Illinois Authors

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay in racially segregated Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a sign painter and a housekeeper. He went on to become a heavyweight boxer with a dazzling mix of power and speed, a warrior for racial pride, a comedian, a preacher, a poet, a draft resister, an actor, and a lover. Millions hated him when he changed his religion, changed his name, and refused to fight in the Vietnam War. He fought his way back, winning hearts, but at great cost.Jonathan Eig, hailed by Ken Burns as one of America’s master storytellers, sheds important new light on Ali’s politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition through unprecedented access to all the key people in Ali’s life, more than 500 interviews and thousands of pages of previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department files and audiotaped interviews from the 1960s. Ali: A Life is a story about America, about race, about a brutal sport, and about a courageous man who shook up the world.

Simon & Schuster, New York : 2010.

Drawing on thousands of pages of recently discovered government documents, wiretap transcripts, and Al Capone's handwritten personal letters,

Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2023

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.

Albert Whitman & Company 2021

Another Lola Jones escapade with our book-loving third grader! Lola and her twenty-nine classmates don't understand the words to a traditional song they're meant to sing at the upcoming Winter Concert, so they make up their own, very silly (and very funny) words. Lola's mother and her Grampa get involved too, and we all learn not only the words to the song, but something about global warming, by the time of the concert.

Lola, with help from Grampa Ed and neighbor Gabriel, figures out a way to show the boys at school that they should be letting girls play soccer with them at recess.

Lola's grandfather does the best pigtails ever. But her principal isn't so sure.Lola has a mind of her own and a love for books. With the help of Grandpa Ed and the support of her mother and friends, she learns how to use her determination to right a wrong at school.

Lola is back! Fresh from her escapades at her school when the principal is not exactly impressed with her very unusual pigtails, and straight from her hard-pressed victory with the boys who don’t want to let the girls play soccer, Lola now has to convince her mother that having a dog is a good idea.

Simon & Schuster, New York : ©2005.

Recounts the life of the Hall of Fame ballplayer whose career was cut short by the disease now commonly called after him, in a portrait that shares details about his rivalry with Babe Ruth, the onset of his illness, and the final years of his life.

Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York : 2008.

A chronicle of the 1947 baseball season during which Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier is a sixtieth anniversary tribute based on interviews with Robinson's wife, daughter, and teammates.

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