James Naismith

Rains and Carpenter chronicle how James Naismith developed the original rules of basketball, coached the game at the University of Kansas--establishing college basketball in the process--and was honored for his work at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin.

Rob Rains is a former National League beat writer for USA Today's Baseball Weekly and for three years covered the St. Louis Cardinals for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.  He is the  author or co-author of autobiographies or biographies of Tony La Russa, Ozzie Smith, Mark McGwire, Jack Buck, Red Schoendienst and many other sports celebrities.

Hellen Carpenter is the granddaughter of James Naismith. For more than 40 years she had in her possession more than 200 documents from Naismith's files which were instrumental in crafting this biography.