For a more thorough list of reviews and interviews about The Hustle, see the links on the left sidebar of the blog page.
-
WINNER OF THE 2011 WASHINGTON STATE BOOK AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
-
“Provides remarkable insight into the fortunes and misfortunes of the ten kids who shared a court but never a dream…This book, both memoir and social analysis, is an essential read as a recent social history and personal story of America.”
– Library Journal
-
“By reminding readers that questions of race and social mobility are at bottom really questions about what kind of people are granted what sort of life opportunities, The Hustle allows us to see our often recursive and overheated debates over such questions play out on a personal, frequently tragic scale.”
– Bookforum
-
“Is history really destiny? Is integration a chimera, more designed to make us feel good than to achieve real equality? Merlino, to his credit, spends much of his 290-page book opening and then reopening this Pandora’s Box of questions.”
– Danny Westneat, Seattle Times
-
“Part history text, part sociological study, part memoir, The Hustle is more than just a book about basketball. It’s a book about America. It’s a book about the country’s past and present. It’s a book that you have to read.”
– SLAM Magazine
-
“A very thoughtful, perceptive, and moving chronicle of the journey from adolescence to manhood.”
– Booklist
-
“Tyrell’s murder made clear that a group that had been on the same path for a time in high school was now experiencing life very differently. What had happened to Tyrell? What was becoming of that team? And what can we learn about race in America from answering that? The book digs deeply, compassionately and intelligently into that question.”
— Henry Abbott, ESPN’s True Hoop blog
-
“Merlino skillfully weaves the personal biographies with the biography of a city that relegated blacks to neighborhoods that were segregated and poor, to the margins of economic life, to public schools that were overcrowded and underfunded. The book’s precise focus enables troubling considerations of the role of race and class in America.”
— Kirkus -
“In working on an apparently small canvas, Doug Merlino has managed to look widely and deeply into race and class, idealism and dead-end despair in America. This unusual combination of sensitive memoir and incisive reporting tells us a great deal about the nation we are and the one we dream of. A fascinating and haunting book.”
— Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold’s Ghost -
“The Hustle, with its meticulous and thorough reportage, appears at a time when many have pointed to the White House and declared the nation “beyond race.” Mindful of the lessons of W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and others, Doug Merlino shatters post-race fantasies and bears witness to immigrant and African-American struggles, past and present, and weaves them into a captivating, unsentimental and sometimes tragic story of dreams realized, deferred and/or destroyed.”
— Nigel Hatton, University of California, Merced -
“Anyone concerned with improving the U.S. educational system must read this book, which brilliantly highlights the problems and possibilities facing schools and students. At the same time, Doug Merlino also tells a broader story of race in America that vividly brings ten boys, and the men they became, to life. The Hustle is a wonderful reading experience.”
— Robert L. Bernstein, founder, Human Rights Watch -
“As a boy, Doug Merlino was part of something special: A championship basketball team that drew players from both sides of Seattle’s racial divide. The Hustle is his elegant, absorbing account of what became of his ex-teammates, and how their lives were inevitably affected by the color of their skin. It is impossible to read this book and not be deeply moved.”
—Brendan I. Koerner, author of Now the Hell Will Start
