This fine collection of sportswriting honors the genre’s ability to create word pictures not only of athletes and their achievements but also of their individual era. Pulitzer Prize—winning author Halberstam (Playing for Keeps, 1999, etc.) and series editor Glenn Stout take a slight detour from the annual edition to cull what they believe to be the century’s best sportswriting from newspapers and magazines. Because all the prominent sports figures are not covered—and, unfortunately, none of the 59 articles has a female athlete as its main subject—this anthology fails as a definitive study of sports in the 20th century. Nevertheless, the chosen articles are examples of excellent storytelling and feature more than 40 of the best sports journalists, among them Red Smith, Frank Deford, Murray Kempton, and Grantland Rice, as well as writers such as Gay Talese (on Joe DiMaggio), Tom Wolfe (on racer Junior Johnson), John Updike (on Ted Williams), and Norman Mailer (on Muhammad Ali). Baseball and boxing are the sports most widely covered; also included are football, hockey, tennis, golf, racing (stock-car and horse), fly-fishing, mountain climbing, bodybuilding, and chess. Some articles touch on issues such as racism, steroid abuse, and being gay in the sports world. The most enlightening pieces humanize the athlete, showing “the man out there is no longer just another great athlete, an idealized hero, but only a man—only ourself” (a line from Roger Angell’s 1975 article about the pitcher Steve Blass). Everyone, not just sports fans, will admire Sal Maglie’s grace after his difficult loss, be fascinated by Bobby Fischer’s extraordinary fears, and be moved by the fates of athletes such as Ali, Tony Conigliaro, Steve Michalik, and even Secretariat. An enjoyable volume of quality sportswriting. Readers who want to read more will be aided by the participating writers’ biographical notes and the list of additional selected notable works and sportswriters.
Pub Date: May 27, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-94513-5
Page Count: 816
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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