Athletics Books

I bought this for my boyfriend since he was carrying around a ratty old bag to the gym. He loves this one, it's huge and has lots of compartments for all of his stuff, with room left over, plus it's pretty light and the straps have shoulder guards. It's a pretty durable bag.

Great bag! It fits all of my martial arts gear!! Which on any given day could include my ju-jitsu gi, shin guards, gloves, sparring partner(just joking on the last one)and mouthpiece. And it is not too bulky to carry with the shoulder strap! Get the bag and get training!!

its a good bag, light and spacious. I like it. The only thing that stoped me from giving a 5 star rating is the straps have plastic clips at the end to connect to bag, i would rather like good quality metal ones. Also shipping should be as high as it is.adidas Elite Medium Duffel

I purchased the Navy bag and it is a lot better than other duffel bags I have owned. The shoe compartment holds my cleats and flip flops with ease. The inside of the bag is lined to keep out moisture. The center compartment holds a mini ball, size 5 soccer ball, shin guards, water bottles, and all of my spring season clothes, which can be a lot depending on Colorado weather. This bag is great.

I recently bought the adidas duffle bag in collegiate light blue. It is a wonderfully designed bag perfect for sleepovers, meets, games, camp, and more! There are lots of pockets in conveinant places, and a great size! I would recommend this bag to anyone, and I enjoy it very much!

Vern Gambetta requires respect. His words and actions speak for themselves. This book doesn't do justice to the depth of his knowledge and experience as a trainer and educator.

This book is full of information, but I found it somewhat difficult to get through because it is very technical in nature.

Athletes, trainers, and anyone studying sports medicine should check out this guide to sports conditioning. It's a great help to prepare for the CSCS exam.

Vern has been around the block and he knows his stuff. Read every word of his book and let it sink in.

The thing that makes this book so very exceptional is its seamless combination of the author's significant personal coaching experience and the state of the art in exercise and sports science. There is just enough theory and background to understand where the ideas come from, helping to put them into better context.

Although there is no formula that works for creating a training program for every athlete, this book probably comes as close as you can get to that goal. It provides you with the basic principles you need for assessing what each athlete needs in order to achieve their potential and training them to attain it. The components of performance are clearly laid out, along with the methods for developing them and also the places where qualities depend critically on other qualities.

The author addresses all of the usual questions along the way with unique and practical answers that can be applied to any sport once you understand the needs of that sport. Get realistic, effective answers to your questions about sets, reps, periodizing, plyometrics, machines, bands, weights, strength vs. power, functional strength vs. absolute strength, flexibility vs. mobility and stability; all of the important questions that arise in the mind of any athlete or coach who takes the training process seriously.

No fads here, just good solid principles proven by experience and explained in terms of current theory. No matter how much you already know, you can't help learn something about training for human athletic performance if you read this book. If you are a trainer, this book may well become one of your most treasured resources, a place to go to help cut through the fluff and fashions of the industry when you have a real question.

Mr. Watterson has presented us with a volume that is unique among sports books - a comprehensive history of college football and its relationship to college life and American society. I recommend it for two reasons:

1. It is incredibly well researched; Watterson has spent years digging through college and university archives around the country. He has amassed a mountain of valuable information about the progression and development of the college game that is not available elsewhere.

2. Despite being an academic, the author writes in a style that is easily readable. In my experience, it is rare to find a scholarly book that is also comprehensible to a lay audience.

Though it has many positives, there are two major flaws that drive me to distraction.

1. Watterson insists on repeating himself, sometimes making the same point in the very next paragraph or on subsequent pages. At times, I found myself wondering whether I had mistakenly lost track of my place in the book and was reading a page that I had already covered. The author's tendency to rehash previously made points slows the reader's progression and makes each chapter significantly longer than it needs to be.

