Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 11/25/2007

11/25/1975:
Building their revamped team around 7'2" center Tom Burleson, the Seattle SuperSonics enjoy a measure of satisfaction when they beat the Knicks, 128-127, in overtime in their first game against former teammate Spencer Haywood. Seattle gladly shed Haywood along with his enormous salary and one-on-one offensive proclivities to create more of a team concept under the tutelage of head coach Bill Russell. They'll reach the NBA finals twice this decade and win the world title in 1979.

Birthdays:
Joe DiMaggio b. 1914
Bernie Kosar b. 1963
Cris Carter b. 1965
Anthony Peeler b. 1969
Donovan McNabb b. 1976

BIOGRAPHIES

Everyone is reading the biography of Lev Nussimbaum. “Who!?” Nussimbaum was a relative nobody (though an interesting one), but Reiss manages to make his story essential. Born a Russian Jew, Nussimbaum passed himself off as a Muslim prince and became a celebrated author in Nazi Germany. Reiss’s reconstruction of the life of Nussimbaum, aka Kurban Said, is at once a character study to rival those found in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and a lively history of the Middle East and Balkans. Critics said, “spellbinding” (The Los Angeles Times), “thrilling” (Entertainment Weekly), and “wondrous” (The New York Times).

THE ORIENTALIST: SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF A STRANGE AND DANGEROUS LIFE, by Tom Reiss (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006)