84 Journal of American Ethnic History / Fall 2013 medalists Mae Faggs Starr and Wynomia Tyus shed much light on the struggles and accomplishments of African American women in track during the 1950s and 1960s. Both were members of Tennessee State University’s famous women’s track team, the Tigerbelles, coached by the legendary Edward Temple. In another valu- able account, Lenny Wilkens, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, describes several confrontations with segregation and discrimination that he experienced in the early 1960s while playing for the St. Louis Hawks and while traveling with U.S. military teams across the South. Other athletes, especially those from minor sports like wrestler Don Benning, elaborate on the unique challenges that they faced when competing in historically white sports. The thirteen interviews contained in Better than the Best provide readers with a wealth of personal detail about the historical experiences of African Americans who were successful not only in athletic competition but in their later lives as well. Even though racial barriers gradually declined over time, these talented individuals still needed to push themselves to the maximum in order to be “better than the best.” Oral history purists will be disappointed not to find a technical description of how the texts of the interviews were worked into their published format. Nonetheless, the book makes a useful contribution to African American history and sport history, and its inspiring stories should prove especially enlightening for high school and college students. Charles H. Martin University of Texas at El Paso Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball. By Adrian Burgos, Jr. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. 336 pp. Il- lustrations, notes, and index. $28 (cloth). Adrian Burgos, Jr., Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, established his scholarly reputation with the 2007 publication of Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley, CA, 2007). Burgos offers another valuable contribution with Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball. Burgos examines the life of Alejandro (Alex) Pompez, a trailblazing figure in Negro League and Major League baseball. Pompez, a Cuban American, rose to prominence in Harlem not only as a baseball owner, but also as a “numbers king” in the 1920s. As Burgos explains in the preface, one of his motivations in writing this book was to defend Pompez and his career against the many naysayers who questioned whether Pompez was worthy of his 2006 Hall of Fame selection, which Burgos had advanced as a member of the voting committee. Specifically, Burgos seeks to redeem Pompez’s reputation, marred by years of association with the New York numbers game, and also to defend his importance as a baseball owner and scout. Downloaded from http://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/jaeh/article-pdf/33/1/84/1186170/jamerethnhist.33.1.0084.pdf by guest on 08 February 2022