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Times Weekly: “Althea” is a grand slam
“Sports fans, don’t miss this biography. Black history scholars, you want it. Tennis lovers, there’s a lot of tennis here, so make a racquet for it. Althea is a grand slam.”
Times Weekly Staff, “Althea: The Life Of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson,” Books, Times Weekly, August 16, 2023.
NY Post: A champion ahead of her time
“When Althea Gibson was born in the South Carolina town of Silver in 1927, her birth certificate made no sense whatsoever. Chalk it up to an overexcited family member or an exhausted midwife; both her name and gender were inaccurately recorded.
’Instead of recording the birth of a girl named Althea, the record documented the birth of a boy named Alger,’ writes Sally Jacobs in Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson ( St. Martin’s Press).”
Gavin Newsham, “Tennis legend Althea Gibson was a champion ahead of her time: ‘Nothing to lose’,” New York Post, July 29, 2023.
Publisher’s Weekly: Movingly Told
“Journalist Jacobs (The Other Barack) offers an affecting biography of Althea Gibson (1927–2003), the ‘first Black woman to be the number-one tennis player in the world.’ … Thoroughly researched and movingly told, this warts-and-all portrayal of Gibson’s life is a winner.”
“Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson, Publisher’s Weekly, May 15, 2023.
Kirkus: Comprehensive and elegantly written
“A comprehensive and elegantly written life of Althea Gibson, one of the greatest athletes America has produced… An essential book about an incomparably authentic American pioneer and the times in which she lived.”
“ALTHEA,” Kirkus Reviews (starred review), April 3, 2023.