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ONWARD TO VICTORY

THE CRISIS THAT SHAPED COLLEGE SPORTS

Sperber (English and American Studies/Indiana Univ.; Shake Down the Thunder, 1993, etc.) again chips away at the sacred mythic core of college sports. Beginning with the George Gipp/Knute Rockne legend so carefully crafted by Hollywood in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American, and moving onward through the decades, the author demonstrates that this surpassing bit of lore served as the bedrock for a massive sham: the myth of the “scholar-athlete.” Sperber shows how, before the Rockne film, college athletes were widely perceived as violent, disloyal, drunken brutes. In support of this, he cites 1920s sportswriters such as Westbrook Pegler and Damon Runyon’scribes forming a decidedly unsentimental school of pundits whom Sperber calls the “Aw-Nuts” men—and such films as the 1930s Marx Brothers’ romp, Horse Feathers, as examples of the low regard in which schoolboy athletes were held. Sperber also details a withering litany of scandals in gambling, cheating, recruitment, and more over the years—e.g., the Kentucky and CCNY basketball point-shaving contretemps of the late ’40s-early ’50s and the Army testing scandal of 1951, to name two. However, many misdeeds, according to the author, stemmed not from athletes’ inherent lawlessness, but from a corrupt system that made money hand over fist while strictly enforcing players’ amateurism. The “antidote” to college sports’ corrupt ways came not in the form of sincere self-regulation, but was induced by journalists, promoters, producers, and university publicity flacks. —Shocking— is the word that best describes the depth and breadth of the complicity—from Hollywood, from magazines that breathlessly anointed college footballer heroes, and from Madison Avenue types who crafted program covers that proselytized (and propagandized) about college athletics as a pure, noble, and, above all, American pursuit. A scathing reminder that the “good old days” in college sports never were. (24 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-8050-3865-5

Page Count: 608

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998

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WHY WE SWIM

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

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CONCUSSION

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

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 guyisms 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.

Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015

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