2. The index is woefully incomplete. For example, references to Glenn "Pop" Warner are listed on three pages - 137, 146 and 172 - but more information about him appears on page 180. Likewise, Richard "Von" Gammon is referenced in the index on pages 36-38, but he also appears on page 47 (misspelled as Richard Gammen). There are many such instances in the index.

Nevertheless, this book is very valuable for the many nuggets of insight and history that bubble to the surface. The information contained in this volume is found nowhere else, and far outweighs the drawbacks in writing and editing.

This a dry read and takes some effort as it is essentially an academic tome that is concerned with the evolution of modern college football from a political, policy, and business standpoint. But it is quite thorough and hits the nail on the head. The final pages discuss how the game can be saved .... since reform is not an option. This is the weakest part of the book, but understandably so since it would take the wisdom of Solomon to fix this problem. I have always felt that a return to one platoon football makes a lot of sense regarding costs (less insurance, travel and equipment, scholarship dollars).

The editing in the book leaves something to be desired. There are a number of typos - and a few sentences that make contradictory statements. The author is not a well versed student of the game since there are several technical mistakes which indicate some deficiencies in research. Some of these are listed below as examples.

(1) Identifying Brian Bosworth as an Oklahoma lineman when he was a linebacker,
(2) Claiming All American status for 4 years (1982-1985)for a very average SMU running back,
(3) Confusing the major Western Athletic Conference (WAC) with the minor Rocky Mountain Conference,
(4) When describing the 1943 game between the College of the Pacific (COP) and USC attributing Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) membership to COP which was in fact an independent school during the 40's and never was a member of the PCC or its later version, the Pac 10.

That said I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in the history of college football.

This enlightening book covers the history of college football from an interesting and neglected point of view. That is to say, it contains none of the usual lionisation of players and coaches, and no re-working of big games we're all familiar with. Rather, Watterson examines (and questions) the place of the game in American society and its role on campus. The book establishes quite clearly that the over-emphasis placed on gridiron is hardly a recent phenomenon or even (as I foolishly suspected) down to the evils of television - that schools have been fielding ineligible players, fiddling grades, and operating slush funds from the days of Walter Camp. Watterson details the various movements which have attempted to reform the game and how it is run, and explains lucidly why virtually all of them failed. A seemingly insatiable desire for victory and glory to the alma mater has resulted in a gradual yet steady erosion of the original purpose of sport on campus, to the point where today a college President can express a desire to "build a university the football team can be proud of" without a trace of irony.

The book's only real fault lies in some woeful editing, which results in a few stories being re-told, and several paragraphs being repeated almost word-for-word many pages later (not to mention some grammatical howlers which don't strike me as being the author's fault). I found myself able to to overlook this, though, and can unreservedly recommend it. It may not be one which the more avid Sooner, Fighting Irish, Crimson Tide, or Buckeye-backer will gravitate toward, but those who enjoy big-time football and yet abhor how tainted it has all become will find it difficult to put down.

College Football is an outstanding and important work. It is a true history--not a greatest teams and greatest players-type of celebratory writing--and falls under the rubric of sport history. Sport history, which is a subcategory of social history, relates sports to broader themes in society, and John Sayle Watterson in this regard does a terrific job in relating the history of football to the issue of collegiate life as a whole, and even to society as a whole (particularly where the colleges had to fight the pro game for the public's entertainment dollar).

College Football is published by a university press (Johns Hopkins), but it is marketed as a trade book. Thus, the misleading subtitle "History-Spectacle-Controversy," as there is not much spectacle in this book. But there is plenty of controversy, relating to violence, subsidies, and cheating scandals throughout the sport's history and the mostly failed attempts by the college football establishment to reform the sport.

Watterson's work is actually a more narrow history of the governance of college football, rather a broad history of the sport (Johns Hopkins surely did not want to put the word "governance" in the title). As such, however, College Football is the best overview of the subject ever written, primarily because the author takes the story from the beginning up to the present day.

I have some minor carping: there is an excessive number of typos and errors in this book for a university press book.

