Alexander Wolff – författare

While basketball didn’t take up residence in the White House in January 2009, the game nonetheless played an outsized role in forming the man who did. In The Audacity of Hoop, celebrated sportswriter Alexander Wolff examines Barack Obama, the person and president, by the light of basketball. This game helped Obama explore his identity, keep a cool head, impress his future wife, and define himself as a candidate. Wolff chronicles Obama’s love of the game from age 10, on the campaign trail-where it eventually took on talismanic meaning-and throughout his two terms in office. More than 125 photographs illustrate Obama dribbling, shooting free throws, playing pickup games, cooling off with George Clooney, challenging his special assistant Reggie Love for a rebound, and taking basketball to political meetings. There is also an assessment of Obama’s influence on the NBA, including a dawning political consciousness in the league’s locker rooms. Sidebars reveal the evolution of the president’s playing style, “Baracketology”-a not-entirely-scientific art of filling out the commander in chief’s NCAA tournament bracket-and a timeline charts Obama’s personal and professional highlights.Equal parts biographical sketch, political narrative, and cultural history, The Audacity of Hoop shows how the game became a touchstone in Obama’s exercise of the power of the presidency.

During the late 1990s, eminent basketball journalist Alexander Wolff traveled the globe to determine how a game invented by a Canadian clergyman became an international phenomenon. Big Game, Small World presents Wolff’s dispatches from sixteen countries spread across five continents and multiple US states. In them, he asks: What can the game tell us about the world? And what can the world tell us about the game? Whether traveling to Bhutan to challenge its king to a pickup game, exploring the women’s game in Brazil, or covering the Afrobasket tournament in Luanda, Angola, during a civil war, Wolff shows how basketball has the power to define an individual, a culture, and even a country.This updated twentieth anniversary edition features a new preface in which Wolff outlines the contemporary rise of athlete-activists while discussing the increasing dominance within the NBA of marquee international players like Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo. A loving celebration of basketball, Big Game, Small World is one of the most insightful books ever written about the game.

During the late 1990s, eminent basketball journalist Alexander Wolff traveled the globe to determine how a game invented by a Canadian clergyman became an international phenomenon. Big Game, Small World presents Wolff’s dispatches from sixteen countries spread across five continents and multiple US states. In them, he asks: What can the game tell us about the world? And what can the world tell us about the game? Whether traveling to Bhutan to challenge its king to a pickup game, exploring the women’s game in Brazil, or covering the Afrobasket tournament in Luanda, Angola, during a civil war, Wolff shows how basketball has the power to define an individual, a culture, and even a country.This updated twentieth anniversary edition features a new preface in which Wolff outlines the contemporary rise of athlete-activists while discussing the increasing dominance within the NBA of marquee international players like Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo. A loving celebration of basketball, Big Game, Small World is one of the most insightful books ever written about the game.

From the street game to March Madness to Jordan and LeBron, the greatest writing about the grit, grace, and glory of basketballMade in America, basketball is a sport that stirs a national passion, reaching fever pitch during the NCAA''s March Madness and the NBA Finals. Masterfully assembled by longtime Sports Illustratedwriter Alexander Wolff, Basketball spans eight decades to bring together a dream team of writers as awe-inspiring and endlessly inventive as the game itself. Here are in-depth profiles of the legends of the hardcourt--Russell, Kareem, Bird, Jordan, and LeBron--and storied franchises such as the Knicks and Celtics, along with dazzling portraits of the flash and sizzle of playground ball and more personal reflections on the game by some of America''s finest writers, among them Donald Hall, John Edgar Wideman, and Pat Conroy. Highlights include James Naismith recalling how he invented the game that would go on to conquer the world; John McPhee capturing the ever-disciplined Bill Bradley as a Princeton Tiger; Peter Goldman''s indelible portrait of the life and death of a Harlem Globetrotter; and Michael Lewis''s account of the brave new world of NBA analytics. Classic journalism about inner-city basketball by Pete Axthelm, Rick Telander, and Darcy Frey is joined by stories of the game''s popularity across America, from the heartland of Hoosier country to an Apache Reservation in Arizona.

