FEBRUARY 2019 - AudioFile
Albert Samaha tackles the narration of his audiobook with the heart and soul of the youth football team he writes about, Mo Better Jaguars. He describes the team as a haven in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a sometimes violent, always dangerous place to live. Samaha follows three of the Mo Better players—Oomz, Gio, and Hart. Their talent is their “golden ticket.” With it they can go to a better high school and get college scholarships, but without it circumstances in their lives outside Mo Better can lure them into one of many gangs. The boys’ stories include occasional street talk, but it doesn’t detract from a stellar heartfelt performance. Samaha’s compassion and hope for these 12-year-old boys is evident in his presentation. E.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Samuel G. Freedman
…Samaha brings empathy and scrutiny to his reporting…There is much to enjoy and at the best moments to admire in this book…Never Ran, Never Will proves the continued salience of urban sports as a subject for exploring larger issues of race and class.
Publishers Weekly
07/30/2018
In an inspiring tale of sports and inner-city youth, Samaha, a criminal justice reporter for Buzzfeed, chronicles a season in the lives of the members of a Brooklyn youth football team, the Mo Better Jaguars, and its devoted coaches in the high-crime neighborhood of Brownsville as it was becoming gentrified. Of the team’s six coaches, some of whom work two jobs, Chris Legree and Vick Davis are the standouts as they struggle to keep the floundering team afloat throughout the 2013–2014 season. Davis’s son, meanwhile, was in jail, charged with armed robbery. The Mo Better players—ages eight to 13—prove to be determined and are eager students thanks to their dedication to football, and, indeed, at a time when one in three boys in the neighborhood were entangled in the criminal justice system, nearly all of Mo Betta players kept out of trouble. Samaha recalls key episodes, showing the coaches teaching the kids life lessons through football (“Start thinking big.... You don’t have to get a job; get a business, own something,” Legree told the players in the huddle at the end of the first week of practice). At the heart of Samaha’s unflinching book are the life-affirming themes of sports, transcendence, courage, and manhood. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Samaha brings empathy and scrutiny to his reporting... There is much to enjoy and at the best moments to admire in this book... Never Ran, Never Will proves the continued salience of urban sports as a subject for exploring larger issues of race and class."—New YorkTimes Book Review
"Refreshing and raw, Never Ran, Never Will tracks the boys of Brownsville, Brooklyn as they age out of innocence and details the efforts of the devoted men and women laboring to guide them into adulthood. By the last page of Albert Samaha's compelling debut, you don't just want the boys of the Mo Better Jaguars to make it - you realize that we all need them to."
—Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post national correspondent and author of the New York Times bestselling They Can't Kill Us All
"Never Ran, Never Will is the irresistible story of the Mo Better Jaguars, a football team of hard-luck boys in low-income Brownsville, Brooklyn. With dazzling prose, Albert Samaha's big beautiful book about teamwork and ambition, growing up and breaking away, will touch you with its heart and grace."
—Don Van Natta, Jr., ESPN senior writer, New York Times bestselling author, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Good narrative nonfiction requires a kind of alchemy-thorough reporting and incisive writing are essential, but the most important ingredient is time. Albert Samaha's years-long commitment to this tale of striving Brooklyn kids and their dedicated football coaches shines through on every page. The result is a rare gift: a story with genuine characters, real texture, and deep, sensitive insight."
—Nate Blakeslee, author of American Wolf and Tulia
"Samaha takes readers by the hand and leads them on a visceral tour of a peril-filled world that, nevertheless, thanks to people like Legree, can also become a seeding ground for hope. An important book on many levels."—Booklist, Starred Review
"An inspiring tale... At the heart of Samaha's unflinching book are the life-affirming themes of sports, transcendence, courage, and manhood."—Publishers Weekly
"Albert Samaha writes with grit, grace and compassion about coming of age in a hard place. The young men of the Mo Better Jaguars-and their tireless coaches-face long odds on the field and in the streets. It's impossible not to root for them, to marvel at their determination and heart, and to share in their dream of a better future."—Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America inthe Twenty-First Century
FEBRUARY 2019 - AudioFile
Albert Samaha tackles the narration of his audiobook with the heart and soul of the youth football team he writes about, Mo Better Jaguars. He describes the team as a haven in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a sometimes violent, always dangerous place to live. Samaha follows three of the Mo Better players—Oomz, Gio, and Hart. Their talent is their “golden ticket.” With it they can go to a better high school and get college scholarships, but without it circumstances in their lives outside Mo Better can lure them into one of many gangs. The boys’ stories include occasional street talk, but it doesn’t detract from a stellar heartfelt performance. Samaha’s compassion and hope for these 12-year-old boys is evident in his presentation. E.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
