The Charles Van Doren of College Hoops

Mack Davis is a former basketball legend idling away his prime playing years at the start of Big Man, Jay Neugeboren's 1966 fictional account of a young black man from Brooklyn caught up in college-hoops' 1950s point-shaving scandals. "I got no kicks coming, though," Mack begins the novel. "I live okay." Mack's voice is the reader's guide through his confined world, which expands in surprising ways as he encounters characters who may or may not want to help him.