Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports

Like the other reviewer, I came to this book after reading another of Barry's books, in my case his latest, "The Great Influenza." (Next I'll try "Rising Tide.") What amazes me about this writer is he can handle so well, and in such depth, very very different topics. While I found much of the material on sports moving and interesting-- short profiles ranging from a world record holder in track to athletes trying to make it in the NFL-- the core of the book is its take on the political media. He looks at models of crowd behavior studied by a Nobel laureate and applies them to the press corps. It works magnificently. This is a very very original book, and extermely well written and readable.

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.