Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time

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.

(found at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/features/2002/top_sports_books/1/)

Send to Printer Sports Illustrated's Top 100 Sports Books of All Time 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. (found at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/features/2002/top_sports_books/1/)
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	1.	?	The Sweet Science by A. J. Liebling
	2.		The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
	3.		Ball Four by Jim Bouton
	4.		Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H. G. Bissinger
	5.		YOU KNOW ME AL by Ring Lardner
	6.		Season on the Brink by John Feinstein
	7.	?	SEMI-TOUGH by Jenkins
	8.		Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback by George Plimpton
	9.		The Game by Ken Dryden
	10.		Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
	11.		A River Runs through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition by Norman Maclean
	12.		Seabiscuit: An American Legend by LAURA HILLENBRAND
	13.		Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association-As Told by the Players, Coaches, and Movers and Shakers Wh by Terry Pluto
	14.		Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris
	15.		Heaven Is a Playground by Rick Telander
	16.	?	Levels of the Game by John McPhee
	17.		Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam
	18.	?	The Summer Game (Unabridged) by Roger Angell
	19.		The Long Season by Jim Brosnan
	20.	?	Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer by Jerry Kramer
	21.	?	Everybody's All-American by Frank Deford
	22.		Fat City (California Fiction) by Leonard Gardner
	23.		The City Game: Basketball from the Garden to the Playgrounds by Pete Axthelm
	24.	?	Natural by Bernard Malamud
	25.		North Dallas Forty by Peter Gent
	26.		When Pride Still Mattered : A Life Of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss
	27.		Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert Creamer
	28.		The Golf Omnibus by P.G. Wodehouse
	29.		About Three Bricks Shy...And the Load Filled Up by Jr Roy Blount
	30.		A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
	31.	?	Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life by Richard Ben Cramer
	32.		The Game They Played by Stanley Cohen
	33.		Veeck--As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck
	34.		Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan
	35.		The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
	36.	?	Beyond a boundary by C. L. R James
	37.	?	A false spring by Pat Jordan
	38.		Life on the Run by Bill Bradley
	39.	?	The Red Smith reader by Red Smith
	40.	?	An Outside Chance: Classic and New Essays on Sport by Thomas McGuane
	41.	?	The unforgettable season (Fireside sports classic) by Gordon H Fleming
	42.		The Celebrant by Eric Rolfe Greenberg
	43.	?	Big Red of Meadow Stable: Secretariat, the making of a champion by William Nack
	44.	?	Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James
	45.		End Zone by Don DeLillo
	46.	?	Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story by David Wolf
	47.		Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella
	48.		Into Thin Air : A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by JON KRAKAUER
	49.		Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof
	50.		Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy by Jules Tygiel
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