Following Gary Smith’s amazing biography of Andre Agassi in Sports Illustrated I was inspired to buy Beyond the Game, a collection of the biographies he wrote. I was disappointed. Except for a few stories, I did not connect with the athletes he was writing about – probably because I had not heard of most of them and did not care for their sports.

Also, over the course of an entire book, I found Gary Smith’s style grating – his perpetual use of “I” made it feel as though he was inserting his story and writing his story rather than that of the athletes and their entourage. Interesting how something that can work so well for an article can fail over the course of a book.