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Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance
by David Epstein
In high school, I wondered whether the Jamaican Americans who made our track team so successful might carry some special speed gene from their tiny island. In college, I ran against Kenyans, and wondered whether endurance genes might have traveled with them from East Africa. At the same time, I began to notice that a training group on my team could consist of five men who run next to one another, stride for stride, day after day, and nonetheless turn out five entirely different runners. How could this be?
We all knew a star athlete in high school. The one who made it look so easy. He was the starting quarterback and shortstop; she was the all-state point guard and high-jumper. Naturals. Or were they?
The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training?
The truth is far messier than a simple dichotomy between nature and nurture. In the decade since the sequencing of the human genome, researchers have slowly begun to uncover how the relationship between biological endowments and a competitor's training environment affects athleticism. Sports scientists have gradually entered the era of modern genetic research.
In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle. He investigates the so-called 10,000-hour rule to uncover whether rigorous and consistent practice from a young age is the only route to athletic excellence.
Along the way, Epstein dispels many of our perceptions about why top athletes excel. He shows why some skills that we assume are innate, like the bullet-fast reactions of a baseball or cricket batter, are not, and why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like an athlete's will to train, might in fact have important genetic components.
This subject necessarily involves digging deep into sensitive topics like race and gender. Epstein explores controversial questions such as:
Through on-the-ground reporting from below the equator and above the Arctic Circle, revealing conversations with leading scientists and Olympic champions, and interviews with athletes who have rare genetic mutations or physical traits, Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism.
"Starred Review. Readers may feel overwhelmed at Epstein's avalanche of genetic and physiological studies, but few will put down this deliciously contrarian exploration of great athletic feats." - Kirkus
"Epstein comes closest to scoring a home run in his provocative and thoughtful focus on the relationships between gender and race and genetic determination...While he helpfully leads readers into the dugout of modern genetics and sports science, his overall conclusions challenge few assumptions. In the end, he concedes that "any case for sports expertise that leans entirely either on nature or nurture is a straw-man argument." - Publishers Weekly
"In The Sports Gene David Epstein blows up the notion that 10,000 hours is all that is required for dominance in a sport and reveals the true complexity behind excellence." - Daryl Morey, Houston Rockets general manager; cofounder of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
"There has been nothing like this: a strong yet accessible review of the science and genetics of sports wrapped in personal stories. It will cause readers of all stripes to question their assumptions about just what it takes to become an elite athlete." - Sttephen M. Roth, exercise physiologist and director of the Functional Genomics Lab, University of Maryland
"Truly a groundbreaking work, contemporary sports journalism at its best. After reading Epstein's superb book - by turns a travelogue, highly readable primer on sports science, and string of who knew? anecdotes - you will never watch sports the same way again." - L. Jon Wertheim, coauthor of Scorecasting
"Step by surprising step, David Epstein takes our hand, grips our mind, and leads us deeper and deeper into the fascinating jungle of sports and genetics ... until we finally begin to see the miracle we've been watching in our stadiums and on our TV screens all our lives." - Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated writer and four-time National Magazine Award winner
"David Epstein offers the definitive account of what does and does not make an athlete elite. By myth-busting conventional thinking and offering new insights, Epstein has created a must-read for athletes, parents, coaches, and anyone who wants to know what it takes to be great." - George Dohrmann, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Play Their Hearts Out
"The Sports Gene, written for top athletes and just plain weekend duffers (one of whom tests the bounds of all things human to try to become a pro golfer), is a story told elegantly and with David Epstein's indefatigable powers of investigation. Do elite athletes have innate gifts or can they be produced? I've always wondered -and in this groundbreaking book, I finally have the answer. Spend a few hours. You'll be educated, and you'll be fascinated." - Peter King, senior writer, Sports Illustrated
"It does an excellent job covering the scientific basis of athletic performance and amplifies the research with an impressive collection of narrative examples and interviews." - Mike Joyner, Mayo Clinic physician-researcher and one of the world's leading experts on human performance and exercise physiology
This information about The Sports Gene was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Epstein has a master's degree in environmental science and is an award-winning senior writer for Sports Illustrated, where he covers sports science, medicine, and Olympic sports. His investigative pieces are among Sports Illustrated's most high-profile stories. An avid runner himself, he earned All-East honors on Columbia University's varsity track squad. This is his first book. He lives in Brooklyn.
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