The Madness has begun...

This is the place for all of those books and videos you've always meant to buy. FEED the madness....

The Best American Sports Writing

George Plimpton, guest editor of Best American Sports Writing, is no stranger to literature or sports--or, for that matter, the energizing zone of triumph and defeat where the two meet. A freelancer for Sports IllustratedI in its glory years (where he first published the New Journalism classic that would become Paper Lion), Plimpton is just the sort of referee you'd expect for such a collection.

While any "best of" series is bound to attract naysayers, it's hard to quarrel with Plimpton's
selection of the year's most memorable sports journalism. Included among the 21 pieces are profiles of two top major-league pitchers by leading baseball writers Roger Angell and Tom Boswell; Jon Krakauer's original magazine story on the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster, "Into Thin Air",
on which the book of the same name is based; and Gary Smith's much-discussed SI article on Tiger Woods. Other literary heavyweights represented in this anthology include David Halberstam, Gay Talese, and David Foster Wallace.

The end result is pretty much summed up in the book's title. If you care about sports, good writing, or both, don't drop the ball! BUY IT!

Women's Basketball Madness!

Reach for the Summit

Pat Summitt has been called a living legend. As head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols, Summitt has taken her NCAA Division 1 women's basketball team to back-to-back-to-back national championships in 1996, 1997 and 1998, and five titles in a 10-year span. In Reach for the Summit, with the help of former Sports Illustrated writer Sally Jenkins, she draws from 24 years as a successful head coach to provide motivational advice for anyone who wants to succeed in sports, business, and life in general. Structured around her Definite Dozen system, each chapter covers one of her 12 commandments of achievement by interweaving personal anecdotes, strategies for success, and basic ethics. A lot of people can win once, she writes. They get lucky, or follow their intuition, or strike on a good short-term formula. Summitt's book is about building a system of principles and sticking to it.

BUY IT!