March Madness
March Madness is an expression used in American College Basketball. March is the busiest month for the single-elimination college basketball tournament and usually one top seeded team will be outdone by an underdog.
Below I have short-listed 5 books for our March Book. This month we’re looking at Basketball, F1, Gaelic Games, Horse Racing and Ice Skating books. Quite different to what we’ve seen previously! Admittedly, I found picking these 5 books difficult but with difficultly comes possibility. I hope you are interested in what you see below.
March’s book will be revealed on Thursday the 7th. For your say, please vote at the bottom of the page.
A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers by John Feinstein
John Feinstein was allowed to follow the Indiana Hoosiers for one season, what happened changed the sport and created one of most talked about American sports books of all time. Key dates for the College Basketball season can be viewed here.
About John Feinstein John Feinstein is one of the nation’s most successful and prolific sports authors who has written 24 books to date. His most recent work Are You Kidding Me? , written with Rocco Mediate, was released on May 18, 2009, and is presently on the shelf at bookstores everywhere. In addition, he is an award-winning columnist and regular contributor in both radio and television.
Book Description
A Season on the Brink chronicles the basketball season that John Feinstein spent following the Indiana Hoosiers and their fiery coach, Bob Knight. Knight granted Feinstein an unprecedented inside look at college basketball-with complete access to every moment of the season. Feinstein saw and heard it all-practices, team meetings, strategy sessions, and midgame huddles-during Knight’s struggle to avoid a losing season. A Season on the Brink not only captures the drama and pressure of big-time college basketball but paints a vivid portrait of a complex, brilliant coach walking a fine line between genius and madness. John Feinstein has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, The Sporting News, and Inside Sports and is currently the main feature writer for The National. He has won twelve U.S. Basketball Writers awards. Book jacket.
Senna Versus Prost by Malcolm Folley
I watched the movie Senna when it was released a few years back. Aryton Senna was a legend, it’s as simple as that. He lifted the spirit of the Brazilians and his untimely death in 1994 was a tragedy for both his country and his sport. Senna Versus Prost however is about what happens when the top drivers are on the same team. In that instance, who goes for glory? The F1 season starts in March in Melbourne, Australia. What better way to get pumped up than by reading about the biggest internal team rivalry until Lewis Hamilton, who feuded with everyone!
About the Author
Malcolm Folley has been Chief Sports Reporter for the MAIL ON SUNDAY for almost 12 years and attended the 1980 Wimbledon final for the DAILY EXPRESS. He has reported on tennis around the world for 26 years. He has also collaborated on tennis champion Hana Mandlikova’s autobiography and worked with World Cup winning England rugby star Jason Robinson on his autobiography.
Book Description
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Formula One was at its most explosive, with thrilling races, charismatic drivers, nail-biting climaxes—and one of the most dangerous rivalries ever witnessed in sports. Two of F1′s most honored champions and iconic figures drove together for McLaren for two seasons, and their acrimonious and hostile relationship extended even after one of them had left the team. Alain Prost was France’s only F1 world champion, an intelligent, smooth driver with the epithet “Le Professeur,” while Ayrton Senna was the mercurial kid from a privileged background in Sao Paolo who would become the most intense and ruthless racing driver the world has ever seen. As the great rivals raced to victory, their relationship deteriorated badly, culminating in Prost accusing Senna of deliberately trying to ride him off the circuit, and fearful that the Brazilian would get someone killed with his daring overtaking feats. The final, sad act of this drama happened at the San Marino Grand prix at Imola in May 1994, when Senna was killed. Insights from Martin Brundle, Damon Hill, Sir Frank Williams, Bernie Ecclestone, Derek Warrick, Johnny Herbert, Gerhard Berger, plus McLaren insiders and other F1 figures provide a breathtaking account of one of the all-time classic sporting rivalries.
Ruby: The Autobiography by Ruby Walsh
I have a flutter on the horses maybe two times a year, either at Cheltenham or the Grand National. How far does my horse racing knowledge go? Not far. Winners and losers are usually picked by the wit or original thought put into their name(Paddy the Plasterer comes to mind). That being said, there was a time when you would have been a foolish man to bet against the jockey Ruby Walsh. With the Cheltenham festival just around the corner, it’s time to revisit his legacy.
