Our book reviewer Carole Barrowman was making a list of all the classic sports books that she has read, and she found herself asking a question... Where are all the women?! While she had a list of great books, there was a definite lack of female athletes being portrayed. So Carole joins us with 4 "should-be" classics where the subjects are women!
For more information on Carole, visit CaroleBarrowman.com . And see below for her picks!
1. "Women in Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win" - I’ve picked books from this awesome coffee-table series before (Women in Science; Women in Art). It’s an anthology of fifty women athletes from around the world who broke barriers and records in their various sports. It includes archery, body-building, roller-derby, swimming, and gymnastics. It’s graphics are great and jump off the page (literally).
2. "Dust Bowl Girls" by Lydia Reeder - A fast-paced underdog story about a women’s basketball team in Oklahoma in the 20s & 30s. This is bound to be a film soon. I don’t know much about basketball and still found this a highly entertaining history.
3. "Annapurna" by Arlene Blum - This is the feminist counterpart to Into Thin Air. It traces the story of the first female expedition to Annapurna in 1978. The author was the expedition leader and it reads as if you are with her on the mountain. It’s thrilling and gut-wrenching story.
4. "Break Away: Beyond the Goal" by Alex Morgan (8+) - Read this with your family’s soccer players. It’s an inspiring memoir about one of our most popular women athletes and member of the US National Women’s history-making soccer team. A good pick for younger readers.
And here are Carole's "classics":
"When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi" by David Maraniss (Packers!)
"Friday Night Lights" by H.G. Bissinger (high school football)
"Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer (disastrous mountain climb in Everest)
Harvey Penick’s "Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime of Golf" (every golfer I know owns a copy of this book)
"Eight Men Out" by Eliot Asinof (White Sox scandal of 1919)
"The Boys of Summer" by Roger Kahn (classic baseball book about 1930s & 40s, incl. Jackie Robinson)
"The Amateurs" by David Halberstam (Olympic rowing)
"Open: An Autobiography" by Andre Agassi (tennis and how it stole his childhood anf robbed him of happiness)