On the Shoulders of Giants, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, is a great book on his experience through the Harlem Renaissance. He tells about the segregation and how African-Americans were beat up by the whites. The cops wouldn’t even try to help them. They would just stand and watch. Over time, the African-American’s produced an amazing amount of talent in sports and music. Harlem, New York became the black capital of the nation because of how many African-Americans lived there. Although all of the great restaurants were owned by whites the spirit of the place was filled with the African-Americans. Abdul-Jabbar admires many great people that did something to change this nation and how he was lucky enough to watch some of the things they did. He writes in the book about a lot of famous people I had never even heard of, or the great things they did. He also writes about his high school basketball career and how his coach would call him names just so he would play better and they would have a better chance of winning the game. He also wrote about the first mixed raced basketball championship and it was my favorite part of the book. He described it so well it felt like I could see exactly what each fan’s face looked like. If you like sports history then you have to read this book.

I would recommend this book to people who like hearing about other people’s life and hearing about what they went through as a kid. I would also recommend this book to people who like to read autobiographies. I though this was a tremendous book and I liked all of the detail Abdul-Jabbar wrote. It kept me reading because there was a lot of interesting stories and many great people. Abdul-Jabbar created great pictures in my head while I was reading and it made it like I was watching a movie. I would give this book a 9 out of 10.