Paper Tiger - by Stanley Woodward (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published: New York, Atheneum, 1964 [c1963].

Book Synopsis

Stanley Woodward (1895-1964) was a veteran sports writer, newspaperman, and sports editor of the New York Herald Tribune; indeed, some believe he was the greatest of all sports editors. Paper Tiger is his lively and vivid account of his life as an athlete, sailor, war correspondent, and metropolitan journalist. Whether discussing his war experiences, the world of sports, or the tough and exciting world of newspaper life, Woodward speaks with a rare directness. When he doesn't like something or someone, he makes no bones about it. Yet, despite all of his often acerbic comments, we always have the feeling that the author's honesty is matched by his fairness. Partisan he may be; vindictive and sour he is not. Although Paper Tiger will appeal especially to sports fans, anyone who wants to know the inside story of newspaper life will find it a fascinating book.

Review Quotes

"A hymn to newspapering, the saga of a young man's rise from paper to paper, job to job, until he reaches the very top and then pushes the ceiling far higher than anyone before him ever had. It's a vivid portrait of newsrooms in a day long since vanished--a day of whiskey bottles in desk drawers and file cabinets, of green eyeshades and galluses, of manual typewriters and pneumatic tubes, of two-day train rides and club-car poker games, of copy boys and Western Union--and of New York in the 1930s and '40s. . . . Now [Woodward's] gone but not forgotten. Now he's remembered in those few places where literate, stylish sportswriting is respected and valued."--Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

About the Author

In his phenomenal career, Stanley Woodward wrote a number of sports books, including Sports Page and Stanley Woodward's Football. He is the winner of three E. P. Dutton awards for sports writing. John Schulian is the author of Writers' Fighters and Other Sweet Scientists and Twilight of the Long-ball Gods: Dispatches from the Disappearing Heart of Baseball, available in a Bison Books edition.