WILT, 1962

Buy the Book

Featured Articles

External Links

Reviews: WILT, 1962

“A sports book worth talking about, and a moving portrait of a great athlete and his era.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A book that turns the box score into a tapestry of sweaty faces, squeaking sneakers and roaring emotions...From one man, one game and 100 points, Pomerantz expands his narrative in every direction. His grasp of even the most arcane detail helps to create a vibrant sociological and historical context for Chamberlain... The narrative follows, loosely, the four-quarter structure of the game, and even though we know the outcome, Pomerantz deliciously describes the drama leading up to that 100th point... "
New York Times Sunday Book Review

"Deeply researched, beautifully written... Pomerantz uses Chamberlain's historic game against the New York Knicks to illuminate forgotten worlds and obscure figures while detailing a sport -- and a nation -- on the cusp of dramatic change. WILT, 1962 hinges on hindsight, the magic power that enables writers to see how things are and also what they are becoming. Just as Lewis Nordan's novel, Wolf Whistle, reinterpreted the 1955 racial murder of Emmett Till through the lens of the civil rights movement it helped ignite -- revealing the crime's latent power -- Pomerantz argues that Chamberlain's big night augered the rise of assertive black athletes in the 1960s... A marvelous book.
The Raleigh News

"Gary Pomerantz has what could be called a Joseph Heller problem. A reformed sportswriter who migrated over to writing books, Pomerantz hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth of the seventh game of the World Series on his first try: the staggeringly brilliant Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, an account of Atlanta's racial divide as seen through the eyes of two prominent families over the generations. And just as Heller had to move on after his first effort, Catch-22, became an instant classic, Pomerantz had some decisions to make, too. Most particularly, what next? He chose Wilt Chamberlain, and I'm here to tell you it doesn't get any better than this... Less a biography than an appreciation of the man who, more than any other player, transformed professional basketball into the game we know today, Pomerantz's book uses that mythical game, which is still amazing to contemplate, as a way of coming to terms with a player, a game and a country."
The Chicago Sun-Times

“Gary Pomerantz's Wilt, 1962 is beautifully written, well-reported and compelling. But what's so special about this book, what causes it to linger, is the atmosphere that Pomerantz has captured through his words, so bittersweet and haunting. You love Wilt Chamberlain. You feel the aura of his isolation as he towered above the rest of us in life, and you wish more than ever he was still around because of his very individuality.”
Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

“Meticulously researched and superbly crafted, WILT, 1962 revisits and vividly recreates a seminal but overlooked moment in American sports history. On that transformative evening in Hershey, Pa., Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points and staked a black man's claim to the city game. In Gary Pomerantz's deft possession-by-possession retelling, Chamberlain thunders back to life.”
Jane Leavy, author, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy

"More than any athlete since Babe Ruth, Wilt Chamberlain trascended his sport, and author Gary Pomerantz shows that beautifully in WILT, 1962."
The San Francisco Chronicle

“I don’t know quite how to express how much this book meant to me. In Wilt, 1962, Gary Pomerantz treated this tender story marvelously and captured the man, the league, the time and the town. I felt nostalgic, warm memories, emotion and very proud of the immortality of my little town.”
Ernie Accorsi, General Manager, New York Giants, native of Hershey, Pa.

"Wilt, 1962 not only retells the story of that game, but captures the complexity of Wilt Chamberlain with a riveting narrative and novelistic flair. The result is a uniquely Philadelphia work, told with an insight and poignancy nearly unparalleled in the nonfiction sports book genre."
Philadelphia Weekly

"For those who believe the NBA today is more interesting and entertaining than it was in the 1960s, I would suggest two things. One, go find some old highlight films or videotapes of Wilt in the five NBA finals that he graced. Two, go read WILT, 1962. Gary Pomerantz has distilled Chamberlain's essence as well as anyone has in print. The book is ostensibly about the night Wilt scored 100 points in a game, which Pomerantz documents with a terrific reporting job full of details and anecdotes. But his book, at heart, is a love poem to Chamberlain's massive impact on his sport's culture."
The San Jose Mercury News

"Pomerantz takes us back to the Hershey Arena, to that one magical night, removing the layer of mystique that always had been wrapped around a game played in a chocolate-covered minor-league town, in a half-filled arena with no videotape ever made . . . In this meticulously researched book . . . Pomerantz does a masterful job, weaving the narrative of the Philadelphia Warriors-New York Knicks game into the larger context of who Wilt was -- and how he fit into both the pro basketball world and the larger American society."
The Buffalo News

"An insightful look into one of the most fascinating figures in the history of American sport."
The Providence Journal

"Meticulous research (250 interviews) is welded to absorbing prose that merges basketball, biography and history to capture a tipping point in the National Basketball Association's evolution... While the astonishing achievement has always seemed a footnote to NBA history, Pomerantz has given it the defining chronicle it deserves."
The Rocky Mountain News

"While Pomerantz writes a suspenseful narrative of the game, he also delivers an engaging, full-bodied portrait of one of the great athletes of our time... A sports book that can stand on its own."
Booklist

"The author has done an impressive job of reconstructing that night, no easy feat... This well-written book has the feeling of a Philadelphia postcard. It is rich in city characters... And Pomerantz paints a compelling portrait of Chamberlain, a stunningly gifted athlete with larger-than-life appetites and expectations who, in some sense, seemed unknowable. He comes across as a solitary figure, not only off the court but on it as well... Pomerantz gives us as much of him as we may ever know."
The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Historical nonfiction is about the author packing us into his personal time machine, taking us back a few decades, and making us feel like we’re there... Mr. Pomerantz passes with flying colors ... Thanks to Mr. Pomerantz’s keen imagination and (particularly) the 250-plus interviews he conducted, there’s not a page of the book that doesn’t crackle with perfectly chosen detail."
The New York Observer

