“A risky and brilliant book. . . . It is an emotional journey into Jock Culture's heart of darkness. Shields is willing to write himself naked about the hungers and envies that move across the grandstand like the wave.”—Robert Lipsyte, New York Times

“Black Planet accomplishes a rare feat by tackling race head on.”—Steven Hill, Chicago Tribune

The National Basketball Association is a place where white fans and black players enact virtually every racial issue and tension in U.S. culture. Following the Seattle SuperSonics for an entire season, David Shields explores how, in a predominantly black sport, white fans—including especially himself—think about and talk about black heroes, black scapegoats, and black bodies.

Critically acclaimed and highly controversial, Black Planet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN USA Award, and was named one of the Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 1999 by Esquire, Newsday, Los Angeles Weekly, and Amazon.com.

David Shields is the author of several other books, including the novels Dead Languages and Heroes (available in a Bison Books edition). His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and the Village Voice. Shields, a recent Guggenheim fellow, is a professor of English at the University of Washington. Gerald Graff is a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His most recent books are Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind and (with Cathy Birkenstein) “They Say/I Say”: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing.

Also of interest: They Cleared the Lane: The NBA's Black Pioneers by Ron Thomas

The National Basketball Association is a place where white fans and black players enact virtually every racial issue and tension in U.S. culture. Following the Seattle SuperSonics for an entire season, David Shields explores how, in a predominantly black sport, white fans—including especially himself—think about and talk about black heroes, black scapegoats, and black bodies.

Critically acclaimed and highly controversial, Black Planet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN USA Award, and was named one of the Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 1999 by Esquire, Newsday, Los Angeles Weekly, and Amazon.com.