Book Log 2006 #39: Game of Shadows by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.

While all the attention on Game of Shadows is focused on what Barry Bonds allegedly put into his body, there's a lot more to this book. It gives a very comprehensive look into the rise of Victor Conte and BALCO and how the company got into steroids and into providing them to top-level athletes. We spend plenty of time with Marion Jones and her crowd, and with the other baseballer caught up in the BALCO brouhaha.

But Bonds is the biggest name in the book, and he gets as comprehensive a treatment as Conte. It is, charitably, unflattering. The authors do this, I think, to give some background as to why Bonds would use steroids - his vanity and insecurities trumping his obvious talent. Regardless of the steroids, I can't escape the idea that Bonds will become this generation's Joe DiMaggio, living on his legend while he grows increasingly embittered in later years.

Denials aside, the book is well-written and well-documented. Where suppositions are made, they are done so clearly (though I don't think there are very many of them). I'd recommend this book highly; if you can stomach it, I'd also suggest reading it in tandem with Howard Bryant's Juicing the Game. I did not do this, but would have appreciated the baseball focus of the latter in follow-up.