I cannot live without books, either

More than 200 years ago, President Thomas Jefferson once said, "I cannot live without books." As one of our country's Founding Fathers, Jefferson was onto something – and today, I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment.

While I have a nice living room display and collection of books, it's become increasingly challenging to find and make good time to read books on a regular basis. Mind you, I enjoy reading – even if I have a reading list I will never finish. Every day, I spend time reading The New York Times and I keep up with the newsfeed of my Facebook. Still, I would like to spend more time with books. Doesn't matter if they are hardcover or softcover. A good book is something that's hard to put down.

Fortunately, each time I go to the gym – usually five times a week – I bring a book with me and spend 30 minutes riding a stationary bike with an open book to take my mind off of exercising. After all, it's been said, "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

While reading a book is like taking a good journey, three books which I have recently read and recommend to everyone are:

Indentured / Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss
The rebellion against
the college sports cartel.

• Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA by Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss. The authors (one a columnist, the other a contributing writer for The New York Times) have long recognized that there is a widespread corruption that plagues big-time college sports. Indentured grew out of a controversial New York Times column Nocera wrote four years ago in which he asked pointblank: "How can the NCAA blithely wreck careers without regard to due process or common fairness? How can it act so ruthlessly to enforce rules that are so petty? Why won't anybody stand up to these outrageous violations of American values and American justice?"

As millions of high school seniors each year accept athletic scholarships to American colleges and universities to chase their dream of fame and fortune as "student-athletes," sports fans have finally come to realize that athletes in the two biggest college sports, men's basketball and football, "are little more than indentured servants." Their best interests are not being served by the NCAA, notes Nocera and Strauss.

They write: "For about 5 percent of top-division players, college ends with a golden ticket to the NFL or the NBA. But what about the overwhelming majority who never turn pro? They don't earn a dime from the estimated $13 billion generated annually by college sports – an ocean of cash that enriches schools, conferences, coaches, TV networks, and apparel companies ... everyone except those who give their blood and sweat to entertain the fans."

Indentured is a must read book for college sports fans – a real eye-opening drama and a good page-turner – and chapter after compelling chapter, it tells a story of a group of "rebels" – former athletes, coaches, marketers – who decided to fight for justice against the hypocrisy of the NCAA.

Saving Capitalism /
For the Many, Not the Few
By Robert B. Reich.

• Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few by Robert B. Reich is a book that's an intersection of economics and politics, "a myth-shattering breakdown of how the economic system that helped make America so strong is now failing us, and what it will take to fix it." Reich has served in three national administrations – he was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton – and currently is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economics. So, he knows his subject matter very well.

In Saving Capitalism, Reich "reveals how power and influence have created a new American oligarchy, a shrinking middle class, and the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in eighty years." His writing throughout the book is both filled with passion and it's precisely argued.

Reich recalls how in the post-World II outlook, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. "Then, the economy generated hope. Hard work paid off, education was the means toward upward mobility, those who contributed most reaped the largest rewards, economic growth created more and better jobs, the living standards of most people improved throughout their working lives, our children would enjoy better lives than we had, and the rules of the game were basically fair," writes Reich.

He continues: "But today all these assumptions ring hollow. Confidence in the economic system has declined sharply. The apparent arbitrariness and unfairness of the economy have undermined the public's faith in its basic tenets. Cynicism abounds. To many, the economic and political systems seem rigged, the deck stacked in favor of those at the top. The threat to capitalism is no longer communism or fascism but a steady undermining of the trust modern societies need for grown and stability."

Robert Reich is one of the best economists in modern American history, according to U.S. Senator and Democratic Presidential contender Bernie Sanders. "He understands that there is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. This book is a road map on how to rebuild the middle class and fix a rigged economy that has been propped up by a corrupt campaign finance system," said Sanders.

I'd Know That Voice Anywhere /
By Frank Deford
A collection of his NPR commentaries.

