For their 50th anniversary, Sports Illustrated collects 52 of their best and most memorable articles. Editor Rob Fleder delivers on what makes the magazine standout and fashionable: a mix of on-sport reporting (Mark Kram's lyrical coverage of the third Ali-Frazier bout) and polished articles written with years of perspective (Dan Jenkins's examination of the 1960 US Open, 18 years after the golf tournament). SI's most well-know scribe, Frank Deford, bookends the collection with reflections on boxer Billy Conn and a lovely obit on hometown star Johnny Untias. There is a sweet array of noted authors including John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Pete Dexter, Don DeLillo, and Garrison Keillor. Profiles are the bulk of the book, but like the magazine, we take off-beat trails: a rattlesnake derby, articles on broadcasters, and Wallace Stegner's sobering "We Are Destroying Our National Parks" (written in 1955!). Since there has been other SI collections over the years (Yesterday in Sport one of note), fresher articles are more abundant (eight articles from the 21st Century). As with any survey book, one can be picky about the exclusions: no Olympic coverage; the only article on cars deals with the Autobahn; hockey is only represented through an ex-player's murder case. The biggest caveat is a book without pictures from a magazine famous for them. Certainly a single shot of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile or one of the blurry photos that originally accompanied George Plimpton's ultimate April Fools' Day joke (pitching sensation Sidd Finch) would evoke the memory of those who read the articles upon their release. --Doug Thomas

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Sports Illustrated set out to raise the bar for sports writing when it debuted in 1954. Longtime editor Andre Laguerre, who stepped down in 1976, pushed his writers to take their work beyond the cliches, statistics, and humdrum details of the daily sports pages. He also looked beyond his staff for the best writer for a subject. Among those who contributed to the magazine are Robert Frost, John F. Kennedy, William Faulkner, and A. J. Liebling. The selections included here run the gamut from the silly to the profound, but each in its way exemplifies the lofty ambitions to which the magazine aspires. Among the highlights are William Nack' s examination of former boxing champion Sonny Liston, 20 years after his death; an ode to Ted Williams by Leigh Montville; and Jeff MacGregor's account of an Oklahoma rattlesnake roundup, which will have readers' skin crawling even as they wipe tears of laughter from their eyes. One might quibble over a favorite piece that's been left out, but there's no argument that each selection included is a shimmering example of the best of sports journalism. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the half-century since its birth, as Sports Illustrated grew from a struggling start-up to America's preeminent sports magazine, one thing has remained constant: the commitment to great storytelling. That part of the magazine's mission has always been easy to define: Identify the most compelling sports stories of our time and get the best writers in the business to tell them.

This book brings together a lineup of writing talent worthy of the Hall of Fame and the classic stories they produced for Sports Illustrated over the past 50 years. Many of the writers whose work is collected here are longtime favorites of SI readers (Frank Deford, Rick Reilly, Steve Rushin, Gary Smith). Others are former SI staffers or contributors who left the fold, but not before making an indelible mark on SI's history (Dan Jenkins, Rick Telander, Mark Kram, Roy Blount Jr., William Mack). There are celebrated journalists (A. J. Liebling, Jimmy Breslin, George Plimpton), screenwriters (Budd Schulberg and Kenny Moore), renowned novelists (Thomas McGuane, Pete Dexter, Wallace Stegner, Don DeLillo), and even a couple of Nobel Prize winners in literature (William Faulkner and John Steinbeck).

The stories themselves are a mirror of our times. Included in this volume are accounts of some of the most memorable athletic feats of our era (Secretariat's Belmont victory, the Thrilla in Manila, and Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round the World). Profiles of the towering athletic figures of our time (Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, Ted Williams and Johnny Unitas). Good guys (Yogi Berra and Harry Caray) and bad guys (Sonny Liston and Mike Tyson). The fast (Roger Bannister) and the faurious (Dick Butkus). The ridiculous (Howard Cosell) and the sublime (Josh Gibson). And the stories that simply touch our hearts and inspire us (Frank Deford's masterpiece on light-heavyweight champ Billy Conn).