A useful book for everyone who has a long-lasting interest and knowledge on the College Football, but it can be a little bit dazy and hard-to-understand for the beginners. College Football by Watterson is an analytical book which also solves the past-time football's problems according to the periods national crisis' and situations with huge acknowledgements. If you already have a good knowledge on College Football, then you will find a lot of interesting things in this book; if you have no or a little knowledge, then I will suggest you to read easier books to prepare yourself for this book. I really liked reading and learned a lot from this book though.

I have owned this book ever since it was first published. Periodically I give it to people asking for guidance on weight training. It is nicely comprehensive on the various exercises, giving the proper form and names of equipment, movements and such. The photos are 80's vintage and dated but the info is not. Training with free weights has not changed. The exercises that worked twenty years ago work just as well today.

This book has good detailed descriptions on every exercises and also has info on reps, restance training and how to recover from a workout. The exercise routines are a little out-dated.

I liked reading this book but I don't know exactly how scientific some of the terms are; like when he calls people who jerk the weights around for high reps "pumpers." I usually refer to them as time wasters because they are injuries waiting to happen. The book does present you with modern training methods, but if I have to recommend one book.....Steve Reeves' new book "Building the Classic Physique" is still the best.

This book has a nice collection of exercises, with photographs and detailed description on the proper execution techniques for each one of them. The detailed description on each exercise include: The muscles emphasized by the exercise, its starting position, movement performance, exercise variations and training tips.

One valuable aspect of this training book is that at the end of each chapter you will find a lot of routines from Professional bodybuilders and champs. Each muscle is treated with great detail in its own individual book chapter.

Since the Table of Contents is not included in the book information presented above by the seller, I am including how the book is organized, so everybody can visualize what topics are covered:

- Basic information.
- Biceps training.
- Chest training.
- Shoulder training.
- Back training.
- Thigh and hip training.
- Triceps training.
- Abdominal training.
- Calf, forearm, and neck training.
- Advanced training techniques.
- Glossary.

In summary, very useful manual, with lots of exercises and routines, and plenty of information on training techniques and principles as they apply to bodybuilding.

For those who want to learn an extensive set of exercises for each muscle group, this is the book. It illustrates every exercise it refers to and indicates the muscles affected. Moreover, the descriptions and illustrations are almost always on the same page for easy reference. Very useful for learning your set of routines and as a reminder before a training session.

Rick Telander's The Hundred Yard Lie is an interesting read for anyone who cares about the moral implications of big-time college football. But it's also a depressing read.

Telander does an admirable job of discrediting the notion that amateur sport is somehow ennobling. The Hundred Yard Lie is very pointed in its criticisms of the NCAA for phony amateurism (as well as a host of other sins). You won't have much respect for the NCAA after reading this book.

One of the intriguing aspects of The Hundred Yard Lie is that Telander does a good job with "human interest" stories. He details his own playing days at Northwestern & his relationship with his head coach, Alex Agase. Telander meets with players from an inner-city high school in Houston and with Michigan State's highly-touted Tony Mandarich, among others. Telander keeps the pages turning & the human interest is a big part of The Hundred Yard Lie's appeal.

A drawback that many readers will notice is that little of the criticism in The Hundred Yard Lie seems original. The ensuing 20 years have brought a host of books (such as Murray Sperber's Beer and Circus) attacking the hypocrisy of college sports. There are some other weak spots in the book. Some of the digressions on amateurism (in Chapter 2) are slow reading. Chapter 6 - on college football's alleged values - did not consistently hold my interest. The Stretching sections, which apparently detail Telander's own experiences with football, aren't well integrated with the rest of the book.

It is difficult to read The Hundred Yard Lie without a sense of despair. All of Telander's criticisms are still valid today. In fact, some things have gotten far worse; for instance, some head coaches' annual salaries now top $4 million. In that sense, The Hundred Yard Lie is a difficult read.

In short, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the seamy side of college football. But The Hundred Yard Lie is a bit dated; college football has only gotten worse in the past twenty years.

