# The Bypass Transfusion *A Biography of Arthur Ashe* — Legendary Biographies No. 013 - **Subject:** Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. - **Written by:** Roland Mercer - **Shelf:** Sport / Tennis - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 185 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 185 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-053-9) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Gideon Marsh (ISBN 979-8-90623-199-4) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/013-the-bypass-transfusion.html ## About this book He was born on July 10, 1943, in Richmond, Virginia, into a country in which a Black tennis prodigy was not allowed to enter the city's main public courts. He won the U.S. Open at twenty-five, Wimbledon at thirty-one, and an honorary doctorate from Yale at thirty-six. He received a contaminated blood transfusion during double bypass surgery in 1983. He died of AIDS-related pneumonia on February 6, 1993, at forty-nine. Roland Mercer's biography opens with the Brook Field segregation and the Lynchburg coaching of Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, follows the arc through UCLA on a full scholarship, the 1968 U.S. Open (open era's first), the 1970 South African visa denial and the long anti-apartheid campaign, the 1975 Wimbledon five-set defeat of Jimmy Connors, the 1979 first heart attack and 1983 second bypass, the 1988 brain-infection diagnosis and HIV-positive serology, the 1992 USA Today outing that forced him to disclose his status, the 1992 founding of the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, the September 1992 White House arrest for protesting U.S. Haitian-refugee policy, and the death five months later. What emerges is a portrait of an African-American tennis champion whose career the country let him play in white tournaments and whose death the country let him be the most prominent HIV-positive man of his generation. ## Contents 1. Brook Road 2. The Playground Behind the Fence 3. Leaving Virginia 4. Westwood 5. The Amateur 6. Open 7. The Professional 8. Johannesburg 9. Centre Court 10. The Captain 11. The Heart 12. A Second Chance 13. Camera 14. Days of Grace 15. The Diagnosis 16. The Press Conference 17. The Last Campaign 18. Monument Avenue ## Questions **Who is The Bypass Transfusion about?** Arthur Robert Ashe Jr.. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Bypass Transfusion — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 4,186 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 61,500 words, 18 chapters, 185 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Roland Mercer is a Boston-based culture writer whose biographies of athletes have appeared as cover features in Sports Illustrated and The Atlantic. He covers the NFL, NBA, and the institutions that profit from each. His longform writing focuses on the physical costs of modern athletic competition and the complex systems that surround professional sports. Through books like The Fastest Woman, Friendly Fire, and The Bypass Transfusion, Mercer examines the intersection of physical endurance and commercial pressure. In books such as The Twisties and The Industrial Park Murder, he explores the psychological strain on high-profile competitors and the darker aspects of competitive industries. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he spends his free time rowing on the Charles River and collecting vintage sports memorabilia.