Latrell Sprewell. Allen Iverson. John McEnroe. Even Mohammed Ali and Mike Schmidt and Michael Jordan. These are characters of our national imagination, athletes who stand as symbols of our complex relationship with professional sport. In this erudite and captivating book, bestselling author Larry Platt takes us on a tour through American sports. Offering profiles of the athletes we love (and love to hate), Platt shows that sport, more than any other nationwide pastime, is the way we come to understand—and alter—race relations, gender, and, most profoundly, how we communicate with each other in ways that are often given too little credit in the minds of intellectuals. Thought-provoking and richly written, New Jack Jocks offers a textured picture of how athletes live their lives and how we live out and define American culture by the way we come to understand their lives in and out of the halls of play.

Larry Platt is Editor-in-Chief of Philadelphia Magazine. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Playboy, and Salon. com, among other publications. The author, most recently, of Only the Strong Survive: The Odyssey of Allen Iverson. He lives in the Philadelphia area.

"Larry Platt's writing flies two places at once: inside America's sports heroes and high above them, gazing down on the strange dynamic between us and them. You won't be able to look at our athletes or our society the same after you've read Platt."—Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated

"Larry Platt's view of the sports world reads like fiction—but it's fact! Writers of sitcoms and soap operas could use New Jack Jocks as a source of great content."—Pat Croce, part owner and former president, Philadelphia 76ers

"Like the athletes he profiles, Larry Platt is a renegade in his own right. He has always known that the real stories are found outside the arenas and playing fields, and he tells them with insight and passion. Too bad he still can't go left...."—Gail Shister, Philadelphia Inquirer television columnist and former sportswriter