A Victory for The Lost Dogs
Best-selling author and senior editor at Sports Illustrated, Jim Gorant, joined me in this episode to talk about his inspiring New York Times bestseller, The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick’s Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption. I asked him what inspired him to write this story, what he learned from writing the book and what he would like readers to take away from reading his book. He also talked with me about what’s happened to the dogs that were featured in his book and about the impact the book has had on positive change in many states that have enacted anti-dog fighting laws. If you followed the story about The Lost Dogs (or even if you’re just hearing about it), you’ll definitely want to listen to this interview to find out more!
BIO:
Jim Gorant's career in magazine publishing began in 1990 with a job at Good Housekeeping and led him to Sports Illustrated, where heis currently a senior editor. In the interim he’s bumbled over seemingly every inch of the vast terrain that exists between those titles, holding staff positions at GQ, Men's Journal, Popular Mechanics and Power & Motoryacht. In the course of his daily responsibilities at those magazines and during two stints as a freelancer he's fished everywhere from Alaska to Venezuela, snowmobiled 12,000 feet into the Idaho Rockies, dived on the Great Barrier Reef and played golf with honest-to-goodness celebrities. The high point came when he was escorted off the grounds of the All-England Lawn Tennis Club (a.k.a. Wimbledon). On the more serious side, he’s investigated anti-aging strategies, infant vaccinations, and the psychology and response to child abductions.
His writing has appeared in more than three dozen national magazines ranging from Men’s Health, Outside, and Popular Science, to Worth, the Robb Report, and the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, among many others. As an editor he’s tinkered with the scribblings of everyone from Mike Lupica to Dan Quayle and worked on two SI books, Tiger 2.0 and The Golf Book.
Jim's original SI cover story on the dogs of Bad Newz kennels won the Humane Society’s Genesis Award for magazine writing. He is also the recipient of the John Southam Award and of multiple writing awards from both the Golf Writers Association of America and Boating Writers International. Prior to The Lost Dogs, Jim authored Fanatic: 10 Things All Sports Fans Should Do Before They Die, a title that despite its length doesn’t come close to capturing the book’s essence (it’s not a list book), and he is also the co-author of Fit For Golf (with Boris Kuzmic).
Shortly after his birth in Brooklyn, New York, Jim's family decamped for the greener pastures of northern New Jersey. Other than the four years when he escaped to college in the distant metropolis of Philadelphia, he’s spent his entire life in the Garden State, where he still lives with his wife and two children. Despite the legacy of his residence, none of his friends or family have been captured on or accurately represented by reality TV programming