A Rhodes Retrospective

Merle McClung's memoir "A Rhodes Retrospective" is a two-volume set: Volume I "My Education" and Volume II "My Career." In Volume I McClung tells his story from impoverished childhood in a small Midwestern town (Montevideo, Minnesota) to unlikely scholarships to Harvard College, Oxford University and Harvard Law School. His improbable rise from bottom to top socio-economic status, underscored by winning a Rhodes Scholarship, is not a "rags to riches," but rather a "rags to respect" story. In his memoir, McClung pays tribute to some of those who made it possible: his working mother (Martha), his public high school English teacher (Claude Dziuk), his Republican mentor (Ollie Rekow) and his Constitutional Law Professor (Archibald Cox). Only later in life does McClung come to appreciate how much basketball has paved the way to a larger world beyond the game.