Five Minutes to Midnight

Lapchick has expanded his earlier, disturbing examination, Broken Promises: Racism in American Sport, published in 1984. The current volume (about half of of which consists of new material) begins with Lapchick's recounting of a vicious assault by white racists he suffered in 1978 p. 3 while organizing against a South African Davis Cup team visit to Nashvillep. 16 . Ironically, in spite of the Reagan-era attacks on people of color, Lapchick says he is more optimistic than he was in '84: ``I have shed my cynical edge about sport. While hardly perfect, sport has made major improvements while society seems to have embarked on a self-destructive course.'' The most compelling new material outlines the problems of barnstorming pro basketballers of the '20s and '30s, as recalled by his famous father, hoops great Joe Lapchick. This section puts the author's experiences into a larger historical context, giving the new volume a more coherent structure than its predecessor. The last third of the book surveys changes in the status of black athletes at all levels of sport and proposes necessary reforms, a list that should be read by administrators, educators and parents. (June)