Simon Apter

Floyd Patterson had an ego the size of a soybean, and, sandwiched between Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali in the great scheme of boxing, he needed one that small. If getting knocked out in the first round by Sonny Liston twice within a 10-month span wasn’t enough, Patterson had to sit back and watch Ali, […]

Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, a 62-year-old career politician from–and Mike Myers’ fans may be permitted a chuckle here–Aurora, Illinois, stands on the second rung of presidential succession, right after the veep. Should, as Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) is attempting to do, President Bush and Vice President Cheney be impeached and removed from […]

A new book investigates the oft-overlooked subject of children whose parents are serving hard time. TAP sits down with Nell Bernstein, author of All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated (The New Press, 2005). Bernstein is an award-winning journalist whose stories have appeared in The Washington Post, Mother Jones, salon.com, and Newsday. She […]

Forget Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor from 2001. Forget Richard Fleischer’s Tora! Tora! Tora!, an even better film about the December 7, 1941 attack, from 1970. Forget, even, Fahrenheit 9/11. Forget the us-versus-them schlock, the tacked-on romantic subplots flourishing amidst a backdrop of total war, the mean-spirited finger-pointing. We’re searching for the soul of war, here, […]

With Michael Jordan still on the table in the 1984 NBA draft, the Portland Trail Blazers used their first-round pick on Sam Bowie, a 7-foot-1 All-American string bean from Kentucky. Bowie, a walking injury, became a punch line for generations of NBA fans, missing hundreds of games while Air Jordan slowly ascended to greatest-of-all-time status. […]

In spite of Katrina’s looping right cross to New Orleans and Rita’s quick left jab to Lake Charles, Louisiana’s Angola Prison Rodeo — the self-proclaimed “Wildest Show in the South” — will be held as planned, on five successive Sundays this month at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Angola, some 135 miles northwest of New Orleans, […]