When the Garden Was Eden

The basis for the ESPN documentary, New York Times columnist Harvey Araton’s When the Garden Was Eden is a fascinating look at the 1970s New York Knicks.

Part autobiography, part sports history, part epic, this incredible sports history is set against the tumultuous era when Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, and Bill Bradley reigned supreme in the world of basketball. Perfect for readers of Jeff Pearlman’s The Bad Guys Won!, Peter Richmond’s Badasses, and Pat Williams’s Coach Wooden, 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.

“Brilliant . . . smartly written, featuring tons of interviews with the Knicks of the Phil Jackson-Clyde-Reed era.” —New York Magazine

“Harvey Araton, one of our most cherished basketball writers, 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.” —Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentleman, the Bronx is Burning

“I wasn’t there when Clyde and Willis and Dollar Bill were lighting up the Garden, let alone barnstorming Philadelphia church basements, but after reading When the Garden Was Eden I now feel like I was courtside with Woody and Dancing Harry.” —Will Leitch, founding editor of Deadspin

“Harvey Araton, who writes the way Earl the Pearl played, has made the Old Knicks new again. I learned so much and I was there.” —Robert Lipsyte, author of An Accidental Sportswriter