The Harlem Globetrotters have long been a staple of American basketball. However, their origins and their renaissance are largely unknown. They began not in Harlem, but Chicago's South Side as the brainchild of Abe Saperstein. The team sustained the early days of the NBA only to be overshadowed by it, yet ultimately reemerging as national and global stars.

Before Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Julius Erving, or Michael Jordan--before Magic Johnson and Showtime--the Harlem Globetrotters revolutionized basketball and spread the game around the world. In Spinning the Globe, author Ben Green tells the story of this extraordinary franchise and iconic American institution. We follow the Globetrotters' rise from backwoods obscurity during the harsh years of the Great Depression to become the best basketball team in the country and, by the early 1950s, the most popular sports franchise in the world. Green brings to life their struggles with racism and segregation, and their influence upon a nation's views about race and sport. We witness the Globetrotters' fall from grace to the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1990s, and their ultimate rebirth under Mannie Jackson today, as they once again amaze kids and families around the world. Now in paperback, this is the true and complete story of their amazing eighty years as a team, told with lyrical prose and masterful storytelling by Ben Green.