A March to Madness: A View from the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference

In terms of work ethic, John Feinstein is the sports equivalent of Stephen King: he's tireless, prolific, and multifaceted. With a past-performance line that includes A Season on the Brink, A Good Walk Spoiled, and A Civil War, he's regularly in the running for his genre's MVP. A March to Madness, which chronicles the 1996-97 Atlantic Coast Conference's ineluctable journey to March Madness, continues his string. Exhaustively reported, and penned with as much poignancy as panache, it's the story of the most competitive college basketball conference in the U.S., filtered through the eyes--and complex lives--of its head coaches. Coaching young in-your-faces is never easy; it's even harder in a pressure cooker such as the ACC, where expectations are enormous, winning is essential, and an NCAA tournament bid is requisite for survival. Feinstein had remarkable access to his high-profile, high-strung subjects, such as Dean Smith, Bobby Cremins, and Mike Krzyzewski, and the drama he records is every bit as fast-paced and stunning as a close Duke-North Carolina game with the final seconds ticking off the clock.