A Few Good Reads
Noted author David Halberstam, who died yesterday in a car crash, has written many highly acclaimed books on a wide variety of topics, including The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, The Fifties and The Children.
He's also written a handful of sports books, all of which I'd recommend. These include several baseball books -- The Summer of 49, October 1964 and The Teammates -- some basketball books -- The Breaks of the Game and Playing for Keeps and several others.
My favorite, though, was a book on amateur rowing called The Amateurs. This is a story of four men who were competing to represent the United States in the single sculls in the 1984 Olympics. This book highlights the pure joy of athletic competition. These athletes were unknown to virtually everyone outside of the rowing community, and they had no hope of financial reward. The reward was to make the Olympic team, or to give it their best shot and congratulate the winner.
Halberstam relates how all four virtually put their lives on hold in the quest for this goal, and how hard they worked. I've given copies of it to friends who knew nothing about rowing and were skeptical about whether they would like it, but they did. It's something we can all relate to, and it's one of several books -- along with John McPhee's classic book about Bill Bradley's basketball career at Princeton University called A Sense of Where You Are -- that I'd like my kids to read to see a different, less commercial side of sports.
If you haven't read these books, you should, and consider passing them on to your kids as well.
