March Madness: Cinderellas, Superstars, and Champions from the Final Four

College basketball's ""biggest stage"" gets a year-by-year treatment in this coffee-table book and accompanying DVD. The book covers the wildly popular sporting event of March Madness from its inception in 1939 (when the Oregon Ducks beat the Ohio State Buckeyes) to the 2004 crown (when top-ranked UConn triumphed over Georgia Tech). Each year's game summary is written by a different newspaper sports editor, and most writers are matched with years in which their home team won the tournament. They document upsets, spectacular performances and gaffes, simultaneously charting college basketball's evolution from a money-losing venture (the first tournament lost $2,531) to a forum on race (in 1962, Mississippi State refused an invite to the NCAA Tournament because it would have to play integrated teams) to a showcase of supreme athleticism (which Wooden, former UCLA coach and winner of 10 NCAA championships, laments: ""If I want to see showmanship, I'll go see the Globetrotters""). Although stiff pages make the book difficult to page through and keep open, fans probably won't mind; they'll be sucked in by the stories and photos of drama on the courts. Photos.