1. Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance
By Tony Dungy
Tyndale House Publishers

Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy shares a lifetime of thoughtful reflection in this empowering book. Looked on by many as the epitome of the success in his field, Dungy has persevered through many tribulations, including the tragic suicide of his son. Still, Dungy continues to work with young men who are trying to achieve significance through football and all that goes with a professional athletic career — such as money, power and celebrity. Coach Dungy has had all that, but he passionately believes that there is a different path to significance, a path characterized by sacrifice, humility and relationships.

2. A Sporting Chance
By William Humber (Foreword by Spider Jones)
Dundurn Press

Canadians have often asserted a smug superiority over the United States concerning race relations. Yet as this story of African-Canadian participation in sports demonstrates, the record is far more troubling. In reality, Canada’s record in matters of race was a disturbing blend of occasional good intentions and ugly practices. A Sporting Chance is the story of the leading athletes who brought grace and a determination to achieve. Included are George Dixon, Sam Langford, Reuben Mayes, Ray Lewis, Sam Richardson, Dr. Phil Edwards, Jackie Robinson, Harry Jerome, Earl Walls, Donovan Bailey, Sylvia Sweeney, Molly Killingbeck, Herb Carnegie, Jamaal Magliore, Perdita Felicien and Jarome Iginla, to name but a few of the fine athletes who form a part of Canada’s sports heritage.

3. Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete
By Amy Bass
University of Minnesota Press

Tommie Smith and John Carlos forever changed the sports landscape when they raised black-gloved fists on the victory dais at the Mexico City Olympics and brought American racial politics of the late 1960s to a worldwide television audience. In this far-reaching account, Amy Bass offers nothing less than a history of the black athlete. Beginning with the racial discussions of the early twentieth century and their continuing reverberations in popular perceptions of black physical abilities, Bass explores ongoing African American attempts to challenge these stereotypes. Ultimately Bass not only excavates the fraught history of black athleticism, but also offers an incisive look at media coverage of athletic events and the way sport is intimately bound up in popular constructs of the nation.

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