Book: Paperback | 8.26 x 5.23in | 368 pages | ISBN 9781592402687 | 01 Mar 2007 | Gotham Books | 14 - AND UP years
The blockbuster New York Times bestseller that caused a media firestorm and stayed in the headlines for weeks at last arrives in paperback—with a new afterword about the Barry Bonds perjury investigation.
This is the complete inside story of the BALCO steroids scandal from the award-winning reporters who broke the news nationally. In the summer of 1998, as baseball was still struggling to regain popularity lost during the contentious 1994 players’ strike that caused the World Series to be canceled, a race to break the home-run record transfixed the nation. Over the next three seasons, baseball players across the country hit home runs at unprecedented rates. Although sportswriters pointed to suspicions of “juiced” baseballs and small parks being responsible, there were whispers that illegal performance-enhancing drugs were being used. But home runs were big business, and baseball carried on with a weak performance-drug testing regime.
In December of 2004, after more than a year of investigation, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story that in a federal investigation of a nutritional supplement company called BALCO, Barry Bonds and fellow slugger Jason Giambi had admitted to taking steroids. Immediately the issue of steroids in baseball became front-page news. In Game of Shadows, Fainaru-Wada and Williams expose the secrets of BALCO, illuminating how professional athletes risked their health for a competitive edge.
A sober, skillful and utterly damning account of not just the Bonds fiasco but the pervasive influence of steroids in sports. (Los Angeles Times)
Devastating. . . . groundbreaking. . . . Necessary reading for anyone concerned with the steroids era in baseball and track and field and its fallout on sports history. (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)
A compelling portrait of conspiracy. . . . Fascinating. (The Boston Globe)
Scorching. . . . A testament to baseball’s failure. (Newsweek)
Superb. . . . Important and disturbing. (San Francisco Chronicle)
The evidence is detailed, damning, and overwhelming. . . . It’s a growing bonfire of controversy. This book is one of the matches. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
[Fainaru-Wada and Williams] have got the goods and they reveal them methodically. Everything is well-sourced and meticulously explicated. (Chicago Tribune)
Email Alerts
To keep up-to-date, input your email address, and we will contact you on publication
