Synopses & Reviews
When Rodney Mason, an ex-con drug dealer from Newarks rough South Ward, was shot and paralyzed, he vowed to turn his life around. A former high-school pitching ace with a 93 mph fastball, Mason decided to form a Little League team to help boys avoid the street life that had claimed his youth and mobility. In A Chance to Win, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Schuppe follows Mason and his team, both on and off the field. Predictably, the players struggle—they endure poverty, unstable family lives with few positive male role models, failing schools, and dangerous neighborhoods—but through the fists and tears, lopsided losses and rare victories, this bunch of misfits becomes a team, and in doing so gives the community something to root for. Jonathan Schuppes book is both a penetrating, true-to-life portrait of whats at stake for kids growing up poor in Americas inner cities and a portrait of Newark itself, a struggling city that has recently known great hope as well as failure.
Review
“An extraordinary book of the human spirit.”—Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of
A Hope in the Unseen“[A] deep excavation...told with consummate empathy.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Honest and gritty.”—The Star-Ledger (Newark)
“One of the most powerful books of narrative nonfiction Ive read in years. [A Chance to Win] is somehow both understated and majestic.”—Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning
“A compelling book.”—The Washington Post“Sobering yet inspiring, A Chance to Win is an extraordinary journey.”—Alex Kotlowitz
“It may be peculiar to describe a book that looks unflinchingly at urban poverty as wonderful, but in the sense that this account will open eyes and maybe a few minds, wonderful just might apply.”—Booklist (starred review)
“[A Chance to Win] reads like a mix between Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger and Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc—tough acts that Schuppe gracefully follows.”—Bookriot.com“A lively work of literary nonfiction [that] vividly illustrates the often fierce struggles of a small group of people [and] offers a larger truth about the city...Jonathan Schuppe gives dignified, poetic voice to [Newarks] struggle.”—Inside Jersey “A compelling portrait of inner-city struggles...Schuppes punchy journalistic style serves the material well.”—Kirkus
“A Chance to Win is a model of intimate reporting, an exemplar of lucid prose, and a demonstration of genuine courage. It will take most readers into a world that they do not know, and they will be rewarded for the venture.”—Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
“A Chance to Win will take its rightful place as a classic of American urban life.”—Jonathan Alter
About the Author
Jonathan Schuppe is an award-winning journalist who has shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey's resignation. He won the coveted J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize for A Chance to Win. He lives with his wife and daughter in Maplewood, New Jersey.