This work attempts to cover all international, seminal sports figures from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century in all disciplines. More than 600 biographies cover not only athletes but also coaches, team executives, media figures, writers, and sportscasters. The criteria for selection included "first" achievements, impact on sport and then society, records set or broken, and involvement in controversial or newsworthy activities on or off the field.
Each entry is arranged alphabetically and contains a 1,000- to 2,500-word essay, contact information for the subject, and further readings, including Web sites. Sidebars provide chronologies of events in the lives of the subjects, lists of major awards and accomplishments, statistics, extracts from material such as magazine articles, and brief biographies of individuals who played significant roles in the sports figures' lives. Other valuable features are the three indexes: a geographic index, an occupational index, and cumulative subject index that provides access under team name, religion, awards, position played, and even diseases, such as HIV/AIDS.
Notable Sports Figures does not necessarily fill a void in biographical coverage of athletes when one considers the recent publication of several other sources, such as Encyclopedia of North American Sports History (2d ed., Facts On File, 2002) or The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives: Sports Figures (2002). Admittedly these two volumes are restricted to American or North American sports coverage, but after scanning the geographic index in Notable Sports Figures, it is quite evident that the emphasis is on American athletes. However, having all of the notables in one reference set will save the reference librarian time in searching for authoritative sources. Notable Sports Figures is recommended for high-school, public, and academic libraries where budget dollars will allow purchase.