Nike Is a Goddess: The History of Women in Sports

Both a gathering and a celebration, Nike brings together some of the best women writers on sports to chronicle, sport by sport, the struggles and the politics that permeate the arena, and the achievements of the achievers who've broken through to rise above. "The story of women in sports," writes former Stanford basketball star Mariah Burton Nelson in the introduction, "is a personal story, because nothing is more personal than a woman's bone, sinew, sweat and desire, and a political story, because nothing is more powerful than a woman's struggle to be free."

Sport by sport, the history of women in sports unfolds in sweeping, breezy narratives: Shelley Smith on basketball, Grace Lichtenstein on tennis, Malanie Hauser on golf, Amy Nutt on baseball, Karen Karbo on swimming, Kathleen McElroy on track and field--and the list goes on. And, of course, heroes emerge: Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Althea Gibson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Gertrude Ederle, Billie Jean King, and scores of others who've slipped through memory's net and are finally rescued here.

Clearly assembled to inspire, Nike indeed does. But it also instructs. "This book shows what women can do when they work hard, when they team up, when they hurdle the barriers that are placed in front of them," writes Nelson. "It's about them, but it's also about us. By revealing their past, it points the way toward our future." And in Nike, so much of what's revealed borders on revelation. --Jeff Silverman