Formerly the associate director of media relations at the Vanderbilt athletic department and the first-ever media relations manager for the Tampa Bay Rays, Andrew Maraniss is now a partner at McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations. He is the author of Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South (Vanderbilt University Press). Based on more than eighty interviews, this fast-paced, richly detailed biography of Perry Wallace, the first African American basketball player in the SEC, digs deep beneath the surface to reveal a more complicated and profound story of sports pioneering than we’ve come to expect from the genre. Perry Wallace’s unusually insightful and honest introspection reveals his inner thoughts throughout his journey.