Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes: How to Rethink Your Life

By James Zug When to Jump: If the Job You Have Isn’t the Life You Want By Mike Lewis (New York: Henry Holt, 2018) When we last visited with Mike Lewis with the article “Have Racquet, Will Travel”...

Book It: Essential New Squash Books

By James Zug It is that time of year again. In between Labor Day and New Year’s, the vast majority of books are published. Since squash players are intensely literary as a rule, here is a...

Book Review: Lucky, Anil Nayar’s Story

Lucky: Anil Nayar’s Story—A Portrait of a Legendary Squash Champion By Jean Nayar (New York: Five Rivers Press, 2020). By James Zug Lucky is the biography of one of the top amateurs of the twentieth century. Anil Nayar...

Angles—A Must Read

A book of poetry about squash? Oh boy. That was my first thought. But I’ve known Richard Millman, the author of “Angles, A Squash Anthology,” for over 20 years, and part of me just knew...

Book Review: Western Lane

Western Lane By Chetna Maroo (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023) by James Zug Chetna Maroo’s debut novel—short and tight, at 150-pages it is really a novella—is set in the 1980s in Luton, a town north of London, and...

Book Review: Two Squash Manuals by James Zug

Two Squash Manuals By James Zug The G Spot: A Book about Squash Tony Griffin CreateSpace, 2014 Tony Griffin is a stalwart. He grew up in New Zealand and started playing squash in the early 1970s. At the time,...

Book Review: Play Better Squash by John Beddington

By James Zug Forty-one years ago John Beddington wrote a tiny paperback squash manual, Play Better Squash, which was published in London by Queen Anne Press (the publishing house that Ian Fleming ran; perhaps the...

Good Literary Length: Three New Books

Good Literary Length: Three New Books By James Zug Trading Secrets: Squash Greats Recall Their Toughest Duels Rod Gilmour (Durrington, England: Pitch Publishing, 2015) Oral history books are notoriously unreliable. What one person remembers might not jib with the...

How to be a Good Squash Parent: A Look at New Books

By James Zug The Winning Parent: A Parent’s Guide for the Journey of Competitive Sport—A System for Winning Now and Forever with Your Children in Sport By Daniel Massaro (New York: Mairs & Shaw Publishing, 2015) Last year...

Conqueror of the World

By James Zug 555: The Untold Story Behind Squash’s Invincible Champion and Sport’s Greatest Unbeaten Run by Rod Gilmour and Alan Thatcher Worthing, England: Pitch Publishing, 2016 It is hard to recall now, a quarter of...