Rick Talender creates a new view of collage football for the eyes of all involved. Talender stumbles over an unusual premonition. "Child abuse" constantly realed across his mind. He related it to the treatment of the collage players by the collages and spectators treat the players. Student dealing with collage life as well as playing tirlessly with no pay and no moral support except for the little relatotionship they have with their coach. Rick Telander casts some light on the much ignored situation.

Rick Talender creates a new view of collage football for the eyes of all involved. Talender stumbles over an unusual premonition. "Child abuse" constantly realed across his mind. He related it to the treatment of the collage players by the collages and spectators treat the players. Student dealing with collage life as well as playing tirlessly with no pay and no moral support except for the little relatotionship they have with their coach. Rick Telander casts some light on the much ignored situation.

Telander exposes rampant cheating, exploitation, and NCAA hypocrisy in this searing look at the sordid underside of college football. The author attacks amateurism as fraudulent and unworkable, and shows that scandals have recurred almost since the game's founding (by rebellious students) in the late 1800's. We also learn that athletic programs rarely turn profits or boost fund-raising for their host schools. Despite these criticisms, this author (and ex-player at Northwestern) remains as attached to the game as us fans. Telander concludes his concise and highly readable book with a sensible proposal for reform. "The Hundred Yard Lie" fell on predictably deaf ears when first published in 1989. Still, it's an eye opener for those who dare question football's relationship to education.

A good book with some slow parts in the middle where the author goes to subjects that could be shortened. Telander is a former player in college and is watching the game he played be ruined. But he honestly discloses more than once that what is being said now has been said since the 1930s.

Maybe Telander should stop tilting at windmills and just give up to fight another fight and that may be my feelings also. But then you read his well-thought suggestions for changing the game and you see they could solve the problem. Let big colleges run professional sports team for entertainment and segment other colleges. The players would be paid and would not be required to attend college. The suggestions are fascinating and seem to address most of the points of weakness in the problem. All it will take is backbone from the college presidents and a few other powerful players. Oh, well. There goes this problem as no one associated has backbone. Witness the Oklahoma president presiding in the late 80s who years later tries to downplay the problems he faced. Witness Walter Byers who presided over the NCAA and now has his own book stating that there is a problem and it should be solved. Where were you years ago Mr. Byers?

If you love college football, you should read this book. Maybe it won't change your mind but it should at least let you see there is a problem. And Mr. Telander still doesn't cover football. Nice boycott.

Full of great drawings by Salvador Beltran, excellent quality MRI images, and handful boxes. The most didactic book on msk MRI. Greatly improved from the previous version. Definetly worth it, much better than the one from the Diagnostic Imaging series.

Best book in orthopaedic surgery. Huge amount of photos and illustraions, in detail review, almost every disease and the sports injuries are covered in this book. Very practical, easy to read, must-have for orthopadeic surgeon. This is not only the best textbook, this is the beautiful artwork.

This is the definitive work on orthopedic imaging. The illustrations and images are all of high quality. Unlike many other reference books, this one actually gives you an approach to image interpretation for each joint, in addition to detailed discussions of the pathology. There is also a sample report with images provided at the beginning of each chapter. Although it is pricey, it certainly blows the diagnostic imaging book out of the water. Highly recommended for any radiolgist interested in providing high quality reports to your referring orthopedists.

The illustrations are beautiful. There has been tremendous attention to detail. This is a definitive tome on high end orthopedic imaging. It contains information and concepts that are pretty cutting edge (that seem to just be getting into the literature). If you're looking for THE text on orthopedic imaging, this is the one. It BLOWS away the DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING Series - Orthopedics (by Dr. Stoller also).

This is a very large series of 2 books. Like that it's broken up into upper and lower extremity. Initially, cost freaked me out a bit. But, for what you get ... particularly the really high quality images and illustrations (and lots of them), it's well worth it.

