"Narrator Torian Brackett brings vocal gravitas to this biography of Jack Robinson, which dwells as much on the athlete's youth and post-baseball civil rights activism as it does on his groundbreaking career with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It's a powerful, stirringly delivered account..." - AudioFile Magazine An enthralling, eye-opening portrayal of this barrier-breaking American hero as a lifelong, relentlessly proud fighter for Black justice and civil rights. According to Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson was “a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before the Freedom Rides.” According to Hank Aaron, Robinson was a leader of the Black Power movement before there was a Black Power movement. According to his wife, Rachel Robinson, he was always Jack, not Jackie—the diminutive form of his name bestowed on him in college by white sports writers. And throughout his whole life, Jack Robinson was a fighter for justice, an advocate for equality, and an inspiration beyond just baseball. From prominent Robinson scholars Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long comes Call Him Jack, an exciting biography that recovers the real person behind the legend, reanimating this famed figure’s legacy for new generations, widening our focus from the sportsman to the man as a whole, and deepening our appreciation for his achievements on the playing field in the process. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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“A pugnacious civil rights advocate who also happened to be a great athlete. . . . Williams and Long chronicle [Robinson's] athletic achievements . . . but look beyond them to portray him as a 'relentless and uncompromising Black freedom fighter' who 'used his racial pride to fuel his lifelong passion for justice' . . . Thorough, expansive, readable [and] essential.
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Kirkus Reviews, starred review