The world of the rower, he was pleased to find, was a happy alternative to the big-bucks emphasis of professional sport. Whether it’s the impact of television on society, or the impact of the new materialism, sport says a lot about our change of focus, our change of purpose.” Sport is an excellent mirror to the condition of America, of how our values have changed. “I have sort of a little side store of mom-and-pop sportswriting. Halberstam makes us care about the four men, their disappointments and the brutal testing of their friendships.“I like to do sportswriting on the side,” he said recently.
Maintains the suspense to the very last stroke.
"RIVETING." *Christopher Lehmann-Haupt The New York Times " MASTERFUL JOB.
Informative and compelling, The Amateurs combines the vividness of superb sportswriting with the narrative skills of a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent. And even if they succeed, they will have to live with the bitter knowledge that they were not the best, only close to it. The man who wins will gain the right to represent the United States in the 84 Olympiad the losers will then have to struggle further to gain a place in the two- or four-man boats. What drives these men to endure a physical pain known to no other sport? Who are they? Where do they come from? How do they regard themselves and their competitors? What have they sacrificed, and what inner demons have they appeased? In answering these questions, David Halberstam takes as his focus the 1984 single sculls trials in Princeton. While other athletes are earning fortunes in salaries and-or endorsements, the oarsmen gain fame only with each other and strive without any hope of financial reward. This time he has taken for his subject the dramatic and special world of amateur rowing. One of the best books ever written about a sport." *Walter Clemons Newsweek "A PENETRATING, FASCINATING AND REMARKABLY SUSPENSEFUL NARRATIVE." *David Guy Chicago Tribune In The Amateurs, David Halberstam once again displays the unique brand of reportage, both penetrating and supple, that distinguished his bestselling The Best and the Brightest and October 1964.
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