Strong Inside

Andrew Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author of sports nonfiction for adults, teens, and children. His first book, the bestseller Strong Inside, became the first sports-related book ever to receive the Lillian Smith Book Award for civil rights and the RFK Book Awards’ special recognition prize for social justice. His Young Readers adaptation of Strong Inside was named one of the Top Biographies for Youth by the American Library Association. Andrew’s second book, Games of Deception, tells the story of the first U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. It was a Sydney Taylor Book Award Honor recipient and a Junior Library Guild selection. His third book, Singled Out, is a biography of Glenn Burke, the first openly gay Major League Baseball player. Esquire magazine hailed it as one of the “top 100 baseball books ever written.” His fourth book, Inaugural Ballers, tells the story of the first U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. It was named a “book of the year” by Kirkus and School Library Journal. In the spring of 2024, Andrew launches a series of early chapter books for young readers, Beyond the Game, featuring athletes who have done significant work for humanity outside of their sport. Andrew is Director of Special Projects at the Vanderbilt University Athletic Department and lives in Brentwood, Tenn., with his wife, Alison, and children, Eliza and Charlie.

• List of Illustrations Foreword1. Forgiveness 2. Short 26th 3. Woomp Show 4. They Had the Wrong Guy 5. Harvard of the South 6. These Boys Never Faltered 7. Somewhere Like Xanadu 8. Reverse Migration 9. Growing Pains 10. Icicles in Raincoats 11. Articulate Messengers 12. A Hit or Miss Thing 13. Inferno 14. Subversion’s Circuit Rider 15. Trouble in Paradise 16. Season of Loss 17. Ghosts 18. Memorial Magic 19. Deepest Sense of Dread 20. A Long, Hellish Trauma 21. Destiny of Dissent 22. Revolt 23. The Cruel Deception 24. Black Fists 25. Nevermore 26. Bachelor of Ugliness 27. Ticket Out of Town 28. Time and Space 29. Embrace 30. Rising EpilogueAcknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index Author Biography