Customer Reviews

Skate: 100 Years of Figure Skating

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I have the first printing of this book (the one with Bourne and Kraatz on the cover) and I was less than impressed with it. It had a horrendously enormous Canadian bias in it -- if reviewers who complained about Beverly Smith's Figure Skating: A Celebration having too much of a Canadian bias picked up this book, they would be beside themselves. There are certainly many great skaters from Canada, but the lengths this book went to in including low level Canadian skaters while excluding high profile skaters from other countries was absurd. For example, on one page there were several young ladies skaters pictured in color from Canada who might be well known there, however they are all but anonymous to the casual skating public at large. Prominent skaters like Kristi Yamaguchi, an Olympic gold medalist, on the other hand, were all but ignored in this book. Some of the pictures were also erroneously labeled as well.

Some of the book was nice -- it had some interesting pictures I've not seen in other books. Hopefully in this next printing of the book (the one shown above) these many problems were fixed -- I only have the first edition so that's the only one I can review. Unless huge changes were made to eliminate the bias in the edition I own, however, I cannot recommend this book to any knowledgeable skating fan.

This book is a beauty! The photography is beautiful, the writing is thoughtful, and the authors took the time to touch on a variety of topics, some of which are seldom if ever written about elsewhere at any great length(ie: precision skating). A great book for fans, athletes, and casual observers alike!

This book talks about many things not written about in other books. It has a chapter on precision skating and skating in movies. It has lists of world, Olympic and national champions as well as members of the Canadain, American and World figure skating hall of fame. The book also looks at the four disaplines of skating and show skating. I reccomend this book to skating fans.