This image is the cover for the book Gilded Age of Sport, 1945–1960

Gilded Age of Sport, 1945–1960

From gridiron to diamond, lawn to green, a legendary sportswriter captures the wins, losses, and draws of an exciting period in American sports history

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Herbert Warren Wind covered many of the most dramatic contests and iconic athletes of the twentieth century. Inspired by Paul Gallico’s classic dispatches from the golden age of the 1920s and ’30s, The Gilded Age of Sport collects Wind’s finest pieces on the people and places of the postwar era.

With graceful prose and an authoritative eye for the telling detail, he profiles sports heroes including Yogi Berra, Ben Hogan, Maurice Richard, Bob Cousy, Sam Snead, Ted Williams, Herb Elliott, and Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman. Wind reveals Rocky Marciano’s training regimen, journeys as far afield as Japan and Australia to report on the international sports scene, and delights in the startling discrepancy between the woeful record of Harvard’s football team and the glory of its marching band.

An elegant and comprehensive survey of fifteen thrilling years in sports history, The Gilded Age of Sport is a testament to the versatility, wit, and wisdom of a master craftsman.

Herbert Warren Wind

Herbert Warren Wind (1916–2005) was a longtime staff writer at the New Yorker and a writer and editor for Sports Illustrated. The dean of American golf writers, he coined the term “Amen Corner” to describe the famous stretch of the Augusta National Golf Course and co-authored books with Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus. A native of Brockton, Massachusetts, Wind graduated from Yale University and earned a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Cambridge. He began playing golf at a young age and competed in the 1950 British Amateur Championship. His elegant, richly detailed prose matched his meticulous golf course attire of a tweed jacket, shirt, tie, and cap—even in the warmest weather. Wind wrote or edited fourteen books during his lifetime, including The Story of American Golf (1948), The Gilded Age of Sport (1961), Herbert Warren Wind’s Golf Book (1971) and Following Through (1985). The United States Golf Association’s annual book award is named in his honor, and in 2008 he was posthumously inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. According to his friend Ben Crenshaw, “every time you read Herbert Warren Wind, you get a history lesson, a golf lesson, and a life lesson.”
 

Open Road Integrated Media