James S. Hirsch is an American journalist and best-selling author who has written extensively about sports, race, and American culture and whose most recent book is the first authorized biography of Willie Mays. He was a reporter for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and his first book was the best-selling Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter. Hirsch has also written Riot and Remembrance: America's Worse Riot and Its Legacy, Two Souls Indivisible: The Friendship That Saved Two POWs in Vietnam, and Cheating Destiny: Living with Diabetes. His biography on Willie Mays, released in February 2010, describes how the Negro League phenom became an instant sensation with the New York Giants in the 1950s, was the headliner in Major League Baseball's expansion to California, and played an important but underappreciated role in the civil rights movement. Hirsch, a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, lives in the Boston area. 

St. Louis