An illuminating mix for sports fans and math buffs looking to hone their skills.
Entertaining deconstruction of the mathematics of sports.
To enjoy this book, readers need only a basic knowledge of high school math, even when Barrow (Mathematical Sciences/Cambridge Univ.; The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos, 2011, etc.) discusses more complicated subjects such as probabilities. He shows how the relationship between time and distance determines the best strategy for kicking the ball in rugby or soccer. Turning to track and field, Barrow speculates that in order to top his world-record 100-meter time, sprinter Usain Bolt could reduce his reaction time, but an even better bet would be to race on a high-altitude track in Mexico City while getting an assist from a high tailwind. The author explains why runners, given a choice, don't select either the inside position on a circular track, even though it is the shortest distance, or the outside, with its gentler curve, because they want to gauge the speed of the runners on either side. Barrow also investigates Cold War politics to discover why female world records in Olympic track and field competitions have remained static in recent years. The answer can be found in the practices of the East German Stasi, who systematically dosed their athletes with anabolic steroids. While random testing is now routine for Olympic athletes, there is no random testing of U.S. baseball players, despite evidence of steroid use. The author explains that existing tests are not considered to be sufficiently precise. Using hypothetical examples, Barrow introduces the fundamentals of statistics and the application of Bayes' theorem to conditional probabilities, and he includes discussions of skydiving, rowing, triathlons and water polo, among other athletic endeavors.
An illuminating mix for sports fans and math buffs looking to hone their skills.Pub Date: June 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-06341-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Who’d have thought it was possible to make professional football boring?
A self-congratulatory commercial for the NFL and the NFL Network disguised as an insider examination of America’s most popular sport.
Best known as a former ESPN SportsCenter stalwart, Eisen has been the face of the NFL Network since it launched in 2003. The first channel to focus on a single sport 24/7/365, the Network isn’t included in your typical basic cable package, thus it’s not included in your typical football fan’s life. This wouldn’t matter if it were an inherently interesting entity or if Eisen were more of an investigative reporter. But here he comes off as another wide-eyed fan. Only Eisen, for example, would tag as “classic” a meandering blab-fest featuring the CBS studio crew of Jim Nantz, Deion Sanders and Dan Marino. It’s one of many direct transcriptions of TV interviews that fail to translate to the page. The book’s best section is a collection of reprinted emails that Eisen received from players answering the question, “Do you have a ritual or superstition before every game?” Indianapolis Colts receiver Reggie Wayne waxes poetic about his unshakeable desire for pregame soup, while Cleveland Browns defensive back Gary Baxter craves Lay’s potato chips. If Eisen had followed this route throughout and focused more on the players as people—and less on the Network and mind-numbing NFL minutia—he might have had something special. As it’s presented, though, the book is a self-indulgent, mildly informative trip through the bowels of the NFL and cable television.
Who’d have thought it was possible to make professional football boring?Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-36978-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Meditations on hunting, biodiversity, wildlife, ethics, and human folly unify a lifelong bird-hunter's quixotic venture to convert an 800-acre Florida farm into quail heaven. A crack wingshot and professed romantic, de la ValdÇne (a contributor to Field & Stream and other sporting magazines) lived a sportsman's dream, hunting throughout Europe and the US before retreating to an erstwhile tobacco farm near Tallahassee for some large-scale gardening and amateur game management. His devotion to bobwhites is impressive and expensive: He plants crops, clear-cuts or burns acres of forest, and raises a dam to build the habitat and food supply needed to boost quail numbers. This wry chronicle recounts the highs and lows such an audacious project guarantees: Building the dam sans permit to forestall government meddling, he's overcome by red tape after it floods a neighbor's farm and brings a plague of bureaucrats to oversee reconstruction. The highsreveries on nature, hunting, his dogs, and his birds that de la ValdÇne, a world-class daydreamer, can't resistcontribute to the book's charming haphazardness. His genuine love for and keen observation of nature are shaped by predation, and despite his disdain for slob hunters and his understanding of the distaste many nonhunters hold for the sport, de la ValdÇne remains dedicated to hunting, an honorable, primal rite ``as natural as dancing or making love, and just as ancient.'' Unapologetic, he challenges the sacred tenet that hunting pressure is unrelated to declining game populations and castigates sportsmen for shrilly defending second amendment freedoms while industry and human expansion pose the real threat to the sporting life. Beautifully conceived and written, valuable for its insight into quail behavior and its thoughtful address of hunting ethics, a new classic for the sportsman's canon. (First serial to Sports Afield)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87113-618-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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