Matthew Goodman is a New York Times–bestselling author of five books, including The City Game and Eighty Days, whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Review.
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In 1889, Elizabeth Bisland set out on a globe-spanning journey to rival Nellie Bly, combining courage, literary talent, and a sharp intellect to make history in one of the most remarkable travel feats of the 19th century.
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Matthew Goodman is a New York Times-bestselling author of five books: Paris Undercover: A Wartime Story of Courage, Friendship, and Betrayal; The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team; Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World; The Sun and the Moon: Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York; and Jewish Food: The World at Table.
Goodman’s books have received the New York City Book Award and have been a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, the American Library in Paris Book Award, and the Goodreads Choice Award; they have been Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, Indie Next “Great Reads,” and Borders Original Voices selections, and have been translated into eight languages. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the American Scholar, the Harvard Review, Salon, Tablet, the Forward, Bon Appétit, and many other publications. These writings having been cited for Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Short Story anthologies.
He has given book talks at venues including the Museum of the City of New York, the Gotham Center for New York History, the Center for Jewish History, the National Yiddish Book Center, the Brooklyn Book Festival, the 92nd Street Y, the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Authors at Harborfront Center in Toronto, and many bookstores, universities, and libraries. Goodman’s radio and television appearances include National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” “The Diane Rehm Show,” “On the Media,” “Only a Game,” “Back Story,” and “The Splendid Table”; HuffPost Live, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s “Woman’s Hour,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “As It Happens”; Arte France’s “L’Incontournable,” and numerous others, respectively.
In addition, Goodman has taught creative writing and literature at Vermont College, Tufts University, Emerson College, and at writers’ conferences including the Antioch Writers Workshop and the Chautauqua Institution. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony (on two occasions) and the Corporation of Yaddo.
He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two children.Publications by this author
Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team
Ballantine Books | November | 2019
The unlikeliest of champions, the 1949–50 City College Beavers were extraordinary by every measure. City College was a tuition-free, merit-based college in Harlem known far more for its intellectual achievements and political radicalism than its athletic prowess. Only two years after Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color barrier—and at a time when the National Basketball Association was still segregated—every single member of the Beavers was either Jewish or African American. But during that remarkable season, under the guidance of the legendary former player Nat Holman, this unheralded group of city kids would stun the basketball world by becoming the only team in history to win the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year.
This team, though, proved to be extraordinary in another way: During the following season, all of the team’s starting five were arrested by New York City detectives, charged with conspiring with gamblers to shave points. Almost overnight these beloved heroes turned into fallen idols. The story centers on two teammates and close friends, Eddie Roman and Floyd Layne, one white, one black, each caught up in the scandal, each searching for a path to personal redemption. Though banned from the NBA, Layne continued to devote himself to basketball, teaching the game to young people in his Bronx neighborhood and, ultimately, with Roman’s help, finding another kind of triumph—one that no one could have anticipated.
Drawing on interviews with the surviving members of that championship team, Matthew Goodman has created an indelible portrait of an era of smoke-filled arenas and Borscht Belt hotels, when college basketball was far more popular than the professional game. It was a time when gangsters controlled illegal sports betting, the police were on their payroll, and everyone, it seemed, was getting rich—except for the young men who actually played the games.
Tautly paced and rich with period detail, The City Game tells a story both dramatic and poignant: of political corruption, duplicity in big-time college sports, and the deeper meaning of athletic success.Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World
Ballantine Books | February | 2013
On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland. Each woman was determined to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg and circle the globe in less than 80 days. The dramatic race that ensued would span 28,000 miles, captivate the nation, and change both competitors’ lives forever.
