Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball

In the winter of 1891, James Naismith, a physical-education instructor at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, was handed a rowdy gym class that had already driven two teachers to quit. Desperate to keep the energetic students from causing trouble, he devised a new indoor game using peach baskets and a set of simple rules. The picture book follows his quick thinking and the birth of basketball, a sport that quickly spread across the country. It presents the true story of how one teacher's ingenuity turned a chaotic class into the invention of a game now beloved worldwide.