For fans of sports and just plain great writing, this absorbing collection, featuring twenty-eight of the finest pieces from the past year, has something for everyone. Guest editor David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, has assembled a fresh crop of the people and stories that dominated the sports world in 2006. Michael Lewis gives a behind-the-scenes look at the legendary football coach Bill Parcells. Bob Hohler delves in the murky waters of modern amateur basketball, where teams blatantly dole out cash to players and shoe companies set their sights on prospects as young as twelve. William Rhoden traces the fate of an unknown filly injured on the racetrack. Jeff MacGregor describes the unforgettable Friars Club roast of boxing's provocative promoter Don King. Daniel Coyle follows a forty-year-old Slovene soldier who might be the world's best ultra-endurance athlete. L. Jon Wertheim tells of a young pro-basketball player who found himself wrestling the shoe bomber Richard Reid to the ground during a transatlantic flight. And Derek Zumsteg provides a hilarious and utterly original in-depth account of the baseball career of Bugs Bunny, "the greatest banned player ever." These pieces and many more go beyond the spotlight, revealing the people and issues that make sports so relevant and important to all of us.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 2.5 / 5.0
Some very solid, some forgettable:
No way is this collection worthy of only one star. There are too many good or better than good stories, as David Maraniss mixed it up to include a lot of different sports. His focus is on the human element, not actual game stories or their immediate aftermath, as they usually are far too ephemeral for a collection, not matter how sharply done. The challenge for this particular set is that only a few are at all memorable enough to stick with you after completion. Too many are not that interesting or are... more info
Does waste your money:
I read the reviews here, but thought, "how bad can it be?" It's very bad. Every single story was dull, dull, dull. David Halberstam, we miss you!!!
A vast array of quality sports writing:
This book takes for you for a loop in that you think that the major sports are going to be covered in baseball, football, basketball and maybe some hockey. The first chapter is actually about racoon hunting and the next one is a satire about Bugs Bunny if he played in an actual baseball game. In fact here is a list of the additional sports covered in this book: -High school "futbol"
-High school football
-Former NFL player Jake Scott's wherabouts today
-Mark McGwire in retirement... more info
Best American Sports Writing not even Good:
I bought most of the books in this series and gave them for Christmas gifts. My husband loves the Sports pages, so I gave him this book. He said the book has very few good stories, very poor writing in many of them. He said he felt that the editor decided he needed to have one story about each sport, rather than the best stories about a few sports.
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