Go Up For Glory

Going up (from Monroe, Louisiana) for glory is what Bill Russell does on a basketball court. His specialty, grabbing rebounds and blocking shots, has established him as the best defensive player in basketball history. He's the super-star of the phenomenally successful Boston Celtics. But it's not all glory. Russell is a proud and sensitive Negro and has quite a lot to say about discrimination. He says it quite candidly and warns readers that this is ""...not a friendship diary."" He characterizes basketball as ""... high-speed applied psychiatry,"" and whether he is discussing sport or race prejudice, he speaks convincingly in a direct style. The book goes beyond the initial basketball enthusiast market and bears no relationship to the Good-Negro-Athlete-Makes-Good school of autobiography. Russell offers some commonsense about the uncommon hardships of being a celebrity Negro moving through cross-sections of American society and growing as an athlete and an individual.