To the uninitiated, Taekwondo seems almost like magic. Those skilled in this martial art can easily break boards and concrete blocks with their hands and feet, and they can flawlessly reproduce those colorful spinning kicks seen on any... Read More

Since Horace Wilson, an American schoolteacher in the “land of the rising sun,” introduced baseball to his students in 1872, Japanese have been mad for the game. The author, a writer, actor, filmmaker, and director of the Nisei... Read More

No one who followed the grueling 2001 Tour de France on television will ever use the phrase “as easy as riding a bicycle” quite the same way again. No one who reads this excellent book will view American cycling ace Lance... Read More

Next to the Marines, the New York Yankees are the epitome of “the few and the proud.” Throughout their major league existence—more precisely since they “stole” Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox in 1920—the Yankees have been... Read More

Born with a leg deformity that suggested he might be better suited to a less strenuous way of life than the profession to which he was born, no one ever expected John Henry to amount to much. For those who do not follow the sport of... Read More

In his preface, Elias notes that baseball “offers a common denominator that cuts across conflicting ideologies. Baseball provides and also illustrates some of the best that America has to offer. It also features some of the more... Read More

Vince Lombardi, the legendary former coach of the Green Bay Packers, once said that winning wasn’t everything, it was the only thing. He may well have been borrowing from the famous Japanese treatise on combat and strategy written... Read More

“This upper part of Everest must be indeed the remotest and least hospitable spot on earth, but at no time more emphatically and impressive so than when a darkened atmosphere hides its features and a gale races over its face.” These... Read More