As fire is to prairie or water to fish, so is basketball part of the natural environment in Indiana. Round ball, or Hoosier Hysteria is so much a part of the state's heritage that many people believe basketball was invented in Indiana. Naismith's game is a virtual religion in the state.
While everyone knows about the growth of basketball in high schools and in college, the story of Indiana's role in the development of professional basketball

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Named by The New York Times as "a knowing, respectful and caring look at heartland America" and containing a new foreword by legendary player Bob Plump, this is a book every basketball lover should own. The best of Phillip Hoose's classic writings are included here with a fresh look on Indiana's favorite and most beloved sport. A new edition of a well-known Indiana classic, Hoosiers profiles some of the world's most famous basketball players and coaches-Larry...

Prepare to take a tour of some dark, strange moments of southern Indiana's history. From the scheming wife who wanted her dull husband out of the way to make room for a young love affair and the husband who stomped his wife to death because she wouldn't stop singing an irritating song, to the man who murdered an entire family to pay off some farming equipment and the case of a mistaken-identity murder, author Keven McQueen relates the sinister (or...

"Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis" is the riveting story of the formation and formative years of the Indiana Pacers, who opened for business in 1967 and awakened a slumbering city. It traces the events that enabled Indianapolis to become a charter member of the American Basketball Association and reveals the diligent effort, exceptional talent and dumb luck that got the team up and running -- and winning -- in two...

In 1952, when Georgie is eleven years old, her family moves to a new Indiana neighborhood where her teenaged neighbor has polio and is in an iron lung.

Will lightning ever strike twice? Can David beat Goliath a second time? These questions haunt everyone in the small town of Milan, Indiana, whose basketball team inspired Hoosiers, the greatest underdog sports movie ever made. From a town of just 1,816 residents, the team remains forever an underdog, but one with a storied past that has them eternally frozen in their 1954 moment of glory. Every ten years or so, Milan has a winning season, but for

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Where was James Dean's hometown? What do A. J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, and Al Unser have in common besides winning the Indianapolis 500? Where was the world's first theme park? Find these answers and more in Little Indiana: Small Town Destinations. Featuring towns of 15,000 or fewer inhabitants, Little Indiana explores where to eat, stay, play, and shop in over 90 small towns. After six years of traveling the state in search of amazing local experiences,...

In 1972, Flora Smallwood, nine, copes with her parents' separation with the help of her friends, Yury and Nessie, a new pet, and the familiar routines of life in Rosetown, Indiana.

"For far too long the storyline of Indiana basketball has been dominated by Hoosiers. Framed as the ultimate underdog, feel good story, there has also long been a cultural debate surrounding the film, and The Real Hoosiers sets out to illuminate the narrative absent from the film. This is the story of the real life team that inspired the team that most have long assumed was Hickory High's championship opponent. They were Crispus Attucks, an all Black...

"The Bears of Blue River describes the adventures of a young boy growing up in early nineteenth-century rural Indiana. Little Balser lives with his parents, a younger brother, and a baby sister in a cozy log cabin on the bank of the Big Blue River. Although only thirteen or fourteen years old, he is quite familiar with the dangers and rigors of frontier life. As the story unfolds, the boy becomes lost in the forest, encounters the fierce one-eared...