Review: The Sports Book
I wanted to like THE SPORTS BOOK ($35.00, DK Publishing, $23.10 at Amazon). Really, I did. The advance release I received advertised an encyclopedia of the rules and tactics of virtually every common athletic competition the world over. Ever been struck one night with an intense desire to figure out, “Just what the heck is korfball”? Tuned across Australian rules football on a public TV digital subchannel and been strangely entranced, yet completely confused as to the actual goal of the event? Well, this should be the book to solve all those problems.
Plus, it’s covered in Astroturf. No, really.
Here’s the problem, though: in a reference book, if you don’t have detail, you’ve got nothing. This book was originally released in the UK last March, and appears to have been quickly repurposed to the US market in time for the 2007 holiday shopping season. Unfortunately, you can tell. They made an effort to convert metric to US units and/or reverse conversions made for the UK release, but didn’t catch them all. The section labeled “Football” was obviously originally titled “American Football”, with the word “American” hastily edited out of body text and merely deleted (without re-typesetting the yawning gap) from the page title text. Even worse, several distance records are stated as xxxx m (sic) — awaiting a final bit of research that never came and missed the attention of copy editors in two countries.
And it’s a shame, because the concept is great, and what content was verified is quite thorough. Every sport with any noticeable following gets at least four pages of small-font text and diagrams, showing field of play, equipment, and positioning, and explaining strategy and brief history.
But I just can’t recommend paying anywhere close to the list price for a halfway job, and THE SPORTS BOOK, sadly, is just that. Wait until this gets into the remainder bin at your favorite mega-bookstore or arrives at Green Valley Book Fair, then go get it. At $10, it’ll be great. Over $20, you’re better off with Wikipedia.
7 April 2008 / 0 Comments / Tags: books