines all the complex ties that developed between Schmeling and the Nazis, shattering the myth that they frowned upon him before he upset Louis in 1936–he was a ten-to-one underdog–and ostracized him after losing to Louis two years later.
We see the extraordinary buildup to the 1938 rematch–the worsening international tensions seemingly raising the stakes–in which Louis would need only 124 seconds to defeat Schmeling, while radio allowed the whole world to listen. Margolick vividly captures the outpouring of emotion that the two fighters aroused–in the white South, in the black and Jewish communities in the United States, in Germany, everywhere–and he makes clear the cultural and social divisions the two men came to represent as the threat posed by the Nazis became increasingly clear, and as America began to feel the effects of a nascent civil rights movement. Schmeling’s postwar success in business and Louis’s sad decline add a poignant coda.
A book at once about sports and about a pivotal moment in twentieth-century history, Beyond Glory pulses with energy from first to last.
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Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink
Nothing in the annals of sports has aroused more passion than the heavyweight fights in New York in 1936 and 1938 between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling — bouts that symbolized the hopes, hatreds, and fears of a world moving toward total war. Acclaimed journalist David Margolick takes us into the careers of both men — a black American and a Nazi German hero — and depicts the extraordinary buildup to their legendary 1938 rematch. Vividly capturing the outpouring of emotion that the two fighters brought forth, Margolick brilliantly illuminates the cultural and social divisions that they came to represent.
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When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy
From longtime Vanity Fair contributing editor David Margolick comes the first definitive biography of Sid Caesar: founding father of American comedy and the icon who made modern television.
In the spring of 1954, Sid Caesar was America’s number one mensch. Each Saturday night, the 31-year-old sketch comic from Yonkers performed for a crowd of twenty million—some crammed into Manhattan’s cavernous Center Theater, but most plopped on their couches, where Caesar beamed back at them through some of the first TVs to light up living rooms.
For many Americans, Caesar was television. And Your Show of Shows, the 90-minute variety program that catapulted him to stardom, was his magnum opus. Onstage, Caesar could be anyone: a befuddled suburban husband, a pretentious expert fibbing through an interview, a gumball machine, a bottle of seltzer. And he could make anything funny. But behind the entertainer was the man: introverted and tongue-tied, an actor whose hardest role was to simply be himself. Few could have known that, within just a few years, Caesar would be off the air. Television’s first true star was also its first fall from grace. But in his wake would come the talents he personally nurtured―including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon―and the generations of comedians he inspired.
In When Caesar Was King, veteran journalist David Margolick conjures Caesar like few writers can. Deeply researched and brimming with love for its subject, this rollicking and affecting book charts the meteoric rise and fall of a true legend, and his lasting impact on what makes us all laugh.
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Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns
American author John Horne Burns (1916–1953) led a brief and controversial life, and as a writer, transformed many of his darkest experiences into literature. Burns was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Andover and Harvard, and went on to teach English at the Loomis School, a boarding school for boys in Windsor, Connecticut. During World War II, he was stationed in Africa and Italy, and worked mainly in military intelligence. His first novel, The Gallery (1947), based on his wartime experiences, is a critically acclaimed novel and one of the first to unflinchingly depict gay life in the military. The Gallery sold half a million copies upon publication, but never again would Burns receive that kind of critical or popular attention.
Dreadful follows Burns, from his education at the best schools to his final years of drinking and depression in Italy. With intelligence and insight, David Margolick examines Burns’s moral ambivalence toward the behavior of American soldiers stationed with him in Naples, and the scandal surrounding his second novel, Lucifer with a Book, an unflattering portrayal of his experiences at Loomis.
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The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Martin Luther King, Jr. And Robert F. Kennedy
No issue in america in the 1960s was more vital than civil rights, and no two public figures were more crucial in the drama of race relations in this era than Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. Fifty years after they were both murdered, noted journalist David Margolick explores the untold story of the complex and ever-evolving relationship between these two American icons.
Assassinated only sixty-two days apart in 1968, King and Kennedy changed the United States forever, and their deaths profoundly altered the country’s trajectory. In The Promise and the Dream, Margolick examines their unique bond and the complicated mix of mutual assistance, impatience, wariness, awkwardness, antagonism, and admiration that existed between the two, documented with original interviews, oral histories, FBI files, and previously untapped contemporaneous accounts.
At a turning point in social history, MLK and RFK embarked on distinct but converging paths toward lasting change. Even when they weren’t interacting directly, they monitored and learned from, one another. Their joint story, a story each man took some pains to hide and which began to come into focus only with their murders, is not just gripping history but a window into contemporary America and the challenges we continue to face.
Complemented by award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley’s foreword and more than eighty revealing photos by the foremost photojournalists of the period, The Promise and the Dream offers a compelling look at one of the most consequential but misunderstood relationships in our nation’s history.
Copies
No copies available.
