THE REALM OF SPORT: A Classic Collection of the Finest Sports Reporting

The co-editor of Great Stories from the World of Sport (3 vols. Simon & Schuster, 1958), has assembled another handsome collection--this time essays, articles, humorous pieces, autobiographical sketches--dealing with a variety of sports. Avoiding pieces with merely antiquarian interest, Mr. Wind nonetheless includes two essential bits antedating the nineteenth century: Xenophon's advice on sizing up horseflesh; and, of course, Walton's musings on his riverbank. There are a number of nineteenth century memoirs, from an era when the sports writer served up the visual drama of the moment, a service now mainly supplied, unfortunately for repertorial elegance, by TV and movies. Some early hunting accounts by British pacemakers, Nimrod, Suties, are gracefully explicated in the introduction. A satisfying compendium of sports--with siren pastimes such as motoring, mountaineering, walking and archery, grace notes to the heavies--baseball, boxing and football, etc. A handsome line up of authors, topnotch writing, this should follow the earlier anthology in clean-up position as a solid gift book, a reliable library item for sports fans and students of first rate reportage.