A Complete History of the Negro Leagues: 1884 to 1955

In their heyday, the Negro Leagues were an important part of black America, with games between black teams drawing as many as 40,000 fans in some large cities, and the players themselves as celebrated as musicians like Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington. Mark Ribowsky's concise history masterfully evokes these long-gone days with portraits of such Hall of Fame players as Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell. The story is bittersweet--though various incarnations of the Negro Leagues survived well into the 1950s, the end of the leagues was sealed when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson in 1945.