• I'd Know That Voice Anywhere by Frank Deford. The longtime NPR Morning Edition commentator, who is also senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated and a senior correspondent on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, is one of America's most beloved sport commentators. Since 1980, Deford has recorded over 2,000 commentaries for NPR – "the serious, the foolish, the noble, the idiosyncratic; this game, that athletic." His latest book – his nineteenth – is a collection of literary sports commentaries that brings together a charming, insightful and wide-ranging look at athletes and the sports world.

"Being a writer, I never paid much attention to my voice," writes Deford in the forward for I'd Know That Voice Anywhere. "Since, when it came to interviewing, I was a primitive pen-and-notebook reporter, I rarely even heard myself speak on a tape recorder. ... Then, in the autumn of 1979, through impossibly serendipitous circumstances, National Public Radio approached me about doing a weekly sports commentary, and suddenly I had to direct that run-of-the-mill voice of mine into a microphone. But then, to my utter delight (shock and awe?), I soon found myself being complimented, advised that I possessed a distinct "radio voice." Where did you get that? people asked me, as if you could pick it out at an appliance store."

In I'd Know That Voice Anywhere, Deford muses everything sport from our continued love affair for Joe DiMaggio to the similarities between Babe Ruth and Winnie the Pooh. He rhapsodizes about how football reminds him of Venice, and even offers Super Bowl coverage in the form of a Shakespearian sonnet. Deford waxes poetically about the most popular sports of yesteryear such as boxing, golf and horse racing, and compares the Olympics to an independent movie comprised of foreign actors you've never heard of.

"Sports is, on the one level, mere amusement, but it is found in every culture," notes Deford, "and while it's not an absolute necessity for us, as eating and drinking and procreation are – sports is a card-carrying part of the human condition, in the same league with religion and drama and art and music. You can ignore sports, just as  you might choose not to care about other of those optional devotions, but sports does have a hefty place in our world, and I'm pleased to have been its troubadour on NPR. To voice sports may well be the next best thing to being out on the field itself, playing. And there's no risk of concussions."

A New Year's resolution: Read more books!

Reflections from a bookstore window /
 The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle.

So many books ... so little time, reads the slogan printed on one of my tattered navy-colored t-shirts. It's a well-worn one that I bought a few years ago from The Elliott Bay Book Company, one of my favorite independent bookstores, located in Seattle.

As the middle of January approaches, many of us -- including yours truly -- are still drawing a list of New Year's resolutions. 

One of my resolutions for 2014 is to read more. Oh, sure, I stay abreast of current events by reading The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle, both in print and online, on a daily basis, and I enjoy giving a good read to the Life & Arts section of the Financial Times of London each weekend.

And, of course, there's always perusing my Facebook newsfeed, too, to stay current on what's trending.

But, what about books, you might ask? Yes, books, remember them? Before Twitter, before Facebook, before texting sapped all of our intellectual energy, there were books.

Looking back on 2013, I can say with pride that I made better use of my Oakland Public Library card than ever before. I checked out several books at our local branch library. I've learned that if you're willing to wait for a popular best-seller to become available, checking out library books is a good way to save money (and, I might add, bookshelf space) while also showing support for one's local public library.

Watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report regularly, I find both shows to be good barometers about good books to read -- and Stewart, especially, is one of the best interviewers on TV and always brings out the best in authors. You can judge by Stewart's interest in a book if it is worth reading. 

With kudos to Stewart, among the books which I checked out from my local public library last year -- and read cover to cover -- were:

Fawzia Koofi:
"As you grow older
you will learn
about loyalty."

• Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter by the American sportswriter, novelist and NPR commentator Frank Deford.

• The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future by the Afghan politician and women's rights activist Fawzia Koofi. 

• Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by the highly successful American pro basketball coach Phil Jackson.

• Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography by the American journalist Richard Rodriguez.

Currently, I am ploughing my way through the 468-page Cooked: A Natural Transformation by the American author, journalist, activist and academic Michael Pollan.

I tend to favor non-fiction over fiction books. One thing that unites my list of books I read last year is a spiritual quality found in each of them. For instance:

In Darling, Richard Rodriguez, who is considered one of the most prominent Hispanic essayists in America, speaks out of an illumination of the “desert God” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam — a divinity that “demands acknowledgment within emptiness”, wrote The New York Times in its Sunday Book Review section last fall. And, for Rodriguez, who is gay, it extends to a more personal history, too: the ways in which he has resisted, and felt himself resisted by, the Roman Catholic Church.

In Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter, The New York Times wrote of Frank Deford: "His work has helped shape our contemporary view of sports as an enterprise populated not by sublime gods, untouchable athletes, heroes and goats, but by beings recognizable as men and women."

Meanwhile, in Fawzia Koofi's memoir, The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future, written to her daughters, she explores the complexities of Afghan society and Islam and her determination to become an educated woman and live in freedom despite constant threats on her life by Islamic extremists.

Eleven Rings:
The Soul of Success

Finally, there's plenty to absorb in Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, and Phil Jackson quotes from the Grateful Dead, William James, Thelonius Monk, Abraham Maslow and Lao-Tzu, among many. The book reflects Jackson's polymathy. "In the space of a page, he toggles from psychotherapy to Native American customs to Christianity to Buddhism and back to 'two recent studies published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology'," The New York Times wrote in its review of the book.

As my time allows, this year I would love to go back and catch up with some of my favorite authors like Calvin Trillin (Alice, Let's Eat), Roger Angell (The Summer Game) and Michael Lewis (Moneyball). While I've read many of the books written by Trillin, Angell and Lewis -- all of them wonderful American authors -- I haven't read them all!

Also, I would love to tackle the intellect of the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and the literary brilliance of Stephen Fry and Nick Hornby.

Add to that, I've always been intrigued by the late Eudora Welty, the American author of short stories and novels about the American South, and would love to make the time to read one of her short story collections.

If I can average to read a book a month in 2014 -- 12 by the end of the year -- I'll be happy and, I'm sure, feel enriched by the experience. 

Indeed, so many books ... so little time.

Photo of Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013.

Just because: Why we fall in love with the Summer Olympic Games every four years

Golden smiles  x 4 / The American 4 x 100 meter medley relay team
of Allison Schmitt, Dana Vollmer, Rebecca Soni and Missy Franklin
display their gold medals after setting a world record.

Every four years we fall in love with the Summer Olympic Games. And, this year, there were plenty of reasons to fall in love with the London Summer Games.

NPR sports commentator Frank Deford observed that the Olympics are "like an independent movie with foreign actors you've never heard of." Further, he said, it's quite alright if we "cheer for people you've never heard of in a sport you don't care about just because."

During the London Summer Games' fortnight, which wrapped up Sunday night with a smashing three-hour finale that featured a jukebox of British music idols as well as an Eric Idle sing-a-long of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," I found myself cheering for athletes I had never heard of in sports that rarely receive any mention in my country just because ... just because I cared enough to want to. And it was fun.

Golden moment for Team GB / Heptathlete Jessica Ennis basked in
triumph as she won the heptathlon 800 meter run
 and secured a gold medal for Great Britain.

As a result of watching a lot of Olympics coverage live on the BBC via the Internet (here in the U.S., the glamor sports of swimming, gymnastics, diving and track and field aired on tape delay to garner larger nighttime audiences), I got caught up in cheering for a lot of Great Britain's Olympic hopefuls like "Team GB" track cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, heptathlete Jessica Ennis and gymnast Beth Tweddle.

Also, thanks to having a lot of Facebook friends from Tunisia, I rooted for their country's athletes like Malek Jaziri (tennis), Habiba Ghribi (athletics) and Oussama Mellouli (indoor and outdoor swimming). And, I marveled at the achievements of David Rudisha of Kenya, who set a world record in winning the men's 800 meters, and little Meseret Defar of Ethiopia (5-feet-3, 95 pounds), who won an exciting women's 5,000 meter race, then pulled a cloth picture of the Virgin Mary from her track top, held it aloft, and kissed it before breaking down in tears of joy, crying: "I won, I won."

David Rudisha / He set a
world record in winning
the gold medal in the
men's 800 meter run.

Mind you, I thrilled in cheering for the U.S. on the basketball court, in the swimming pool and on the Olympic Stadium running track throughout the fortnight, too.

