Reviews
St. Louis Post Dispatch review, November 4, 2007
The Seattle Times Book Review, November 22, 2007
"I read very few sports books, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend Steve Friedman’s The Agony of Victory: When Winning Isn’t Enough. Friedman profiles unheralded champions in (mostly) solitary sports and examines the blurred line between being driven to succeed and being driven mad. It’s the best-written piece of nonfiction I’ve read in at least a year."
--Matt Ufford, editor, Withleather.com
Advance Praise for The Agony of Victory
"Friedman tells the stories you never see in the sports pages, tracing the fine line between passion and obsession and delivering brutally touching dispatches from the broken and dark hearts of champions. This book is flat out fascinating." —Michael Connelly
"Friedman raises sportswriting to the level of literature." —Richard Ben Cramer, author of Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life
"Steve Friedman has a terrific ability to find the absurd note amid a swelling crescendo of heroics. The stories in here are mordant, sad, hilarious, and altogether unpredictable. He has written that rare sports book: a book about deeply flawed, highly complicated human beings who happen to have had great success as athletes, mostly both because of, rather than despite, their frailties." —Eric Konigsberg, author of Blood Relation
"Friedman has the rare ability to write effortless prose that is funny, touching, and . . . profound." —Jeff Leen, Investigations Editor, The Washington Post
"With unquestionable passion for his subjects and language that is at once soulful and precise, Steve Friedman does for sports figures what most journalists are either too star-struck or too platitudinous to do: he grants them permission to be their mad, brilliant selves. The Agony of Victory is as much about sports as it is about the intersection between super-human strength and fragile humanity. One needn’t be a sports fan to appreciate it.";— Meghan Daum, author of The Quality of Life Report and My Misspent Youth
"It's Gonna Suck to be You," Steve Friedman's amazing piece about obsessed Colorado ultramathoners, has lived in my file cabinets for years as an example of inspirationally terrific reporting and writing. That story, and the other haunting portraits in this collection, upend every facile cliche about winners and losers in sports competition--which is why this is so much more than a book about sports. I don't know where Friedman finds these weird, beautiful, multi-layered stories, but the way he unwraps them makes you feel as though he's just showing you what so many people's interior worlds really look like. It's a great read, and an unforgettable one." - Cynthia Gorney, author of Articles of Faith
"Friedman's The Agony of Victory is compassionate, eloquent, smart; the portraits read like miniature novels. A marvelous addition to the literature of sport."; —Michael Griffith, author of Spikes
"These are terrific human stories. . . . Only Friedman could punch you in the gut with them like this. Plus, he's genuinely funny. . . . That alone is worth the cover price, plus tax." —Scott Dickensheets, Las Vegas Weekly and Las Vegas Life
"Friedman has discovered the human being inside the champion athlete. . . . As he demonstrates so powerfully, the greatest triumphs take place outside the arena. Don’t be fooled: This isn't a book about sports. It's about redemption." —Ken Fuson, Des Moines Register
