Gary M. Pomerantz - Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era

A masterful work nearly as great as the mighty Dipper himself.

The Nashville Tennessean

More than any athlete since Babe Ruth, Wilt Chamberlain transcended his sport, and author Gary Pomerantz shows that beautifully in Wilt, 1962, the story of Chamberlains 100-point game.

San Francisco Chronicle

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 eveningand a slam dunk of a read.

Entertainment Weekly

Gary Pomerantzs 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

Gary Pomerantzs Wilt, 1962 is beautifully written, well reported, and compelling. But whats 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

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 Book Review

Genius is in the details, and Gary Pomerantzs Wilt, 1962 proves that.

John Feinstein, author of A Season on the Brink and A Good Walk Spoiled

Deeply researched, beautifully written Pomerantz uses Chamberlains historic game against the New York Knicks to illuminate forgotten worlds and obscure figures while detailing a sportand a nationon 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. A marvelous book.

The Raleigh News&Observer

Gary Pomerantz has distilled Chamberlains 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 Chamberlains massive impact on his sports culture.

San Jose Mercury News

An enthralling chronicle. Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 on a strange and wonderful night in Hershey. Wilt, 1962 explores that night in sumptuous detail. There arent many sports books as flat-out fascinating as this one.

The Charlotte Observer

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

Thanks to Mr. Pomerantzs keen imagination and the 250-plus interviews he conducted, theres not a page of the book that doesnt crackle with perfectly chosen details.

New York Observer

Meticulously researched and superbly crafted, Wilt, 1962 revisits and vividly re-creates a seminal but overlooked moment in American sports history. On that transformative evening in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points and staked a black mans claim to the city game. In Gary Pomerantzs deft possession-by-possession retelling, Chamberlain soars again. The gangly, uncompromising seven-footer who always seemed too big for the uniform he inhabited thunders back to life.

Jane Leavy, author of Sandy Koufax: A Leftys Legacy

Chamberlain was a uniquely dominating force, as Pomerantz makes eloquently clear. Wilt, 1962 draws ones 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 subjects isolation and the toll it took over the course of his career.

The Washington Post

Pomerantz paints a compelling portrait of Chamberlain, a stunningly gifted athlete with larger-than-life appetites and expectations who, in some sense, seemed unknowable. Pomerantz gives us as much of him as we may ever know.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

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 sportswriting roots, Pomerantz gives us Wilt in his realm, his rise to prominence and dominance, set against the backdrop of the NBAs coming of age. Its all irresistible.

Michael Wilbon, cohost of ESPNs Pardon the Interruption

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

Rocky Mountain News

Wilt, 1962 scores 100 and more. 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. Like Chamberlain himself, the book is special.

The Oakland Tribune

A sports book worth talking about, and a moving portrait of a great athlete and his era.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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 WarriorsNew York Knicks game into the larger context of who Wilt wasand how he fit into both the pro basketball world and the larger American society.

The Buffalo News