Huddle: Fathers, Sons, and Football

Encouraged by his Scotland-born, Canada-raised engineer father, Malcolm was a baseball fan during his boyhood. But as he grew older, he began to find the national pastime boring, and thought golf, soccer, hunting and fishing were silly. He fastened on football, at which he excelled, and also tried wrestling and track, at which he did not. A mediocre student early on, Malcolm (now a New York Times correspondent and the author of Someday ) found that playing sports improved his classroom performance. He writes about the life lessons his father and his coaches taught him, and of steering his own sons toward sports as well. While he embraces many details about specific games, the book is essentially about the role sports can play in the male bonding between the generations. (Sept.)