Ira Berkow’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy is hard­ly earth-shat­ter­ing, but it does pro­vide ample evi­dence of his writ­ing skills. The New York Times colum­nist, whose 16 pre­vi­ous books include adroit biogra­phies of Hank Green­berg and Rod Carew, chron­i­cles the path that took him from his youth on Chicago’s West Side — he was all bas­ket­ball and no books — into the world of writing. 

Berkow is affa­ble and very fun­ny, often tak­ing a breezy tone except when he’s being pas­sion­ate about jus­tice and truth. There seem to be two main pur­pos­es to his book: He deals with the state of news­pa­per writ­ing (par­tic­u­lar­ly sports­writ­ing) past and present, mak­ing use of some fas­ci­nat­ing anec­dotes tak­en from a long and dis­tin­guished career. He also con­fronts his mor­tal­i­ty by look­ing back at his par­ents. In sec­tions that open and close the book, he eulo­gizes his father, Harold. Index.