Great Athletes: Racing & Individual Sports: 0 - Hardcover

9781587654824: Great Athletes: Racing & Individual Sports: 0

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1587654822 ISBN 13: 9781587654824

Publisher: Salem Pr Inc, 2009

Scope and coverage - Virtually every athlete and every sport readers might reasonably expect to find can be found here. Although there is an emphasis on sports that are popular in North America, there is considerable coverage on sports and athletes from other parts of the world. Most North Americans have at least some familiarity with such sports as baseball, basketball, football, golf, ice hockey, and tennis. They are likely to have had less exposure to badminton, cycling, and soccer and even less exposure to sports such as cricket, fencing, and Tae Kwon Do. No matter what the sport, however, readers of "Great Athletes" will learn that outstanding athletes from all parts of the world and all cultures. Organization and format: Averaging three to four pages in length, articles are written in clear language and presented in a uniform, easily readable format. Each article is divided into four sections that cover the athlete's life and achievements chronologically. 'Early Life' covers the athlete's family background, early education, introduction to sports, and other formative experiences. 'The Road to Excellence' discusses the athlete's first serious involvement in sports and the experiences and influences that propelled the athlete toward greatness. 'The Emerging Champion' section follows the athlete from the threshold of stardom to higher levels, and 'Continuing the Story' tracks the athlete's subsequent athletic career and later life. Finally, each article concludes with a 'Summary' recapitulating the athlete's achievements and legacy. A photograph of the athlete accompanies each essay, and every article is accompanied by at least one table, shadowed for easy reference. With their content varying greatly among different sports, these tables summarize the career statistics, honors and awards, records, and other milestones that set each great athlete apart. At a Glance: This title contains 13 Volumes; 5,000 Pages; 1,470 Essays, 380 new; 1,470 Photos (one per essay); 2,600+ Sidebars/Statistic Tables; 60 Appendixes; and Name, Sport Team, Position & Country Indexes. Covering a wide variety of topics, this one volume includes BMX, auto, horse and boat racing, bowling, chess, cricket, lacrosse, martial arts, rodeo, sailing, sumo wrestling, and yachting.

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From Booklist:

This massive undertaking totals 1,470 entries covering athletes in baseball, basketball, boxing, football, golf, auto racing, soccer, tennis, and Olympic sports. Additionally, well-known athletes in other, less-recognized sports—such as cycling, skateboarding, stunt riding, martial arts, and chess—are included, for example, Lance Armstrong, Tony Hawk, Evil Knievel, Bruce Lee, and Bobby Fischer. The set rests on the foundation of earlier Salem publications: The Twentieth Century: Great Athletes (1992), its supplement (1994), and the 8-volume Great Athletes, Revised (2002). This expansion includes almost 400 new entries and, like its predecessors, is intended for younger readers at the middle- and high-school levels. Volumes can be purchased individually, but Olympic Sports consists of 4 volumes, Football and Baseball have 2 each, while Golf and Tennis are combined in one volume, as are Boxing and Soccer. Basketball and Racing and Individual Sports each get a single volume. Entries are arranged alphabetically and are generally about 3 pages in length, covering the lives and careers of each individual. Every entry has the same subheadings: “Early Life,” “The Road to Excellence,” “The Emerging Champion,” “Continuing the Story,” and “Summary.” An accompanying table of statistics or honors and achievements is also a part of each entry, as is an additional sources section for further reading. Most entries include black-and-white photographs as well. Each volume (or, in the case of some sports, multivolume subset) has its own index, and the entire set has a separate cumulative index. This is helpful if a user might not know, for example, that popular snowboarder Shaun “the Flying Tomato” White is covered in the Olympic Sports portion of the set and not in the Racing and Individual Sports volume. The index volume is free with any purchase, whether of the whole or parts. Overall, this is a well-put-together and wide-ranging set, mainly useful at the junior-high and high-school levels. A nice added touch is that institutions or libraries that purchase the full set receive complimentary access to Great Athletes’ content online via the Salem History platform. Grades 7-12. --Michael Tosko

From School Library Journal:

Grade 9 Up—This impressive set builds on three previous works: The Twentieth Century: Great Athletes (1992); a 3-volume supplement (1994), and Great Athletes, Revisited (2002), retaining most of the articles from the earlier works and adding more than 415 new entries. Athletes are grouped by sport: two volumes apiece are devoted to baseball and football, four volumes to Olympic contenders, while single volumes cover basketball, boxing and soccer, golf and tennis, and racing and individual sports. The entire collection contains 1470 succinct biographies with each figure's accomplishments summed up in two to three pages. Text boxes add statistics and milestones, and most entries are accompanied by black-and-white photographs. The scope of this resource is noteworthy. Participants from an array of sports and countries are represented; this is especially true in the volumes dedicated to Olympic sports. Americans comprise the majority of entries in the volumes covering baseball; however, a handful of international athletes is included. A valuable index lists all of the athletes in the set by sport, country, and name. Purchase of the set comes with complimentary online access.—Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA
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