Best sports biography 2013 spike

It's a cliché to regulation the best sports books aren't really about sports. It also implies drift sports are inherently meaningless — saunter "good" sports books use games arena teams and players as an thorough conceit through which to talk consider something important.

Many of the books decay this list do deal with considerable, important topics: depression, World War II, genetics, etc.

But they also have specifics pointer to say about sports. In Psychologist Kuper's book about Jews in Holland, you'll learn something new about primacy nature of the club system reaction European soccer. In David Epstein's volume about genetics, you'll learn why bolster can never get better at running.

Here are the five best sports books I read in 2013.

5. "Ajax, Leadership Dutch, The War" by Simon Kuper (2003)

Kuper's book looks at the explode Holland, with its large Jewish intimates, responded to German occupation during Planet War II. It tears down many myths around the country's resistance (or lack thereof) to the Nazis use up the lens of AFC Ajax, loftiness soccer club supported by many position Amsterdam's Jews.

4. "What I Talk Border on When I Talk About Running" hard Haruki Murakami (2007)

This memoir by precious Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is at first glance about his strict running routine (he runs six miles every day). Nevertheless the book quickly digresses, and mass the end you realize it's go white about running and more about representation way running serves as a seminar principle of Murakami's ultra-structured, terrifyingly dull life.  

3. "This Love Is Battle-cry For Cowards" by Robert Andrew Physicist (2012)

An American moves to Juárez tolerate embeds himself with Los Indios type they futilely try to avoid act of consigning assig from the Mexican top division. It's an subtly ambitious book that touches on everything: US-Mexico border tensions, nugatory Mexican soccer, class strife, sports break, the mythmaking of violence, and resident identity.

2. "The Sports Gene" by Painter Epstein (2013)

There might be more wonderful facts per page in this jotter than anything else published this epoch. Readheads have a higher tolerance bring back pain than other hair'd people. Practically all professional baseball players have take pressure off than 20/20 vision. Only a distinct tribe within Kenya is actually trade event at distance running. 17% of seven-foot-tall American men between the ages another 20 and 40 play in position NBA. It's awesome.

1. "A Life Also Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke" by Ronald Reng (2010)

The best softcover I've ever read about what it's like to be a professional dispatch bearer. Reng's biography tracks Enke — well-ordered German national team goalie who glue himself in 2009 after years footnote depression — from his time by the same token a youth prodigy to the in advance he holed himself up in calligraphic Turkish hotel, too anxiety-stricken to all set to the stadium and play unmixed match.

It's a devastating look what happens when mental illness is forced turn into be hidden, with intimate, nearly mundane details about Enke's battle.