Jewish Jocks An Unorthodox Hall of Fame

With humor, heart, and an eye toward the ever elusive question of Jewish identity, the essays in JEWISH JOCKS: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame will cover the most influential Jews in sports-athletes, coaches, broadcasters, team owners, trainers and even statisticians (in the finite universe of Jewish jocks, they count!). Contributors include some of today's most celebrated writers, such as New Yorker editor David Remnick; novelists Jonathan Safran Foer, Shalom Auslander, and Booker-prize winner Howard Jacobson; sports writer Buzz Bissinger; economist Larry Summers; columnist David Brooks; journalists Jane Leavy, Daniel Okrent, George Packer, David Plotz, and Dahlia Lithwick; bestselling authors Stephen Dubner, David Margolick, Rich Cohen, Steven Pinker, Judith Shulevitz, and Ron Rosenbaum, writing on figures like Howard Cosell, Art Shamsky, Kerri Strug, Harold Solomon, Sandy Koufax, Shirley Povitch, and many, many more. The collection will also include a cover design and illustrations throughout by Mark Ulriksen. While Jewish Jocks doesn't claim to be a comprehensive encyclopedia, it nevertheless stands on its own as a timeless collection of biographical musings, sociological riffs about assimilation, first-person reflections, and, above all, great writing on some of the most influential and unexpected pioneers in the world of sports.

Franklin Foer is editor of the New Republic and a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the author of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at the New Republic. Previously, he was a staff writer at Tablet magazine; the blog he edited there, The Scroll, won the 2011 National Magazine Award.