Before the start of the Summer Olympics, Lord Sebastian Coe, the two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 1,500 meters from Great Britain who headed the London organizing committee, said the London Summer Games would be "the Games for everyone."

And they were.

The London Summer Games will be remembered as the most diverse and inclusive Summer Olympics ever.

American gymnast Gabby Douglas in flight / Color her a winner
as she won the gold medal in the women's all-around.

Three traditionally-conservative Islamic nations, known for their cultural and political restrictions of women ~ Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Qatar ~ sent their first female athletes to the Olympics. The London Games will also be remembered for a double-amputee runner (Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, who earned the nickname "The Blade Runner"); an African-American gymnast (Gabby Douglas of the U.S., who became the first woman of color to win the gymnastics all-around gold medal); and an openly gay soccer player whose acceptance by her teammates was very refreshing (Megan Rapinoe of the U.S., who became the first prominent American soccer player to come out in the media).

The world's Olympic athletes, representing 204 nations of the world, came from all walks of life just like the fans who cheered for them. And, their stories were quite compelling, too.

Inclusive but alone, too / Sarah Attar became the first female Saudi
athlete to compete in an Olympic track and field event. 

Last Wednesday, an Olympic milestone was achieved when the first woman track and field athlete representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia competed. Sarah Attar, 19, born and raised in the U.S. of a Saudi father and an American mother and who holds dual citizenship, ran in the last heat of the 800 meter run. A cross-country runner at Pepperdine University in Calfornia, Attar's Olympic experience lasted less than three minutes.

Sarah Attar wore a white hijab
and a green and black track suit
that covered her arms and legs
to comply with Saudi Arabia's
strict interpretation of
Islamic law.

Attired in a white hijab and a black and green track suit that covered her arms and legs to comply with Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic law, Attar received a standing ovation from many in the crowd at Olympic Stadium as she crossed the finish line alone, well behind the others in her heat. Although she finished last in her heat in 2 minutes 44.95 seconds, about 41 seconds behind the first-place finisher, Attar had much to smile about her experience.

Attar said she wanted to represent Saudi Arabia at the Olympics as a way of inspiring women. "This is such a huge honor and an amazing experience, just to be representing the women," she said, following the conclusion of her race. "I know that this can make a huge difference. Hopefully, this sparks something amazing."

A few other milestones worth sharing from the Olympic fortnight:

• Malaysian diver Pamg Pandelela Rinong won the first-ever diving medal for Malaysia when she won a bronze medal in the 10 meter platform competition. "I feel a great honor to win the historic medal for my country," said Pamg, who was the flag bearer for Malaysia at the opening ceremonies. "I'm very proud of Malaysia for the breakthrough, and hope my country is also proud of me," she added.

• The tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada (population 109,000) became the smallest country to win an Olympic gold medal when 19-year-old Kirani James won the men's 400 meter sprint.

• Before the London Games, the last all-male sport in the Olympics was boxing. No more, as the first gold medals in women's boxing were awarded in three different weight classes. Great Britain's Nicola Adams became the first female to win an Olympic gold medal. Then, Ireland's Katie Taylor won her country's first gold medal of the 2012 Games. Finally, Claressa Shields won the first U.S. women's boxing gold medal. "It's a dream come true," Adams told BBC Sport. "I am so happy and overwhelmed with joy right now. I have wanted this all my life and I have done it."

A bronze moment / Pamg Pandalela Rinong won Malaysia's first-ever
diving medal. "I hope my country is ... proud of me."

The American poet Maya Angelou, who has written about diversity and inclusion throughout her lifetime, observed: "We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color."

A friend of mine from England shared their perspective about the Games with me that are worth sharing with you: "As a nation, Great Britain has found itself not only through its medal success (Team GB won a total of 65 medals, including 29 golds), but by realizing that we are a truly diverse and inclusive nation who welcome and celebrate the success of all."

While the London Summer Games have been about "inspiring a new generation," these Olympic Games will be remembered for its diversity and inclusiveness, too.

Indeed, breaking down barriers one medal at a time, and welcoming and celebrating the success of all.

