In it’s Nov. 15, 2014 issue, Library Journal calls Strong Inside “an engaging tour.” The review by Arizona State professor Thomas J. Davis:
Playing for Vanderbilt University’s Commodores in 1967-70, Perry Wallace broke the color barrier in Southeastern Conference basketball. In his debut book, media relations specialist and Vanderbilt graduate Maraniss tracks Wallace’s years at the university, from his childhood in segregated Nashville to high school basketball champion and All-American and onward to his becoming a law professor. Maraniss’s life-and-times treatment of the 6’5″ front-court scorer, rebounder, and shot blocker weaves Wallace’s daily disappointments and frustrations as a black athlete with the problems and controversies surrounding him on and off campus. The author spotlights media coverage and university politics as he mixes scores and highlights, sometimes moving play by play, with descriptions of the continually hostile environments of cramped gyms against conference and nonconference foes, the changing landscape of college basketball, the South as a region, and American sports in the 1960s. VERDICT With insight into the motivation and maturing of a African American man amid rabid hostility in the age of desegregation, Maraniss presents social and sports historians and interested readers with an engaging tour that exposes the challenges of change in the South and in college sports with the arrival of black athletes center stage in the white world. –Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe