Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Van Natta (First off the Tee) writes in this engaging biography that Babe Didrikson pointed to a javelin the first time she visited a track and field practice and asked, "What's that?" Only a few months later, the young basketball star from a blue-collar family of Norwegian immigrants in Beaumont, Tex., set a world record for the javelin throw. Two years later in the 1932 Olympics, she won a gold medal in the javelin and the hurdles and a silver in the high jump. A bet between sportswriters in the press box about her ability to golf recruited her to the game the very next day, launching her on a path to becoming the dominant player of her era. She had an amazing capacity to play any sport astonishingly well with a feisty and audacious confidence. Also fascinating was her marriage to professional wrestler and promoter George Zaharias and her struggle with cancer. After major surgery, she won two LPGA tournaments, including the U.S. Open, before the disease took her life at the age of 45 in 1956. While there is little analysis of Didrikson Zaharias's cultural role as a woman in the sporting world, Van Natta marvelously narrates the forgotten life of the "greatest all-around athlete of all time," a story that every American sport fan should relish. (June)