"Gary Pomerantz's decision to get at the man and his times through the prism of his 100-point night against the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962, was a wise one... The joy of WILT, 1962 is in the background details... By the conclusion of the book the reader feels as if he had been among the 4,000 or so lucky souls in the arena on a seemingly unforgettable night that had somehow been forgotten."
Sports Illustrated

"An enthralling chronicle. Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 on a strange and wonderful night in Hershey. WILT, 1962 explores that night in sumptuous detail... There aren't many sports books as flat-out fascinating as this one."
The Charlotte Observer

"This tension between yesterday's apathy and today's awe creates one of many pleasures on hand in Wilt, 1962... Mr. Pomerantz is after a detailed snapshot of a time, place, team and event. His research and reporting yields a wealth of anecdote and color, of which this cast of characters delivers plenty... The gold standard for you-are-there sports narrative remains the first section of Don DeLillo's 1997 novel Underworld, which takes place at the Polo Grounds the day of Bobby Thomson's "shot heard 'round the world" home run against the Dodgers in 1951. Mr. Pomerantz, of course, is dealing in nonfiction. But he has the same kind of tenacious drive for character and detail, and he has the skills to put you directly inside the beat-up Hershey Sports Arena with its loose, friendly rims."
The Dallas Morning News

"A masterful work nearly as great as the mighty Dipper himself."
The Nashville Tennessean

"WILT, 1962 scores 100 and more... It proves so engaging. A gloriously crafted, remarkably researched portrait of Wilt, his times and his country, the book offers us the detail of the man and that most momentous of games, the night he scored 100 points. Pomerantz is obsessed with detail and blessed with a lyrical touch, a blend that carries us to the moment, even when the moment was 43 years ago . . .And yet the night is only a vehicle to expand upon Chamberlain, upon the growth of pro basketball, about the racial climate in America, about characters and issues some have forgotten and others never knew. WILT, 1962 couldn't have been done better by anybody else. Like Chamberlain himself, the book is special."
The Oakland Tribune

"Pomerantz recreates this historic night in startling detail, bringing everyone from Chamberlain, to the Knicks' defensive player Darrall Imhoff, to the caustic journalist Jack Kiser to vivid life . . . Pomerantz explores the racial tension of the era through Chamberlain's experiences, fluidly transitioning from the action on the court to moments in the player's life and then back again. In one instance, he's finger-rolling a ball into the basket, and in the next, he's at Big Wilt's Smalls Paradise, the Harlem nightclub he part-owned, talking about how many good African-Americans were left out of the league due to its racial quotas. Throughout this surprisingly touching narrative, Pomerantz does a remarkable job of making Chamberlain, the world he inhabited and that mythic night shine all over again."
Publisher's Weekly

“Big, strong, gregarious, dapper: Wilt Chamberlain stood in no man’s shadow – except his own . . . Pomerantz unfolds a meticulous and engaging narrative that illustrates how a combination of obsequious teammates, forgiving rims, and more than a little showmanship (picked up playing a year for the Globetrotters) converged to make a historic evening – and a slam dunk of a read.”
Entertainment Weekly

“Genius is in the details, and Gary Pomerantz's WILT, 1962 proves that."
John Feinstein, author, A Season on the Brink and A Good Walk Spoiled

"One of the great strengths of Pomerantz's thoughtful book is that he never flinches from the recollection of the racial slights (and much worse) that black men and women endured in America in the 1950s and '60s . . . Chamberlain was a uniquely dominating force, as Pomerantz makes eloquently clear . . . Wilt, 1962 draws one's attention to an uneasy but unsurprising fact: Athletes who strive for the impossible are driven by demons that ordinary folks cannot comprehend. Such feats exact a terrible price in solitude and compulsions. Pomerantz offers exquisitely painful details of his subject's isolation and the toll it took over the course of his career."
The Washington Post

"In this age of instant-everything, few people have any idea who Wilt Chamberlain really was, and what he meant to sports. Gary Pomerantz shows us. In WILT, 1962 he puts us courtside for one of the greatest unexamined moments in sports history, the night Wilt scored 100 points. In a sweet return to his sports writing roots, Pomerantz gives us Wilt in his realm, his rise to prominence and dominance, set against the backdrop of the NBA's coming of age. It's all irresistible."
Michael Wilbon, co-host, ESPN's "Pardon The Interruption", coauthor (with Charles Barkley), I May Be Wrong, But I Doubt It.

“WILT, 1962 is not only a lively sports story about the record-setting performance of a larger-than-life athlete, it is also a wonderful chronicle of urban and social history, replete with colorful characters and situations from a by-gone era of professional basketball, when the game changed from being dominated by white stars to being dominated by black ones.”
Gerald Early, Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters, Washington University, St. Louis, author, This is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s

"It's not easy being a colossus, as Gary M. Pomerantz's brilliant ''Wilt, 1962" painfully emphasizes. Ostensibly, this is a microscopically researched account of Chamberlain's signature achievement: the 100-point anvil he dropped on the New York Knicks . . . [But] more than that, Pomerantz's crystalline style illuminates a vast range of subplots . . . [including] the birth pains of the NBA as it struggled to overcome its perception as a glorified barnstorming conglomeration; and the context of the civil rights movement as it gained momentum partially through the empowerment of black athletes and personalities such as the cosmopolitan Chamberlain. Above all, Pomerantz produces a complex portrait of the enigmatic leading man, perhaps history's prepotent athlete, whose size and skills were both his calling card and his curse."
The Boston Globe