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TOP 100 SPORTS BOOKS OF ALL TIME |
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TOP 100 SPORTS BOOKS OF ALL TIME |
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The following description and list was included in Sports Illustrated December 16, 2002 issue. "In the early 1900s editor Maxwell Perkins told anyone who would listen that Chicago sports columnist Ring Lardner was the most talented writer he knew, high praise given that Perkins' stable included Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. It shouldn't have come as a shock, though. Many of the country's best writers have long been fascinated with sports, and that passion shows up in their prose. After all, when done right, sportswriting transcends bats and balls to display all the traits of great literature: incision, wit, force and vision, suffused with style and substance. Herewith the editors of Sports Illustrated's favorite sports books, compiled with love and reason, out of intense and sometimes unruly discussions." The annotations to each of the 100 titles can be read by clicking HERE.
| 1 | A.J. Liebling | The Sweet Science. 1956 |
| 2 | Roger Kahn | The Boys of Summer. 1971 |
| 3 | Jim Bouton | Ball Four. 1970 |
| 4 | H.G. Bissinger | Friday Night Lights. 1990 |
| 5 | Ring Lardner | You Know Me Al. 1914 |
| 6 | John Feinstein | A Season the Brink. 1986 |
| 7 | Dan Jenkins | Semi-Tough. 1972 |
| 8 | George Plimpton | Paper Lion. 1965 |
| 9 | Ken Dryden | The Game. 1983 |
| 10 | Nick Hornby | Fever Pitch. 1991 |
| 11 | Norman MacLean | A River Runs Through It. 1976 |
| 12 | Laura Hillenbrand | Seabiscuit. 2001 |
| 13 | Terry Pluto | Loose Balls. 1990 |
| 14 | Mark Harris | Bang the Drum Slowly. 1956 |
| 15 | Rick Telander | Heaven Is a Playground. 1976 |
| 16 | John McPhee | Levels of the Game. 1969 |
| 17 | David Halberstam | The Breaks of the Game. 1981 |
| 18 | Roger Angell | The Summer game. 1972 |
| 19 | Jim Brosnan | The Long Season. 1960 |
| 20 | Jerry Kramer and Dick Schaap | Instant Replay. 1968 |
| 21 | Frank Deford | Everybody's All-American. 1981 |
| 22 | Leonard Gardner | Fat City. 1969 |
| 23 | Pete Axthelm | The City Game. 1970 |
| 24 | Bernard Malamud | The Natural. 1952 |
| 25 | Peter Gent | North Dallas Forty. 1973 |
| 26 | David Maraniss | When Pride Still Mattered. 1999 |
| 27 | Robert Creamer | Babe: The Legend Comes to Life. 1974 |
| 28 | P.G. Wodehouse | The Golf Omnibus. 1973 |
| 29 | Ray Blount Jr. | About Three Bricks Shy of a Load. 1974 |
| 30 | Frederick Exley | A Fan's Notes. 1968 |
| 31 | Richard Ben Cramer | Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life. 2000 |
| 32 | Stanley Cohen | The Game They Played. 1977 |
| 33 | Bill Veek and Ed Linn | Veeck as in Wreck. 1962 |
| 34 | Ben Hogan and Herbert Warren Wind | Ben Hogan's Five Lessons. 1957 |
| 35 | Apsley Cherry-Garrard | The Worst Journey in the World. 1922 |
| 36 | C.L.R. James | Beyond a Boundary. 1963 |
| 37 | Pat Jordan | A False Spring. 1975 |
| 38 | Bill Bradley | Life on the Run. 1976 |
| 39 | Red Smith | The Red Smith Reader. 1982 |
| 40 | Thomas McGuane | An Outside Chance: Essays on Sport. 1980 |
| 41 | Gordon H. Fleming | The Unforgettable Season. 1981 |
| 42 | Eric Rolfe Greenberg | The Celebrant. 1983 |
| 43 | William Nack | Big Red of Meadow Stable. 1975 |
| 44 | Bill James | The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. 1985 |
