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SQUASH

Name: SQUASH
Author: James Zug
ISBN: 0-7432-2990-8

A HISTORY OF THE GAME

by James Zug ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2003

With its narrative vivacity and wealth of historical settings, this classy piece of sports writing is not just for squash...

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A history of squash that’s as lively and well paced as the game itself . . . used to be.

It all started with bored medieval European monks who took pleasure in bouncing a ball off the inside corner of a monastery wall, writes journalist and expert player Zug. This game called “racquets”—and its many variants, from court tennis to fives—moved on to become a plaything of the French and English aristocracy (true courts were pricey affairs). A rude form was also played by prisoners and common folk, but what we now call squash was to become, some 150 years ago, the child of private schools like St. Paul’s and tony universities in the Ivy League. (Dartmouth squash captain Zug’s mostly enthusiastic writing occasionally bears witness to that pedigree, with its “contumacious preferences” and “rodomontade eccentricities.”) This sprightly social history of the game also contains good descriptive material on playing styles, from the finesse players who concentrated “on precision of stroke and nicety of placing” to sparkling brutalists like Vic Niederhoffer, as well as fine-line profiles of the sport’s temples (Randolph at Harvard, Merion in Pennsylvania) and its absurdly brilliant players (Hashim Khan, Alicia McConnell, Mark Talbott). Zug is also adept with atmosphere, whether he is praising the composed prowess and humility of great players, or recreating historic matches blow by blow. But he’s perhaps best at tracing the game’s evolution from India rubber balls, bamboo racquets, and granite cages to today’s titanium shafts and glass walls. He ends on a down note, with the sport’s governing body adopting a softer ball, a boon for the aerobics, notes Zug, but death to the “the maverick players and quirky clubs” that thrived on the little nuclear pinball, which ricocheted “like bees shaken in a jar.”

With its narrative vivacity and wealth of historical settings, this classy piece of sports writing is not just for squash nuts.

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2003

ISBN: 0-7432-2990-8

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003

Categories:

SPORTS & RECREATION

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WHY WE SWIM

by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL HISTORY | HEALTH & FITNESS | SPORTS & RECREATION

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by Bonnie Tsui ; illustrated by Sophie Diao

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CONCUSSION

by Jeanne Marie Laskas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 24, 2015

Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...

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A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.

Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.

Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.