This remains an essential textbook for musculoskeletal radiologists although one criticism would be that is a little dry . It steers clear of the opinion which makes books by Resnick or Helms so entertaining and useful. Stoller and some of the authors he has used for the chapters are enormously experienced and it would be good to read a more personal perspective .

Even if it didn't have spectacular content, which it does, this book is beautifully put together with colorful pictures, and backdrops. It is fun just to look at and even better to read. It is very practical, and although I have picked up most of this information from my personal research and coach, it is a great concise book on the athlete's sports diet. Not a penny wasted and the presentation is well worth the few extra bucks to get the new edition. It also has many helpful tables, charts, and important/highlight tips and info in the margins. Well written, well designed, and well published.

The book is very practical for somebody that is only beginning to dabble in running. For everybody else, a lot of the information is way too general and can easily be found elsewhere. I also would have liked to see more recipes in the book and less advice along the lines of "do not try food before a Marathon you haven't tried before", that is way to obvious for me.

You don't have be be a Marathoner to benefit from this book. Once again, Nancy Clark shows that it's easy to be fit, eat well -- and go beyond. For those who are - or aspire to be - marathoners put this on the top of your list. The book is full of easy-to-understand information. The photos are beautiful, and the layout makes it a joy to use. I think this is a great book for anyone who wants to eat better, and who likes to cook easy, wholesome recipes. Go for it!

Finally a nutritional guide for marathoners! And one that is written to the reader and not in scientific lingo most of the public cannot understand. This book is definitely easy to read, not full of text, and filled with colorful, appllicable pictures. I love how Nancy highlites certain information and puts it into charts and paragraphs away from the main text so it catches our eyes. Nancy tells us all we need to know about vitamins and supplements, dispells myths about carbohydrates and tells us exactly what to do the week of the marathon. I would reommend it to any of my clients!
Bobbi Hitchcock, RD, LD of Rebecca Bitzer, MS, RD and Associates

Nancy Clark hits another home run with her latest sports nutrition book. She covers everything a marathoner needs for optimum nutrition during training, the night before the big day, pre-race guidelines, hydration and fuel during the marathon, and even recovery from training or the event itself. If your goal is to complete your first marathon, set a PR, or end the race feeling great, Clark's book gives you the tips and guidelines you need. It's written in a friendly style, like sitting down and talking with a good friend; of course it's a friend who is one of the most well-known sports nutitionists in the country!

I was a high school runner when Coe and Ovett burst upon the world Track and Field scene. I was awed by their performances and read everything I could about them, which wasn't much on this side of the Atlantic. Seeing them (and Cram) compete head-to-head in person at the 1984 Olympic Games was such a thrill for me and my late father, who was also a huge T&F fan. Butcher's excellent writing truly took me back to those exciting times. This outstanding book also provides clear, fascinating and entertaining insights into Coe's and Ovett's rise to the world stage of T&F. Their personalities, how they got into running, the discovery of their talents, the ups and downs of their training and careers, the relationships and people who influenced them - it's all here in this eminently readable short book. As an added bonus, Butcher also recounts the "British Tradition" of miling, its rich history as well as other famous pairs of nineteenth and twentieth century milers. This is a fun read and a fantastic contribution to the small but growing genre of T&F books.

This was a very enjoyable book about the great Ovett/Coe rivalry. The book delves into the roots/family influences of the two very talented middle distance runners including Ovett's very influential mother and Coe's father and coach. The author captures the excitement of breaking world records, running in the Olympic games and the expectations associated with being athletes at thier prime. Two very different personalities are contrasted both in their private and public impressions. A fascinating read.

Excellent book for anyone who followed track in the 70s and 80s.

Lots of light shed on what may have been the most significant and consistent rivalry on the oval. The backgrounds of both runners are very revealing; Coe's training routines, while widely discussed, were revolutionary. Meanwhile, Ovett is shown as an agressive and confident runner, and nothing like the arrogant antagonist that the media portrayed. Additionally, he was immersed in the science of footwear and helping develop better products for runners. Why he never got the acclaim he deserved is a mystery.

