Figure Skating's Greatest Stars Hardcover – September 25, 2009

If you're interested in figure skating, this is a nice book to put on the shelves, to pick up once in a while whenever you feel like knowing more about certain athletes in the sport. Although the author acknowledges that he provides a personal view, he also states that choices were made on the basis of the impact of skaters on the sport in general. So, he can sometimes present skaters who have won no World or Olympic championship at any time but still influenced the direction of the sports in a substantial way. And for the most part, this is correct. However, especially concerning the more recent years he does show a somewhat North American Favouritism which is a pity because the rest of the book (the early years and the intermediate ones) is highly balanced on that score. This can be illustrated with ice-dancing. Olympic and World Champions Marina Anessina and Gwendal Pezzerat do not get a chapter of their own, even though they showed remarkable innovations like the gender changes in the lifts. Others have since than followed on with this practice. That means they did execute a major influence on the direction the discipline has taken. Similar omissions are present (or to be be exact: they are not present as such in the book!) with regard to other disciplines. Having said that, this still is a wonderful book, with beautiful photo's, and interesting descriptions of the (skating) histories and lives of many skaters. Despite the small bias noted and remarked upon, I would still highly recommend it to fans all over the World.

Bought this for my daughter who is a competitive figure skater and she LOVES it! The photos are beautiful and the articles look to be very interesting!

This book is broken into the four skating disciplines (Men's, Pairs, Ladies, Ice Dance) and has side sections with some history about the development of figure skating. Many known personalities are covered here (Michelle Kwan, Peggy Fleming, Brian Boitano, to name a few) but there are quite a few skaters that I had not heard of but made a significant mark on the sport. The book is easy to read and never boring and has some historical photographs of interest. It even tries to explain the new scoring system (which I don't think anyone in the ISU or even Dick Button can do adequately). If you are a fan of figure skating or just curious about the sport this book will entertain and enlighten you.

Nice retro book on figure skating. Reminds me of good times as a young skater.

I rated good only because I thought I was buying a dvd. The book looked good as far as a book goes but I had wanted a dvd.

Love it