Long before cetaceans became objects of popular affection and scientific scrutiny, the author had his first and most memorable encounter with the killer whale.
Despite the well publicized dangers, the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs has permanently altered the sports landscape.
William J. Baker, a historian at the University of Maine, is narrated with similar flair and illustrated with an equally fascinating set of images. Here, too, one encounters every conceivable kind of athlete, from gladiators to golfers. Both authors are perceptive analysts of sports as thrilling demonstrations of extraordinary physical skill and prowess, and both also have an informed sense of the ritual contexts and aesthetic appeal of sports.
Technology and sports have become inseparable, but will professional advances ruin the games?
Vietnam's long struggle for independence seemed to end 20 years ago. Today, Communist leaders, having opened their country to the world, are riding the tiger of economic reform while trying to keep a tight grip on political power.
America's victory in the Persian Gulf War seemed a resounding confirmation of conventional U.S. military thought. Yet to cope with a world in which terrorists and warlords pose as great a challenge as massed armies, a radical revision of military thinking is essential.
One of America's finer novelists shows how the reading of books "brings us together in a rare community of joy."
Sports have changed a lot over the past 150 years, but they can tell us a lot about who we are and what we want to be.
f elite bashing has become a national
pastime-possibly the national pastime,
in the absence of baseball-no one today
appears to be playing the game better than Republican politicians. For their recent triumph at the polls at least some credit should go to skills they've been honing ever since the Reagan Revolution got under way in the early 1980s.
But Democrats have little room to com- plain. When the chips are down-and that's fairly often-these past masters of the game still take swipes a...