A discussion of squash, history, and culture with author James Zug. His book Squash: A History of the Game (Scribner’s, 2003) is the definitive history of a sport that started as an English schoolboys’ pastime at Harrow. It has since grown into an obsession for hundreds of thousands of players (professional and amateur) around the globe. The book’s cast of characters includes Ivy League coaches, English aristocrats, Philadelphia and New York sportsmen, Pakistani immigrants, and many famous artists and writers. Some were well-bred preppies, some were scrappy outsiders, and many were just plain eccentrics. Who knew that conductor Leonard Bernstein and modern artist Frank Stella were also passionate squash players? Not only was there a squash court on the RMS Titanic in 1912, but there was also one on the RMS Queen Mary a quarter-of-a-century later.
The late author Tom Wolfe said about Squash: A History of the Game: “The squash world has been waiting for a book like this. I bet even the most dedicated and knowledgeable maestros of tight rails and feathery drop shots will lots of fascinating stuff they never knew before.”
A graduate of Dartmouth College, where he was captain of the squash team, James earned a masters degree in nonfiction writing from Columbia. He has written for numerous national print publications including the New York Times, Atlantic, Outside, Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal as well as many websites like the Daily Beast, Town and Country, and Vanity Fair. He has authored a half dozen books, including one on an anti-apartheid newspaper in South Africa and another on the eighteenth-century American explorer John Ledyard. He is a global expert on racquet sports, having played and written about tennis, squash, court tennis, racquets, paddleball, padel, platform tennis and sticke tennis. Scribner put out his history of squash book in 2003 and is republishing an updated version later this year. And Run to the Roar: Coaching to Overcome Fear, his best-selling book on Paul Assaiante, the Trinity squash coach, is close to being made into a major motion picture.
The guest interviewer for this episode is David Letourneau, a Canadian-American world-ranked squash player and entrepreneur. He has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Princeton University, where he was captain of the men’s squash team and winner of the Skillman Award for Outstanding Sportsmanship.
James and David have known each other for many years, and it was great fun getting them together for a conversation about their favorite game on Wet Lunch on the High Seas.
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