Various photographs courtesy of The Guardian.co.uk, 2012.

Photograph of David Rudisha courstesy of nbcolympics.com, 2012.

Image of Sarah Attar courtesy of NBC, 2012.

A love of American team sports: At what price?

The rest of the sporting world is catching up to America.

In his weekly sports commentary this morning on National Public Radio, commentator Frank Deford opined about how America's love of team sports comes at a price.

I have a deep admiration for Deford, an author and writer whose reporting and commentary includes: senior contributing writer for Sports Illustrated, commentator for NPR and correspondent for HBO's monthly sports magazine 'Real Sports'. Today, Deford said: "I've always thought that one of the best things about American sport is that we aren't dominated by one team game, as so much of the rest of the world is soccer-centric. That's why we can have our own American dream.  The dream of most other countries is simply to have their national soccer team do well." (Note to my friends around the world: What you call football, in the U.S. we call it soccer.)

Deford is absolutely right.  In America, we've always focused our devotion to team sports ~ baseball, American-style football, basketball and ice hockey come to mind ~ and we've turned college sports into a big multi-million-dollar business. Can high school sports be fare behind?

Looking up at No. 1 /
Vamos Rafa!

Meanwhile, I have found through many friendships I've made on Facebook that in other nations, their sports affection and devotion are monogamous.  For instance, my friends either root for Rafa Nadal or Novak Djokovic, but not for both. It's either "Vamos Rafa" or "Ajdee Nole". Switzerland's Roger Federer, like his native country, is a neutral presence. And, on the football pitch, the line is clearly drawn between fans rooting for either Real Madrid or Barcelona. For Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. You see, there's no waffling among my international friends when it comes to showing one's rooting interest.  It is pinned to their heart or worn on their sleeve for everyone to see ~ and I've grown to appreciate this.

Here in the U.S., Deford refers to American sports fans as "serial team fans". What this means is simple: You're either for the Yankees or the Mets if you live in New York, but dare not root for both. And, if you live in Chicago, you're either a Cubs fan ~ especially if you live on the North Side ~ or a White Sox fan if you're from the South Side. But you can't be a true Chicago baseball fan and root for both teams.

In a topsy turvy week that began with deadly tornadoes whipping through Alabama and beyond in the U.S., then continued with the splendid Will and Kate's Royal Wedding in London, and, finally, concluded Sunday night with President Obama announcing to the nation and the world the killing of Osama bin Laden, the U.S. has shown it has become less of a power in individual sports like tennis.

From the hard courts of Melbourne and Flushing Meadows to the red clay of Roland Garros to the pristine grass of Wimbledon, all of the reigning Grand Slam champions, except for Serena Williams at Wimbledon, are foreigners.  Sure, the Williams sisters have mostly been injured on and off for the past year. But, even if they were healthy, who's to say the outcome of any of the Grand Slam tournaments would have been any different? Still, it's a far cry from the days when John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Chris Evert were part of a dominating American presence in the Grand Slams.

Roger Federer/
In search of his 17th
Grand Slam singles title.

Now that the tennis calendar has shifted to the European clay court season in the lead up to this month's French Open, the focus is clearly on rest of the world.  The top four men's seeds at this week's Mutua Madrid Open ~ Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Andy Murray ~ are from Spain, Serbia, Switzerland and Great Britain, respectively. After the first day of competition, all of the Americans except one had lost.  The lone exception, John Isner, had to defeat another American, Mardy Fish, to advance to the second round.   And, it was yet another clay-court disappointment for America's best player, Andy Roddick. The red clay that is a universal playing surface for much of the rest of the world, is still so very foreign to the American players.  It seems they can't wait to get to Wimbledon so they can play on grass, or to return home to America for the summer hard-court season leading up to the U.S. Open in August.

Yes, it is painfully obvious that the rest of the world has caught up with America in sports as it has in many other respects. And, as Deford concluded his commentary this morning, he said: "The cliche is that there's no 'I' in team. But more and more, when it comes to tennis and golf, there's no 'U.S' in world champion."

I couldn't agree more.