Listen up, sports fans Joe Garner is the author/compiler of We Interrupt This Broadcast, a popular collection of audio highlights with accompanying text from some of the biggest news stories in the past 65 years. It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to figure out what the follow-up should be, since the formula worked so well. Sports events are made for this sort of project, and some of their biggest moments are brought back to life nicely in And the Crowd Goes Wild: Relive the Most Celebrated Sporting Events Ever Broadcast, narrated by Bob Costas. It’s easy to figure out why this volume works even better than the original. With a few exceptions, newscasts don’t feature live descriptions because they aren’t planned. In sports, however, broadcasters are usually on site to tell audiences about history-making events. It’s wonderful, then, to hear the original emotion in the voices of announcers describing such events as Bobby Thomson’s 1951 playoff home run, the New York Mets’ 1969 World Series championship, Jack Nicklaus’s 1986 Masters triumph, and Mark McGwire’s 62nd home run of 1998. There won’t be many avid sports fans who will be able to resist giving this a listen or a read.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
