Much care needs to be taken in assessing the value of this work to librarians outside the US, for it almost completely deals only with sports people from that country. The intention of the editor and the advisory board, which comprises school and public librarians from Illinois, Georgia, Florida and Pennsylvania, is “to provide narrative biographical profiles of more than 600 individuals who have made significant contributions to their sport and to society”. Sporting characters from the past 200 years are listed, from sports largely based on baseball, basketball and American football. The editor claims a passing glance at “lesser‐known sports such as cricket” but C.B. Fry, Sunil Gavaskar, Jack Hobbs and even W.G. Grace fail to be included. In cycling, there are entries for Lance Armstrong – naturally – and Miguel Indurain for winning five Tours de France, but Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil and the great Eddy Merckx who have achieved the same feat are not granted entries. Understandably, Mario Andretti, the American racing car driver who successfully competed in both US Indy car racing and the Formula 1 World Championship, is given a full entry, but the British driver Graham Hill, who was also successful in both forms of racing, is not included.
Entries are detailed and well laid out; that for the baseball player “Shoeless Joe” Jackson is longer than most. The heading gives us his birth and death dates, his nationality and sport and is followed by an article of nearly 3,000 words. This outlines the life and career of the batter who regrettably became more famous for the scandal caused by the Chicago White Sox 1919 team throwing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Boxed inserts provide a chronology of the man's life, his awards and accomplishments, a reference to the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams based on W.P. Kinsella's book Shoeless Joe, and his career statistics. Cross‐references in the article are printed in bold type; the entry is completed by a list of further reading in books and periodicals. Most entries include a black and white photograph of the subject; Jackson gets two. For those entries dealing with living sports people, contact information, usually in the form of Web sites, is provided and the four volumes have cumulative indices to provide the enquirer with access by nationality or sport. There is also a general subject index.
