Overview

"Howard Cosell's colorful bombast, fearless reporting, and courageous stance on civil rights made him one of the most recognizable and controversial figures in American sports history. ""Telling it like it is,"" he covered nearly every major sports story for three decades, from the travails of Muhammad Ali to the tragedy at the Munich Olympics. Now, two decades after his death, this deeply misunderstood sports legend has finally gotten the ""definitive"" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) and revelatory biography he so much deserves. With more than forty interviews, Mark Ribowsky has brilliantly presented Cosell's endless complexities in the ""first thoroughly researched and effectively framed biography of Cosell and his times"" (Huffington Post)."

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Reviews

Ribowsky, who previously wrote a fine book on Satchel Paige, gives Cosell the treatment this controversial giant in sports journalism deserves. Ribowsky has deftly captured this complicated figure, and anyone who cares about sports and how we talk about sports will find this book well worth the time, no matter how off-putting its subject was to many.--Steve Kettman Ribowsky, who seems to have read just about everything on Cosell, is a deft narrator of the life of Humble Howard, taking his readers from the skinny kid in Brooklyn who yearned to spend more time with an absent father to the sportscaster who helped make an event out of Monday Night Football by being so very different from anyone else who had ever called a game. A powerful biography... well researched and well written. A sportscasting giant is interpreted for a generation that never knew him...Mark Ribowsky's clear-eyed take on the broadcaster who built his career on telling it like it is reveals the insecurities that fueled Cosell's bravado, charting his ascension from growing up in a middle-class home in Brooklyn to a short-lived career as a lawyer before elbowing his way into radio and TV and becoming the most influential--and controversial--sports commentator in America.

In Howard Cosell, author Mark Ribowsky reveals the obnoxious broadcaster who transformed sports reporting. --Sherryl Connelly

...the book vividly depicts Cosell as a brilliant meteor that soared through the electronic sky before ultimately fading, dimmed by controversy, age, exhaustion and perhaps his own obstreperous personality. Warts and all, there has never been, and may never be again, anyone quite like Howard Cosell. --Don Ohlmeyer, former president of NBC West Coast and produced of Monday Night Football from 1972 to 1976

...the book vividly depicts Cosell as a brilliant meteor that soared through the electronic sky before ultimately fading, dimmed by controversy, age, exhaustion and perhaps his own obstreperous personality. Warts and all, there has never been, and may never be again, anyone quite like Howard Cosell.--Don Ohlmeyer, former president of NBC West Coast and produced of Monday Night Football from 1972 to 1976

Mr. Ribowsky's book is an entertaining read and a thought-provoking portrayal of the multi-faceted Howard Cosell in all his glory and enmity. It is based on voluminous, well-sourced research into print and electronic material, coupled with numerous interviews with Cosell's contemporaries. ...the book vividly depicts Cosell as a brilliant meteor that soared through the electronic sky before ultimately fading, dimmed by controversy, age, exhaustion and perhaps his own obstreperous personality. Warts and all, there has never been, and may never be again, anyone quite like Howard Cosell. --Don Ohlmeyer, former president of NBC West Coast and produced of Monday Night Football from 1972 to 1976

Author Information

Mark Ribowsky is a New York Times acclaimed, best-selling author of fifteen books, including biographies of Tom Landry, Al Davis, Hank Williams, and most recently, In the Name of the Father: Family, Football, and the Manning Dynasty. He lives in Florida.lorida.

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