'Remarkable lives in extraordinary times - a gripping and exceptional literary journey.' Philippe Sands'Alexander Wolff is keen, after a generation of silence, to follow the untold stories wherever they might lead.' Claire Messud, Harpers Magazine'As riveting as the fiction the Wolffs themselves have published, and deeply affecting.' NewsweekIn 2017, acclaimed journalist Alexander Wolff moved to Berlin to take up a long-deferred task: learning his family's history. His grandfather Kurt Wolff set up his own publishing firm in 1910 at the age of twenty-three, publishing Franz Kafka, Émile Zola, Anton Chekhov and others whose books would be burned by the Nazis. In 1933, Kurt and his wife Helen fled to France and Italy, and later to New York, where they would bring books including Doctor Zhivago, The Leopard and The Tin Drum to English-speaking readers.Meanwhile, Kurt's son Niko, born from an earlier marriage, was left behind in Germany. Despite his Jewish heritage, he served in the German army and ended up in an prisoner of war camp before emigrating to the US in 1948. As Alexander gains a better understanding of his taciturn father's life, he finds secrets that never made it to America and is forced to confront his family's complex relationship with the Nazis.This stunning account of a family navigating wartime and its aftershocks brilliantly evokes the perils, triumphs and secrets of history and exile.

A powerful portrait of a Jewish German family divided by exile, abandonment and emigration.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2026, held in Krakow, Poland, during February 2026.The 48 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 133 submissions. They deal with the theory and practice of computer science focusing on the latest results and developments of fundamental research in computer science.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2026, held in Krakow, Poland, during February 2026.The 48 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 133 submissions. They deal with the theory and practice of computer science focusing on the latest results and developments of fundamental research in computer science.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on Graph Drawing, GD 2013, held in Bordeaux, France, in September 2013. The 42 revised full papers presented together with 12 revised short papers, 3 invited talks and 1 poster description were carefully reviewed and selected from 110 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on upward drawings, planarity, beyond planarity, geometric representations, 3D et al., universality, practical graph drawing, subgraphs, crossings, geometric graphs and geographic networks, angular restrictions, grids, curves and routes. The book also contains a short description of the graph drawing contest.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on Graph Drawing, GD 2013, held in Bordeaux, France, in September 2013. The 42 revised full papers presented together with 12 revised short papers, 3 invited talks and 1 poster description were carefully reviewed and selected from 110 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on upward drawings, planarity, beyond planarity, geometric representations, 3D et al., universality, practical graph drawing, subgraphs, crossings, geometric graphs and geographic networks, angular restrictions, grids, curves and routes. The book also contains a short description of the graph drawing contest.

"Haribo macht Kinder froh – und Erwachsene ebenso." Ein banaler Werbespruch, doch er brennt sich unauslöschlich in unser Gedächtnis ein. Mehr noch: Wenn ein Satz sich reimt, bewertet unser Gehirn ihn völlig unbewusst als präziser, glaubwürdiger und wahrhaftiger als denselben inhaltlichen Satz ohne Reimstruktur. Dieses bizarre Phänomen der kognitiven Verzerrung nennt sich "Rhyme-as-Reason-Effekt" oder Keats-Heuristik.Warum lassen wir uns von einfacher Poesie so leicht betrügen? Unser Gehirn ist extrem auf Effizienz getrimmt. Es verarbeitet gereimte, fließende Sprache wesentlich schneller und flüssiger als holprige Prosa (kognitive Leichtigkeit). Anstatt innezuhalten und den logischen Wahrheitsgehalt der Aussage kritisch zu prüfen, verwechselt unser Verstand die Leichtigkeit der Verarbeitung mit der Richtigkeit des Inhalts. Was schön klingt, muss wahr sein.Dieses Buch bietet einen faszinierenden Einblick in die Mechanismen der rhetorischen Manipulation. Es analysiert berühmte Gerichtsprozesse (wie den O.J. Simpson Fall: "If it doesn''t fit, you must acquit"), erfolgreiche politische Kampagnen und milliardenschwere Werbeslogans, die gezielt auf diesen neurologischen blinden Fleck abzielen.Für Marketingexperten, Juristen und Kommunikatoren liefert dieses Werk mächtige Werkzeuge. Lernen Sie die kognitive Biomechanik der Sprache kennen und durchschauen Sie, wie Poesie die Logik unseres Verstandes systematisch ausschaltet.