A great read for those who have been there.

Very good book, well written, not boring at all, interesting information not only about the lifes of the two runners subject of the book but also of the sport of running in general those days in Europe. I am a "serious" runner a serious reader and also a writer myself. As such, I collect all sorts of books about running. Many are forgetable, this is not the top of the line but very good and worth reading

This is a very detailed and rich biography not only of Ovett and Coe but of history of the mile particularly from the British view point. As the author notes, the emergency of Ovett and Coe strides right into British middle distance runners dominating the world scene in the late 70s and early 80s with Cram, Elliott and Moorcroft. The Ovett and Coe duo are so different in racing styles, personalities and family life as Ovett emerges from blue collar roots with a very strong guarded mother and wonderful grand parents while Coe comes from a more upper class conservative family coached by an efficient and strong willed father. Butcher captures both athlete's abilities in detail with Ovett's amazing ability to run the sprints and high jump at early age to running events aside from 800 and 1500 to the 5K ,cross country and even jumping into a half marathon. Coe develops slightly slower but run as if a greyhound taking the pace to avoid contact with his 119 pounds particularly dominating the 800 while he and Ovett trade the 1500 and mile back and forth. The differences in mental and emotional make up between the two men is captured well in an excellent photograph of the two after a surprise loss to a relative unknown in a championship 800 where Coe literally looks crushed while Ovett has dangled his arm around Coe while looking off with chin up as in "well another day". The comparison between the Hagg and Anderson (includes interviews) and Ovett and Coe are well done as Ovett and Coe dominates the English sports news. Americans may require a little more patience as the author does discuss the world's best milers that include Walker, Bayi, Wessingham along with the US's Scott and Maree but the focus is on the English with running clubs and their depth of great runners at that time. Also, unlike Coorder Nelson's great book on Jim Ryan, this book has more depth into the history of middle distance running and the athletes' personal lives. Amusing that the author identifies Kenny Moore as an excellent writer but identifies him as a fourth place marathoner at the Montreal games when it was actually at Munich and he confuses the details of the New York and Boston Marathon's of Rosy Ruiz into one race. The book also contains some interesting British humor and phrases. I wish there was a more detail on the races in Moscow particularly the 1500 as Coe steals one from Ovett to avenge his 800 upset. It is quite tragic that Ovett became so ill at the LA Olympics that he became hospitalized but continued to compete and make he finals in both the 800 and 1500. He literally looks like death going into the last lap of the 1500. And Coe comes back from devastating illness to get in world class shape after being written off to be the only man to win successive Olympic 1500 titles. This was a glorious time for Track & Field when these two men from the same country seesawed world records back and forth almost weekly.

As the author notes, these two were such amazing competitors even the Falkland Islands were bumped in Britian foir the news of what Coe and Ovett did the night before.

"The Quotable Runner: Great Moments of Wisdom, Inspiration, Wrongheadedness, and Humor" is a gift book, but for the runner, it is a fun gift.

Runners aren't known for effusive Knute Rockne sorts of locker room speeches, or Yogi Berra witticisms, but, as seen here, they should be.

Quoted here are great runners and writers about running, from Shakespeare to high school mile record holder, Alan Webb.

Read what Lasse Viren, Emil Zatopek, Bill Bowerman, and Steve Prefontaine all had to say.

Readers of "Runner's World" may know many of these names, but there are some unexpected voices. Oprah Winfrey is there more than once, including, "I'm never going to run another marathon."

There's honesty. Distance star Rob de Castella on marathoning, "If you feel bad after 10 miles, you're in trouble. If you feel bad at 20 miles, you're normal. If you don't feel bad at 26 miles, you're abnormal."

There's wit. Don Kardong frankly said about registering a race with hills, "You entered a marathon with hills? You idiot."