| 45 | Dan DeLillo | End Zone. 1972 |
| 46 | David Wolf | Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story. 1972 |
| 47 | W.P. Kinsella | Shoeless Joe. 1982 |
| 48 | Jon Krakauer | Into Thin Air. 1997 |
| 49 | Eliot Asinof | Eight Men Out. 1963 |
| 50 | Jules Tygiel | Baseball's Great Experiment. 1983 |
| 51 | Boll Barich | Laughing in th Hills. 1980 |
| 52 | Kevin Kerrane | Dollar Sign on the Muscle. 1984 |
| 53 | Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock | The Bronx Zoo. 1979 |
| 54 | W.C. Heinz | The Professional. 1958 |
| 55 | Macmillan (Publisher) | The Baseball Encyclopedia. 1969....... |
| 56 | Richard Hoffer | A Savage Business. 1998 |
| 57 | Lawrence Ritter | The Glory of Their Times. 1966 |
| 58 | John Thorn (ed,) | The Complete Armchair of Baseball. 1999 |
| 59 | Bill Buford | Among the Thugs. 1991 |
| 60 | John Helyar | Lords of the Realm. 1994 |
| 61 | Robert Coover | The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. 1968 |
| 62 | Arhur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad | Days of Grace. 1993 |
| 63 | Dave Maggyesy | Out of Their League. 1970 |
| 64 | John Updike | Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf. 1996 |
| 65 | Madeleine Blais | In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle. 1995 |
| 66 | John Wooden and Jack Tobin | They Call Me Coach. 1972 |
| 67 | Howard Cosell | Cosell. 1973 |
| 68 | Bobby Jones and O.B. Keeler | Down the Fairway. 1927 |
| 69 | Alexander Wolff | Big Game, Small World |
| 70 | Darcy Frey | The Last Shot. 1994 |
| 71 | Arnold Schwarzenegger and Douglas Kent Hall | Arnold, The Education of a Bodybuilder. 1977 |
| 72 | Rex Lardner | Out of the Bunker and Into the Trees. 1960 |
| 73 | Norman Mailer | The Fight. 1975 |
| 74 | Robert Peterson | Only the Ball Was White. 1970 |
| 75 | Harvey Penick with Bud Shrake | Harvey Penick's Littlt Red Book. 1992 |
| 76 | Joe Jares | Whatever Happened to Georgeous George? 1974 |
| 77 | Maurice Herzog | Annapurna. 1951 |
| 78 | Philip Roth | The Great American Novel. 1973 |
| 79 | Eduardo Galeano | Soccer in Sun and Shadow. 1998 |
| 80 | Herbert Warren Wind | The Story of American Golf. 1948 |
| 81 | Christine Brennan | Inside Edge. 1996 |
| 82 | Paul Gallico | Farewell to Sport. 1938 |
| 83 | Thomas Hauser | Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. 1991 |
| 84 | Jimmy Breslin | Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? 1963 |
| 85 | James Fixx | The Complete Book of Running. 1977 |
| 86 | Ted Williams and John Underwood | The Science of Hitting. 1970 |
| 87 | Robert Daley | Only a Game. 1967 |
| 88 | Michael Novak | The Joy of Sports. 1976 |
| 89 | Vyv Simson and Andrew Jennings | The Lords of the Ring. 1992 |
| 90 | Steve Rushkin | Road Swing. 1998 |
| 91 | Michael Murphy | Golf in the Kingdom. 1972 |
| 92 | Russ Conway | Game Misconduct. 1995 |
| 93 | Jerome Holtzman | No Cheering in the Press Box. 1973 |
| 94 | Murray Sperber | Beer and Circus. 2000 |
| 95 | Budd Schulberg | The Harder They Fall. 1947 |
| 96 | Grantland Rice | The Tumult and the Shouting. 1954 |
| 97 | Robert Lipsyte | SportsWorld. 1975 |
| 98 | William Brashler | The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings. 1973 |
| 99 | Joe McGinniss | The Miracle of Casteldi di Sangro. 1999 |
| 100 | Joan Ryan | Little Girls in Pretty Boxes. 1995 |
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