The Reading List first must absolve Contributing Editor Robert Kagan of responsibility for the misattribution of an allusion to Ozymandias in the midst of his article “Remember Nicaragua?” last week. As reader Alan Vanneman of Washington, D.C., alertly points out, “It was that damn hippie Percy Bysshe Shelley, not Robert Browning, who trashed Ozymandias.” The Reading List promises henceforth to confine This mischief to this page.
With the NCAA Final Four imminent and the NBA playoffs following soon, don’t say you will be too busy watching basketball games on TV to read. Hit the mute button on the remote control, and you can watch and read at the same time. It’s true there’s no first-person basketball book to rival Instant Replay by pro football’s Jerry Kramer or Ball Four by baseball’s Jim Bouton. Nonetheless, here’s the Reading List’s Final Four.
The Jordan Rules, by Sam Smith. All you want to know, locker-room tales included, about the last championship season of the Chicago Bulls. You’ll learn Michael Jordan is impatient with mere mortals, Scotty Pippen is a mere mortal, and coach Phil Jackson understands the game at a higher level of consciousness than the rest of us.
A Season on the Brink, by John Feinstein. Chronicles a season of Indiana University hoops. Chair-throwing misanthrope Bobby Knight really is a great coach, it turns out. The Essence of the Game Is Deception, by Leonard Koppett. You may remember Koppett, who used to be a sportswriter for the New York Times. He had the best grasp of pro basketball — the inner game, that is. A Sense of Where You Are, by John McPhee. The great New Yorker, writer on Bill Bradley when he starred at Princeton. It’s a short but riveting account of what made Bradley great. McPhee details Bradley’s training schedule as a high-school kid. Show it to your lollygagging children.