Then there is the curious odd quotes. Finland's great Olympic marathoner, Lasse Viren enthusiastically revealed his secret to racing success, "Reindeer milk!" Whatever might be dubious about Viren's claim is difficult to argue. Viren won four gold medals.

A treat at the end is a few lines on each person quoted, a sort of mini-bio. I enjoyed learning the new names, and accomplishments of those quoted.

I fully recommend, "The Quotable Runner." It'll put a spark in your day as you head out on the lonely road on runners know.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

This book was given to me by a training partner a few days before my first marathon. Just flipping through the book, I found quote after quote that I connected with. Others gave me great inspiration. They were so good, I decided to read the book from cover to cover and couldn't put the book down. I love Mark's comentary on each subject "Training", "Coaches", "Fear", "Pain", "The Marathon". I want to stock up on this book so I can give it as gifts to my running friends!

I just finished this book and it has been such an inspiration!! It is boiling over with insight and wisdom about what we all feel as runners. It touches the human spirit in the struggles and triumphs related to the experience of running and everyday life. Each chapter is filled with quotes from famous runners about such subjects as: The Starting Line, Coaches, Training, Fear, Racing, Hills, The Marathon, The Mile, Mind Over Matter, Pain, The Olympics, The Finish Line, Victories and Defeats. This book really captures the SOUL of running!

I ended up returning this one to the bookstore after trying to push through the first few chapters...I've had easier marathons.

Most of the quotes in here are long winded personal accounts that don't provide the pithy punch and true quotability I was looking for from the title.

If your a runner...and even if you're not this book will inspire you to do things that you never thought possible. It will help you make goals...and then gradually surpass them. This book describes running as more than just a sport, but a way of life. Thumbs up to Mark Will-Weber on putting together a book that defines the greatest past-time in the world.

This book is easy to read, yet has very good explanations of techniques and exercises to improve your running. Very good information.

This is not a single running "plan", but 12 articles relating to distance running, and related subjects.
Some of the articles - maximizing recovery (Pfitzinger), Maintaining Fitness While Injured (Douglas - coauthor of several books with Pfitz), Supplement Guide (Pfeffer), are very focused and well written. They directly address the question for any serious runner - "Are certain activities going to improve my running, by how much, and is it really worth it?"
Others such as Rubio's training plan are anecdotal and rambling. "I qualified for the Trials using this plan, so you can too". This is non-specific nonsense that is of no use.

The listed references are not sorted or even footnoted in the text - weak. There are 5-6 websites listed, again with no guidance.

The editors obviously solicited articles from a wide range of practioners and published (in realtively unedited form) the 12 best, covering what they believed were the most current subjects in distance running. It is a stretch to call this a "book", but still quite useful.

This is not a traditional training book like Daniels or Coe and Martin, nor is it one of the scores of "Explain Everything About Running to the Beginner" books out there. Instead, it focuses on the aspects of training with which even experienced runners may be unfamiliar. For example, it discusses lifting weights, stretching, dietary concerns, etc. in addition to topics directly related to running such as peaking for a race, improving leg speed, addressing long-term aerobic development, multi-pace training, etc.

This is a valuable book because even if you know a lot about running, you will probably find something new in here. Keep in mind what many of the authors say must be taken with a grain of salt. The jury is still out on whether lower-body exercises and form drills will make you a better distance runner, for example. If you tried to do all the supplementary training discussed in this book, you would probably be working out three hours a day at least. You'll have to try different things and decide for yourself if they are helping your running or just wasting your time and energy. But hey, if you're like most serious runners, you're willing to try almost anything if it will keep you healthy and make you faster. So check the book out for yourself.

Regardless of your running level, this concise collection of essays addresses many issues and will surely provide useful information and inspiration from which the runner can pick and choose. Interesting and informative, it will reinforce or realign your current regimen with clarity and effective advice.

I learned several new stretches and ways to add a little bit more efficiency to my running style. Very Helpful