"Carry the Rock is the rare sports book that doesn’t just transcend its genre; it soars high above it. Jay Jennings has produced much more than a chronicle of a season of dramatic Friday night wins and losses. He has given us a sweeping yet nuanced portrait of race in America—a picture of how far we have come since the Little Rock Nine made their historic stand and of how far we still have to go.”—Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning
"Carry the Rock is a core sample, through layers of bright, dark, and hard-pressed solidarities. At bottom, it makes you root for the kids.”—Roy Blount, Jr., author of About Three Bricks Shy of a Load
“Jennings has produced that rarest of things: A book about race and sports that avoids all the usual clichés about the redemptive power of high school football. Unsentimental yet inspiring, Carry the Rock does what all books about race relations should attempt but few achieve. It tells the reader something he doesn’t know.”—Joe Queenan, author of True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans and Closing Time: A Memoir
"Jay Jennings has written an epistle that invites the reader to join him on a journey back to Little Rock, illuminating the dynamics of race, football, and the soul of die city.”—Terrence Roberts, Little Rock Nine member and author of the memoir Lessons from Little Rock
Jay Jennings is a freelance writer who has contributed to The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, The Oxford American, and many other magazines and newspapers. A former reporter for Sports Illustrated and features editor at Tennis magazine, he edited Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game. He lives in Little Rock.
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