From jazz fantasy camp to running a movie studio; from a fight between an old guy and a fat guy to a fear of clowns - Carlo Rotella's "Playing in Time" delivers good stories full of vivid characters, all told with the unique voice and humor that have garnered him devoted readers in the "New York Times Magazine", "Boston Globe", and "Washington Post Magazine", among others. The two dozen essays in "Playing in Time" revolve around the themes and obsessions that have characterized Rotella's writing from the start: boxing, music, writers, and cities. "Playing in time" refers to how people make beauty and meaning while working within the constraints and limits forced on them by life, and in his writing Rotella transforms the craft and beauty he so admires in others into an art of his own. Rotella is best known for his writings on boxing, and his essays here do not disappoint. It's a topic that he turns to for its colorful characters, compelling settings, and formidable life lessons both in and out of the ring. He gives us tales of an older boxer who keeps unretiring and a welterweight who is "about as rich and famous as a 147-pound fighter can get these days," and a hilarious rumination on why Muhammad Ali's phrase "I am the greatest" began appearing (in the mouth of Epeus) in translations of the "Iliad" around 1987. His essays on blues, crime and science fiction writers, and urban spaces are equally engaging, combining an artist's eye for detail with a scholar's sense of research, whether taking us to visit detective writer George Pelecanos or to dance with the proprietress of the Baby Doll Polka Club in Chicago. Rotella's essays are always smart, frequently funny, and consistently surprising. This collection will be welcomed by his many fans and will bring his inimitable style and approach to an even wider audience.

About the Author
Carlo Rotella is the author of Good with Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt and Cut Time: An Education at the Fights, among other books. He writes regularly for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Magazine, and Boston Globe, and he is a commentator for WGBH FM in Boston.

Reviews
"Carlo Rotella is an old-fashioned journalist in the best sense of the term: he doesn't just visit the people and places he writes about, he inhabits them. His articles and essays are models of empathy and understanding. And because he is a man who appreciates craft - the craft of boxers, fencers, musicians, and clowns - his own work always strikes the right celebratory note, the one that ends with just the slightest inflection of melancholy - which, unparadoxically, is what makes his work a pleasure to read." (Arthur Krystal)"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226729091
Author Carlo Rotella
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 539g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 16mm * 2mm