He knew his readers, too: a perfect gift for all those Washingtonians who miss reading Povich over their morning coffee.
Monday morning quarterbacking—and much more—from the long-time Washington Post sportswriter.
As Post readers once knew, Shirley Povich was practically synonymous with the sports pages. Hired after caddying a golf match between New York Post publisher Joseph Pulitzer and Washington Post publisher Edward McLean and being genially argued over, Povich went to work in D.C. in 1922 in that most legendary of ways: “Go up to the city room,” an editor barked when he showed up, “and tell Mr. Fitzgerald you’re the new copyboy he’s been asking for.” Four years later, Povich was sports editor, and seven decades later, he was still at his desk, dying in 1998 just after finishing a column. Povich (the father of talk-show staple Maury) covered an extraordinary range of events, some history-making. One was the 1938 run at Pimlico between Seabiscuit and War Admiral. Another was the 1924 World Series, in which, for the first and only time, the Washington Senators won the title, thanks to pitcher Walter Johnson, who, writes Povich in what seems to be knockoff Hemingway, “tried to please the crowd. So he threw his speed balls with all the speed he could muster for four innings then he weakened in the fifth inning because he wanted to please the crowd with his speed balls.” Another was the 1936 Berlin Olympics, whose host’s disdain Povich, the son of Jewish refugees from tsarist Russia, took pains to record: He cites a Nazi Party paper’s scornful certainty that America could have won no medals without “black auxiliaries,” then adds, happily, a note that Norway beat the Third Reich in soccer 2–0. Povich was back in Germany for the 1972 Olympics, where he recorded the tragedy in Munich. Strong on being in the right place at the right time—and in sheer longevity—Povich lacked the fluency and style of contemporaries such as Red Smith and Ring Lardner. But, as this chock-full collection shows, he certainly knew his stuff.
He knew his readers, too: a perfect gift for all those Washingtonians who miss reading Povich over their morning coffee.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58648-315-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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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