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. 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.

On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s Worldnewspaper, 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. The dramatic race that ensued would span twenty-eight thousand miles, captivate the nation, and change both competitors’ lives forever.
 

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.