Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports

Rating:
Summary: provocative, informative, and good reading
Review: I looked for this book because of Rising Tide, a magnificent work by the same writer, and was not disappointed. The author says he's writing about power from different perspectives, from the way athletes marshall power over themselves to the way political institutions work. So this is a collection of things that on the surface wouldn't seem to fit together-- a story on a friend of the author who went to Vietnam, pieces on football players and world record holding athletes originally published in places like Sports Illustrated, and chapters on politics, especially on Congress, Newt Gingrich and the Washington media. As strange a mix as that seems, somehow they do all fit together. And the individual chapters are not only moving, but on occasion extraordinarily insightful. If you think you understand Congress, read this and you'll discover a new world. If you think you understand the media, read this and you'll understand how and why it funcstions as it does at a level deeper than you ever have before. If you think you understand what makes world class and pro athletes tick, read this and you'll see that you didn't.