The two women were a study in contrasts. Nellie Bly was a scrappy, hard-driving, ambitious reporter from Pennsylvania coal country who sought out the most sensational news stories, often going undercover to expose social injustice. Genteel and elegant, Elizabeth Bisland had been born into an aristocratic Southern family, preferred novels and poetry to newspapers, and was widely referred to as the most beautiful woman in metropolitan journalism. Eighty Days brings these trailblazing women to life as they race against time and each other, unaided and alone, ever aware that the slightest delay could mean the difference between victory and defeat. Along the way, their journey takes them into the back alleys of Hong Kong, onto a Ceylon tea plantation, through storm-tossed ocean crossings, and to many more unexpected and exotic locales from London to Yokohama.
A vivid real-life re-creation of the race and its aftermath, from its frenzied start to the nail-biting dash at its finish, Eighty Days is history with the heart of a great adventure novel.The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth Century New York
Basic Books | October | 2008
On Wednesday, August 26, 1835, a fledgling newspaper called the Sun brought to New York the first accounts of remarkable lunar discoveries. A series of six articles purported to reveal the existence of life on the moon—including unicorns, beavers that walked on their hind legs, and, strangest of all, four-foot-tall flying man-bats. In a matter of weeks, the series became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era, and the Sun, a brash working-class upstart less than two years old, had become the most widely read newspaper in the world.
Told in richly novelistic detail, The Sun and the Moon brings the raucous world of 1830s New York City vividly to life—the noise, the excitement, the sense that almost anything was possible. The book overflows with larger-than-life characters, including Richard Adams Locke, the author of the moon series; a fledgling showman named P.T. Barnum, who had just brought his own hoax to New York; and the young writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was convinced that the moon series was a plagiarism of his own work.
An exhilarating narrative history of a divided city on the cusp of greatness and a crew of writers, editors, and charlatans who stumbled onto a new kind of journalism, The Sun and the Moon tells the surprisingly true story of the penny papers that made American into a nation of newspaper readers.The World at Table
William Morrow Cookbooks | March | 2005
For centuries, Jewish communities around the world forged dynamic cuisines from ancient traditions combined with the bounties—and limitations—of their adopted homelands. In this important new collection, Matthew Goodman has assembled more than 170 recipes from twenty-nine countries, handed down through the generations and now preserved in this historic volume.
The heirloom offerings Goodman gathered range from such iconic specialties as bagels, kugel, and chopped liver to such favorites, mostly unknown in the United States, as Turkish borekas, flaky cheese-filled turnovers; chelou, an Iranian rice specialty; and shtritzlach, a sweet blueberry pastry unique to Toronto. Together, the recipes celebrate the ingenuity of Jewish cooks around the world: in Mexican Baked Blintzes with Vegetables and Roasted Poblano Peppers, Syrian Bulgur Salad with Pomegranate Molasses, Moroccan Roast Chicken with Dried Fruit and Nuts, Iraqi Sweet-and-Sour Lamb with Eggplant and Peppers, Italian Baked Ricotta Pudding, and many other unexpected delights.
These dishes have been shaped by the histories of the communities from which they come. This book also features dozens of lively, engaging essays that present the history of Jewish food in all its richness and variety. The essays focus on ingredients, prepared dishes, and cultures.
Food is a repository of a community's history, and here, in its broad strokes, is the history of the Jews. The recipes and essays in this book provide a fascinating new perspective on Jewish food. More than a cookbook, Goodman's Jewish Food: The World at Table is a book to learn from, to cook with, and to pass on through the ages.
Ultimately, the Gestapo captures them both. After 18 months in prison, Etta is returned to the United States in a prisoner exchange. Back home, hoping to bring attention to her friend Kitty’s bravery, she publishes a memoir about their work. Paris-Underground becomes a publishing sensation and Etta a celebrity. Meanwhile Kate spends the rest of the war in a Nazi prison, entirely unaware of the book that has been written about her—and the deeds that have been claimed in her name.
In researching this story, Matthew Goodman uncovered military records and personal testimonies that reveal, for the first time, the shocking truth behind Etta’s memoir and the unexpected, far-reaching consequences of its publication. More than just a story of two women’s remarkable courage, Paris Undercover is a vivid, gripping account of deceit, betrayal, and personal redemption.