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Books

Sports & the Sportsmen

Lance Armstrong's War
Daniel Coyle
HarperCollins Publishers; June 2005

Bicyclist Lance Armstrong is viewed a modern-day superhero. He survived testicular cancer and returned to win the Tour de France five times. But, as Jack Kerouac once quipped, "Walking on water wasn't built in a day." In Armstrong's case, his race to triumph requires an almost pathological fervent commitment and a large supportive cast that, according to author Daniel Coyle, includes "Belgian tough-guys, controversial Italian sports doctors, New Age healers, attack-dog lawyer, obsessed fans, and jittery corporations; not to mention his girlfriend, the rock star Sheryl Crow." Lance Armstrong's War takes you inside the tumultuous 2004 cycling season and inside the head of a world-class athlete.

Sports Illustrated: The Anniversary Book
Rob Flender (editor)
Time, Incorporated Home Entertainment; September 2004

For 50 years, Sports Illustrated has set the standard for sports writing and action photography. Now, for the culmination of the magazine's 50th Anniversary celebration, some of the finest writing and most memorable pictures from Sports Illustrated 's archives have been collected in a lavish coffee table book that will be treasured by the magazine's devoted readers for years to come. Along with the stunning photography, which includes every one of the magazine's covers since its launch in 1954, and the great writing that has appeared in Sports Illustrated 's pages, this 288-page-book will also be chock full of all new facts and figures that will give readers an entertaining view of 50 years of world sports.

Three Nights in August
Buzz Bissinger
Houghton Mifflin Company; April 2005

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author captures baseball's strategic and emotional essences through a point-blank account of one three-game series viewed through the keen eyes of legendary manager Tony La Russa. Three Nights in August shows thrillingly that human nature - not statistics - can often dictate the outcome of a ball game. We watch from the dugout as the St. Louis Cardinals battle their archrivals, the Chicago Cubs, for first place, and we uncover delicious surprises about the psychology of the clutch, the eccentricities of pitchers, the rise of video, and the complex art of retaliation when a batter is hit by a pitch. More tellingly, he distills from these twenty-seven innings baseball's constants - its tactical nuances, its emotional pull.

(Source: ETC, Gulshan 1, Dhaka)

Compiled by: Sanyat Sattar