Book Description
Ruby Walsh is a phenomenon. The only jockey to have won all four of the home Grand Nationals, Ruby’s racing life is the stuff of dreams. A charming, much-loved sports personality throughout Ireland and Great Britain, Ruby writes in detail for the first time about a career of remarkable success. The narrative moves at an impressive pace from his sport-enthused youth in County Kildare, where he showed enormous talent from an early age, to his incredible Grand National win at Aintree on Papillion in 2000 (at the age of twenty). It was Ruby’s first attempt, on a horse trained by his father, and achieved just after suffering the first really serious injury of his career. He has ridden over 1,400 winners to date, including more than a thousand Irish victories and the Irish jump jockey’s title on seven occasions.
Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey into the Secret World of Figure Skating by Christine Brennan
The World Figure Skating Championships is on in London from March 11th to 17th. For many people who watch mainstream sport, Figure Skating probably wouldn’t register on their radar, until perhaps the Winter Olympic Games. Having said that I think we can all agree that when those athletes are in full flight, it’s pretty astonishing stuff. From reading the blurb on Inside Edge, it sounds as though this book might focus on the dark side to this visually mesmerising sport.
About the Author
Christine Brennan, a USA Today columnist, has twice been named one of the nation’s top ten sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors. She is also a commentator for ABC News, ESPN, and NPR. Her national bestseller Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey into the Secret World of Figure Skating was named one of the top 100 sports books of all time by Sports Illustrated
Book Description
Figure skating is the most beautiful and mysterious of all sports. When the skaters are on the ice, every twitch of a muscle and every slip of a skate blade is visible for the world to see. In Inside Edge, Christine Brennan chronicles–for the first time–a season on the skating circuit, intimately portraying the lives, on and off the ice, of the sport’s current and upcoming stars. Woven into the narrative are stories of figure skating luminaries past, present, and future–including Peggy Fleming, Katarina Witt, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Michelle Kwan, Rudy Galindo, and Tara Lipinski. Revealing the backstage conflicts high-profile figure skaters face, and the ambition that drives them, Brennan also tells the stories of their families, of improbable rises to the top, and of wasted talents. If skaters are perfect, they can become international heroes. But if they fall, if they miss a three-revolution jump on a quarter-inch blade of steel, the despair is theirs alone. This is their life on the edge, where decades of training culminate in little more than four crucial minutes on the ice. There is no other sport like it. There is no other story like theirs.
The Club by Christy O’Connor
On March 17th Thurles Sarsfields take on St Thomas in the fastest field sport in the world, Irish Hurling. To many people outside of Ireland, Hurling is one of those provincial sports that make no sense in a broader context. Though if you stop and watch a game in full flow, you’ll quickly understand why the Irish are so passionate about it. At a club level, Gaelic Games is what binds a community. Christy O’Connor’s book will make for fascinating reading for those who know nothing about the sport or the culture that surrounds it.
About the Author
Christy O’Connor has covered GAA as a journalist nationally for thirteen years. For twenty years he has kept goal for the St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield senior hurling side, and he is also vice-chairman of the club. He is the author of the acclaimed Last Man Standing: Hurling Goalkeepers, which was short listed for the 2005 Boylesports Irish Sports Book of the Year Award.
Book Description
This chronicle of a year in the life of St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield GAA club in Co. Clare – which won the William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year award for 2010 – breaks new ground in Irish sports writing. Christy O’Connor, a national GAA correspondent who has also been the St Joseph’s senior team goalkeeper for 20 years, tells this story with unflinching honesty: a fly-on-the-wall tale of the effort, agony and struggles that define the journey undertaken every season by every club side. This is grassroots GAA at its purest and rawest, a great story brilliantly told.
Vote for March’s Book
The results will be revealed on March 7th.
Tell me what you think of the book selection for this month.