Our reviewer said that Gold by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster) 'spins a tire-ripping velodrama out of two subjects underrepresented in novels: the head-games of Olympic track cycling and the heart-splitting demands faced by female athletes who try to balance motherhood and elite competition in their peak physical years.'įor younger readers, sportswriter John Feinstein has come out with Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics (Knopf), another sports mystery featuring Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson. Jean Patrick is a phenomenal runner, specializing in the 800-meter race.

It's a memorable coming-of-age story of Nkuba Jean Patrick, a Tutsi in Rwanda at the height of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict. Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron is the third Bellwether Prize winner published by Algonquin, awarded biennially by Barbara Kingsolver for an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice. Subtitled How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever, it's a funny, respectful, expert, complete and literary examination of the team's permanent effects on basketball.įiction also competes for attention. Olympic basketball team of 1992 and its path to gold in Dream Team (Ballantine). Sports Illustrated's Jack McCallum writes about the creation of the U.S. If you've ever wondered how wide a balance beam is (so you can try a move at home), or about the rules and strategies for fencing, this is your book. There are any number of books about the Olympics generally, like How to Watch the Olympics: The Essential Guide to the Rules, Statistics, Heroes, and Zeroes of Every Sport by David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton (Penguin). We've been inundated with doom-and-gloom stories about the London Olympics, so a few good books might help put rain, mud and missile launchers out of mind.

The unlikely pilgrimage of harold fry