Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Figure Skating

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you are looking for accurate facts, DONT buy this book. Many errors in the skater bios. For instance, it states that Mishketuniek & Dmitriev won the 1994 Worlds when in fact they did not even compete. Many remembrances of skating events are completely off the mark as well. Hold out for someone else to get it right. This man did not.

Who wrote this book? Do they know about checking facts before submitting them? The misinformation is unfortunate, but overall is a fairly decent book if you are interested in an overview of the sport.

I hate to criticize this book because its heart is in the right place. Unfortunately, as the first review stated, there are a lot (and I mean A LOT) of factual errors in this book that cannot be overlooked. The most glaring, as the first review pointed out, is the "death" of a well-known ice dancer who, in fact, is still very much alive. Here's hoping the errors are corrected before the second printing. I'm sure the aforementioned "deceased" skater and his family would appreciate it.

Anyone purchasing a book by this kind of title expects accuracy. Accurate this is NOT. Along with spelling errors in skater's names and goof- ups in listing competition results, this title claims a skater dies in 1992 who is very much alive. I would return this for a refund except now I am planning to try to find all the errors. As an avid fan of skating this is kind of an equivalent to Where's Waldo.

Book with a lot of informations, however too many mistakes for the price I paid for. Mr Malone should have this book reviewed by consulting different references available from others sources (books, former skaters, professionals, agents or researchers). I hope that, if a revised edition is published in the near future, informations will be more accurate.

As a beginner skater I tried to find a book to give me a lot of information about skating and I hoped for a little bit more descriptions of different elements. Also the book is very USA-oriented. Still, I got a lot of useful information and was happy to learn that the great Protopotovs started to skate at a fairly old age (hope for me!).It also filled me in with some important issues of figure skating history. It is an interesting book if you know nearly nothing of the people in figure skating.

As a published author of two novels and a five-time US Adult figure skating medallist, I'd like to say that those who have criticized this book have no idea how much time and effort goes into a work like this-or any book for that matter. I can't imagine the hours, days, months, and perhaps years it took for Mr. Malone to gather and cull through the annals of skating history, and put it all together to make a book that those of us who are skating enthusiasts can turn to for historical information. Yes, he made some mistakes, some of them primary. But overall it is a good book that no one else has attempted. Its mistakes could have been corrected had subsequent editions been published-though that possibility was most likely squelched by its audience being turned off by the over-zealous skating purists who spent one minute writing reviews that say "DON'T buy this book," to offset the vast amount of time Mr. Malone spent to get the majority of his material correct. This is a book that I often refer to, month after month, year after year, and it never ceases to bring me pleasure.