Dreadful The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns
American author John Horne Burns (1916–1953) led a brief and controversial life, and as a writer, transformed many of his darkest experiences into literature. Burns was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Andover and Harvard, and went on to teach English at the Loomis School, a boarding school for boys in Windsor, Connecticut. During World War II, he was stationed in Africa and Italy, and worked mainly in military intelligence. His first novel, The Gallery (1947), based on his wartime experiences, is a critically acclaimed novel and one of the first to unflinchingly depict gay life in the military. The Gallery sold half a million copies upon publication, but never again would Burns receive that kind of critical or popular attention.
Dreadful follows Burns, from his education at the best schools to his final years of drinking and depression in Italy. With intelligence and insight, David Margolick examines Burns’s moral ambivalence toward the behavior of American soldiers stationed with him in Naples, and the scandal surrounding his second novel, Lucifer with a Book, an unflattering portrayal of his experiences at Loomis.
Copies
No copies available.
Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song
by David Margolick, Hilton Als
Learn the story behind the song performed by Andra Day in "United States vs. Billie Holiday" now on Hulu
Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, “Strange Fruit” is considered the first significant song of the Civil Rights movement and the first direct assault against racial lynchings in the South. First sung in New York’s Café Society, these revolutionary lyrics have taken up a life of their own, as David Margolick discusses in his revealing account of the song and the struggle it came to personify.
Voted the “Song of the Century"” by Time, “Strange Fruit” is a searing evocation of lynching. And when Billie Holiday sang it, she held audiences in rapt attention, moving some to tears, others to anger, and all to a heightened awareness of the racist violence that was still, nearly a century after the Civil War, taking the lives of African Americans. Now, David Margolick’s account cuts away the myths that have grown up around both Holiday and her most famous song, allowing readers to discover the true origins of “Strange Fruit"” and the circuitous paths it took to the center of a nation’s conscience.
Margolick establishes the political and cultural context that surrounded “Strange Fruit” in 1939—a year in which there were three recorded lynchings and suspicion of many others, and which saw the publication of Gone with the Wind—and traces the song’s journey through the red-baiting 50s and the incipient Civil Rights movement of the 60s, right up to the reverence it still inspires today. Along the way, Margolick includes commentary and reaction to the song from black and white audiences of different eras, and writers and musicians as varied as Lena Horne, Paul Robeson, Pauline Kael, Charles Mingus, Cassandra Wilson, Maya Angelou, among others.
Exploring the intricate nexus between jazz, race, and politics, Strange Fruit opens a window onto an extraordinary song, the woman who sang it, and the role it played in our culture’s evolving consciousness of racism.
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Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock
Who were the two fifteen-year-old girls from Little Rock—one black, one white—in one of the most unforgettable photographs of the civil rights era?
"Through Eckford and Bryan’s tangled lives, [Margolick] hopes to capture the complexity of race, forgiveness, and reconciliation in modern America."—Kevin Boyle, Washington Post
"Margolick . . . tells us the amazing story of how Elizabeth and Hazel, as adults, struggled to find each other across the racial divide and in so doing, end their pain and find a measure of peace. We all need to know about Elizabeth and Hazel."—President Bill Clinton
The names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September 1957 surely is: a Black high school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. This famous photograph captures the full anguish of desegregation—in Little Rock and throughout the South—and an epic moment in the civil rights movement.
In this gripping book, David Margolick tells the remarkable story of two separate lives unexpectedly braided together. He explores how the haunting picture of Elizabeth and Hazel came to be taken, its significance in the wider world, and why, for the next half-century, neither woman has ever escaped from its long shadow. He recounts Elizabeth’s struggle to overcome the trauma of her hate-filled school experience, and Hazel’s long efforts to atone for a fateful, horrible mistake. The book follows the painful journey of the two as they progress from apology to forgiveness to reconciliation and, amazingly, to friendship. This friendship foundered, then collapsed—perhaps inevitably—over the same fissures and misunderstandings that continue to permeate American race relations more than half a century after the unforgettable photograph at Little Rock. And yet, as Margolick explains, a bond between Elizabeth and Hazel, silent but complex, endures.
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The Promise and the Dream The Interrupted Lives of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr
by Douglas Brinkley, David Margolick
Fifty years after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, acclaimed journalist David Margolick reveals the untold story of the complex relationship between the two remarkable men.
With the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, which took place only 62 days apart in 1968, the United States was changed forever. The deaths of these two great American heroes was a turning point in the social history of our country, embodying the nation's inner turmoil and serving as a sinister embodiment of race relations at the time. Fifty years later, how far have we come? In this riveting narrative, journalist David Margolick examines the complex relationship between MLK and RFK and provides a living history of this turbulent time, documented with richly drawn interviews from the people who experienced it firsthand. Filled with untold stories from close intimates and revealing photos by the foremost photojournalists of the period, this book provides a compelling look at a tumultuous moment in our country's history, bringing the past vibrantly to life to shine a light on the unique cultural crossroads of the modern age.
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