McRae, Donald

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McRAE, Donald

PERSONAL:

Born in South Africa; immigrated to England.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. Office—c/o Mainstream Publishing, 7 Albany St., Edinburgh EH1 3UG, Scotland.

CAREER:

Writer and teacher.

AWARDS, HONORS:

William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, 1996, for Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing; William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, 2002, for Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Nothing Personal—The Business of Sex, Mainstream Publishing (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1992.

Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing, Mainstream Publishing (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1996.

Winter Colours: Changing Seasons in World Rugby, Mainstream Publishing (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1998.

In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, Scribner, 2002, published as Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals inlcuding London Sunday Times, Guardian Observer, and Esquire.

SIDELIGHTS:

Donald McRae was a white native of South Africa who immigrated to England as a young man in part because of his objection to his native country's policy of apartheid. While living in London, McRae worked as a writer for a number of magazines and newspapers and then branched out into nonfiction books. A number of his books focus on sports, with boxing a particularly favorite topic. McRae's Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens is a dual biography of the sports stars. A reviewer for Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza praised McRae for his "spare, eloquent prose."

When McRae wrote Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing, he intended to pay tribute to boxing, his favorite sport since the 1960s. Because of what he observed about the aura of death surrounding the sport and how many boxers were taken advantage of, Dark Trade takes a bleaker turn. The book includes detailed descriptions of a number of matches from many weight classes and eras. Joyce Carol Oates in a Los Angeles Times Book Review praised McRae for being "emotionally direct" adn wrote that the author "brings to the highly charged, obsessive world of professional boxing a novelist's eye and ear for revealing detail and convincingly recalled dialogue."

Boxing also played a role in McRae's Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens. This book looks at the parallels in the lives and careers of two African-American icons of the twentieth century: boxer Joe Louis and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens. McRae believes that although these men were among the first prominent African-American athletes to become international heroes, both also suffered much discrimination in the United States and worked—sometimes unconsciously—to break down such barriers. While Louis made much money as a professional fighter, he ended up owing the International Revenue Service millions of dollars in back taxes. Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, but was not allowed to compete as an amateur athlete after that event and made money by competing in staged races, such as races against horses. McRae wrote his book after he learned that Owens ran against Louis in one such race. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly called Heroes without a Country "powerful and moving." Anthony C. Davis of Black Issues Book Review praises the parallel structure of the book because it shows how alike the lives of Louis and Owen were. Davis wrote that "McRae does an excellent job of shedding light on history that is often glossed over." In a review for Library Journal, Robert Cottrell praises Heroes without a Country, writing "this dual biography is a terrific read and tells an important story."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, July-August 2003, Anthony C. Davis, review of Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, p. 57.

Library Journal, July 2003, C. Robert Cottrell, review of Heroes without a Country, p. 94.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 1, 1998, Joyce Carol Oates, review of Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing, p. 3.

Observer (London, England), September 20, 1992, Donald Trelford, "Nothing Personal"; December 1, 2002, Tony Adams, review of In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, p. 3.

Publishers Weekly, May 12, 2003, review of Heroes without a Country, p. 57.

Times Literary Supplement, January 17, 2003, Roland Lloyd Parry, review of In Black and White, p. 28.