When the Garden Was Eden

<p><strong>Brilliant . . . smartly written featuring tons of interviews with the Knicks of the Phil Jackson-Clyde-Reed era. -- <em>New York</em> Magazine</strong></p><p><strong>Harvey Araton has evocatively rendered the team that New York never stops pining for--the Old Knicks. More than a nostalgic chronicle . . . it's a portrait of a group of proud idiosyncratic men and the city that needed them. --</strong> <strong>Jonathan Mahler author of <em>Ladies and Gentleman the Bronx is Burning</em></strong></p><p><strong>In the tradition of <em>The Boys of Summer </em>and <em>The Bronx Is Burning</em> <em>New York Times </em>sports columnist Harvey Araton delivers a fascinating look at the 1970s New York Knicks--part autobiography part sports history part epic set against the tumultuous era when Walt Frazier Willis Reed and Bill Bradley reigned supreme in the world of basketball. </strong></p><p>The late 1960s and early 1970s in New York City and America at large were years marked by political tumult social unrest . . . and the best professional basketball ever played. Paradise for better or worse was a hardwood court in midtown Manhattan.</p><p>Harvey Araton has followed the Knicks old and new for decades--first as a teenage fan then as a young sports reporter with the <em>New York Post</em> and now as a writer and columnist for the <em>New York Times</em>. <em>When the Garden Was Eden</em> is the definitive account of the New York Knicks in their vintage pomp. With measured prose and shoe-leather reporting Araton relives their most glorious triumphs and bitter rivalries and casts light on a team all but forgotten outside of pregame highlight reels and nostalgic reunions at the Garden.</p><p>Araton's revealing story of the Knicks' heyday is far more than a review of one of basketball's greatest teams' inspiring story--it is at heart a stirring recreation of a time and place when the NBA championships defined the national dream.</p>