What I Read -- The Amateurs

I read The Amateurs in its entirety when I was on vacation.  (It's short, don't get excited.)  That's why you didn't hear about it when I started.  I was on a boat trip, so I decided to read a book about boats.  Sail boats, rowing shells, po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.

This was a story I didn't know.  David Halberstam is, believe it or not, an author I have never read.  It would have been easy to make this a boring story.  Several of his chapters start out by telling you how they'll end!  But that doesn't take away from the suspense as he takes you through a race, stroke by stroke.  (Full disclosure: I am probably more interested in this than most because of my many years of rowing.)

Beyond that, he is gifted with description of character.  Each of the rowers you meet - and it's more than just the four in the subtitle - is memorable.  Each one is a character in his own right.

Bottom line: would it be wrong to steal the Newsweek quote from the cover?  Not if I cite it, right?