Millman, Chad

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Millman, Chad

PERSONAL: Son of Barry J. and Temmy Millman; married Stacy Ellen Kronland (an architect), June 20, 1998; children: Zachary. Education: Graduate of Indiana University.

ADDRESSES: Home—Montclair, NJ. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Journalist and writer. Former reporter, Sports Illustrated, New York, NY, then CNNSI correspondent, c. 1993-98;ESPN The Magazine, contributor then senior editor, beginning 1998.

WRITINGS

(With Lars Anderson) Pickup Artists: Street Basketball in America, Verso (New York, NY), 1998.

The Odds: One Season, Three Gamblers, and the Death of Their Las Vegas, PublicAffairs (New York, NY), 2001.

The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

(With Vince Papale) Invincible: My Journey from NFL Fan to NFL Captain, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Chad Millman is a former sports reporter and the author of several nonfiction books, including Pickup Artists: Street Basketball in America, written with Lars Anderson. In Pickup Artists, Mill-man briefly outlines the history of basketball and then focuses in on rule changes that led to the ensuing growth of the sport’s popularity on the streets of major cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The author discusses how the new young players from both the ghettos and America’s working-class families eventually created major changes in how the game was played. He also profiles some of the most famous “street players,” as well as notable women players who played long before women’s basketball became popular. A Publishers Weekly contributor called Pickup Artists a “significant contribution to the history of the game.”

In his book The Odds: One Season, Three Gamblers, and the Death of Their Las Vegas, Millman provides a portrait of Las Vegas and the gambling mania that surrounds sports betting, such as college basketball’s playoffs (known as “March Madness”). As he follows a bookmaker, an experienced professional gambler, and a gambler just starting out as a pro, Millman describes a gambling city that is slowly being turned into a kind of DisneyLand for tourists as its former stranglehold on legal gambling is threatened by developers, off-shore betting sites, and increasing legalized gambling in other states. “This is not a Reefer Madness-style expose designed to scare gamblers straight,” wrote Jim Burns in the Library Journal. Charles Hirshberg, writing in Sports Illustrated, referred to The Odds as “an intimate, hilarious and, at times, terribly sad portrait.”

The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice recounts the story of a 1916 terror bombing of New Jersey’s Black Tom munitions plant by three German agents. The explosion, which occurred before the United States entered World War I, was so strong that it could be heard in parts of Maryland and killed a baby by blasting it out of its crib. The bombing was considered the single worst terrorist act in America up to that time. The author follows the German operatives in the United States and those who worked with them for financial motives, as well as the legal battles that followed the end of the war as lawyers tried to sue Germany for twenty million dollars in damages. Gilbert Taylor, writing in Booklist, commented: “From a storytelling perspective, Millman commendably rises above a dry recitation of briefs and rulings.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor called The Detonators“an intriguing, bracing tale, and not just for history buffs.” Another reviewer writing in Publishers Weekly commented that the “emphasis on the personal stories of the main characters involved in hatching the Black Tom plot and those who solved it makes for gripping reading.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July 1, 2006, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice, p. 25.

Entertainment Weekly, June 30, 2006, Jennifer Reese, review of The Detonators, p. 166.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2006, review of The Detonators, p. 448.

Library Journal, May 1, 2001, Jim Burns, review of The Odds: One Season, Three Gamblers, and the Death of Their Las Vegas, p. 96; June 15, 2006, Edwin B. Burgess, review of The Detonators, p. 84.

Publishers Weekly, May 4, 1998, review of Pickup Artists: Street Basketball in America, p. 193; May 8, 2006, review of The Detonators, p. 58.

Sports Illustrated, April 2, 2001, Charles Hirshberg, review of The Odds, p. R4.