When GAME OF SHADOWS arrived on the scene, the clamor was to know about Barry Bonds and what, if any, illegal drugs he took to fuel his pursuit of Major League Baseball’s all time home run record. To a lesser degree people wanted to know why. Those questions are answered painstakingly throughout the book. In fact, the presentation of Barry Bonds in this book is so brutal, like a villain from a penny dreadful novel, that if it wasn’t true he would have sued. Truth be told, I have been a Bonds hater since he signed with the San Francisco Giants---rival to my LA Dodgers. But even I often blushed at the broad strokes of distasteful behavior that he is shown to be capable of. That, however, is the prurient part of the book. What makes GAME OF SHADOWS a book of historical note is the depth it plumbs into the entire performance enhancing drug culture. The book was criticized upon arrival for not being all about Barry Bonds—as if the rest of it were just padding. Bond’s outsized personality is used to shine a light on the rest of what was going on at the time. Tempting to just use the term steroids when talking about performance enhancing drugs as a short cut, most people have some sense of what those are, but the book reveals that the many different drugs used come from many different places and medical disciplines. Following the drugs from creation to distribution to use is fascinating and the extent to which they have permeated the sports world—including to a very large degree our Olympic athletes who seemingly should have held themselves to a higher standard—is astonishing. Basically an extended newspaper article, the book remains fresh and lively throughout by deftly dropping one story line for another so by the end there is the feeling of having followed the story for months and staying on top of it the whole time. Don’t be scared off if you are not a baseball fan. Or a sports fan. The book reminds us that we may think we have air tight characters, but one wrong decision and we sink like stones.

Much like League of Denial, which Fainaru-Wada wrote with his brother, this is a very interesting read. I found League of Denial to be a bit more engaging than Game of Shadows, but otherwise both are quite good. Also like League of Denial, don't read this book if you don't want your love of sports to be shaken.

For me, what sets this book apart from League of Denial is that most of the events in this book fall within my personal memory. I'm not as big a football fan as I am a baseball fan, and several of the football players detailed in League of Denial predated me. But I have my own memories of nearly everything that happens in Game of Shadows. I remember watching Marian Jones run in the Olympics. I remember her press conferences with CJ Hunter, who seemed to dwarf her. I remember watching Barry Bonds physical transformation. I remember the seasons where he drew tons of walks because everybody knew that if the pitch was in the strike zone he would hit it out. I remember the Congressional hearings, with Sosa's bumbling English, MacGwyer's repeated "I'm not here to talk about the past," and as an Orioles fan I particularly remember watching Palmeiro point his finger and deny using steroids only to later be proven a liar. All of those memories came rushing back and made this book seem more personal than League of Denial, even though I think the writing isn't quite as good.

“With few exceptions, the more than three dozen athletes who
appeared before the grand jury admitted taking steroids ... all to
run faster, jump higher, hit the ball farther, and, ultimately, make
more money. Some of the confessions were grudging and evasive. Others were extremely forthcoming. It came down to the same thing: Competitive sports, it turned out, was part mirage, a game of shadows. “ - Game of Shadows

In this engaging book, Fainaru-Wada and Williams pull back the curtain on America’s national pastime revealing the intriguing backstory of one of it’s most publicised steroid scandals .

Years earlier, Canseco’s book “Juiced” was released as a “tell all” confessional of the rampant doping that occurs within baseball’s ranks. Most dismissed his rantings as the fabricated last remonstrations from a former bitter player destined to fade into obscurity. However it proved to be poignant forewarning to the coming storm that was to rock baseball to its very foundations.

In 1998 Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were embroiled in a home-run chase set to eclipse the long standing record of 60’s slugger, Roger Maris. Rival and baseball’s bad-boy, Barry Bonds was perturbed by the attention McGwire (whom Bonds considered a lesser, second rate hitter) was receiving. Bonds knew McGwire was receiving a pharmaceutical edge and committed himself to levelling the playing field.

Enter Victor Conte; a shameless self promoter who reinvented himself from failed musician to supplement shill, turned drug dealer to the stars. Like a modern day mad scientist, Conte and his BALCO entourage were committed to creating a chemical Frankenstein possesed with the prowess of a sporting Superman. Thus began a relationship that was to transform not only Bond’s on field ability, but the image of baseball, forever.

Even if you know little about, or aren’t even a fan of baseball, this is an engrossing uncovering of the story behind the surreptitious dealings and congressional investigation into steroid use.. A high level of detail is committed to discussing the drugs used by various athletes on Conte’s star roster. Bonds was said to have run the gamut of pharmaceuticals in a cycle that would make any bodybuilder envious including Deca, Winstrol, Testosterone, HGH, insulin, Tren, Clomid and two BALCO specials - The Clear and The Cream - designed to mask detection of many of the above agents.

But it’s not to suggest that the “crime” rests solely on the athletes’ shoulders. Despite the tainted records and public and political outcry, Wada and Williams show evidence of the tacit conspiracy existing between team owners, trainers and the powers that be who themselves look the other way as long as the cash registers keep ringing up their own record-hitting revenues.

It was a great book

Barry bonds fool everybody. I don't know he did it but people think he say did. Barry did get big that 2001 season

This was great. Extremely interesting and a flashback into my childhood obsession with major league baseball.

In a multi-layered investigation spanning years of evidence which covered the art of athletes deceiving drug testers and fans, alike, these two San Francisco Chronicle journalists have exposed the inner workings of the Steroid Era in tremendous detail with plenty of analysis and both far-reaching though quite appropriate conclusions in the book “Game of Shadows.”

As I was coming of age during baseball’s Steroid Era and watched the falling of majestic hitting and home run records on an near-annual basis, I was a bit confused and naive to what ensued to many of my childhood heroes. The BALCO scandal, the congressional hearings involving MLB stars, and the new steroid testing policy in professional baseball in the mid-2000s - I didn’t truly know what any of this fuss was really all about. Even as recently as before I began reading this book, I wasn’t 100% sure if the Home Run King, Barry Bonds, had knowingly abused steroids, or for how long or which ones. Once I started reading this detail-ridden book on how BALCO operated and the calendars kept by its founder Victor Conte and Bonds’ trainer Greg Anderson, I became convinced about how both Bonds and numerous other athletes, including numerous Olympic champions, were steroid cheats who continuously beat the system through the use of undetectable performance enhancing drugs.

THIS book proves why it is so much better to read an in-depth book or thorough newspaper article on such an important topic rather than solely rely on television or newspaper journalism, as those mediums often only focus on a few of the dirty details which journalists and editors falsely believe are the only details the public wishes to hear about. THIS will answer most of the public’s questions regarding the exposure of a important part of baseball’s Steroid Era, and if another edition with an additional chapter highlighting the final developments over the last 12 years ever appears, this book truly will hold its weight in gold. As the iconic baseball film Moneyball put it, “Nobody reinvents this game.” Nobody… not even the greatest home run hitter who ever lived.

The book was totally great.

There is no way anyone could read this book, see the amount of hard evidence documented within, and still conculde anything other than Barry Bonds knowingly took performance enhancing drugs.

The Federal agents have:
1) Calenders denoting which drugs he took on which days used by the BALCO lab to control his drug cycles and maximize the drugs effectiveness.
2) A wire recording from an undercover agent that recorded Barry's personal trainer saying what drugs Barry was taking.
3) Results of failed drug tests from a private third party testing facility, performed at the request of BALCO labs when trying to determine the chamical balance required to make the drugs undetectable (has to be adjusted to each person's body chemistry). The test was performed for an anonymous person, code-named Barry B.
4) A confession from Victor Conte diretor of BALCO labs that Barry was taking the things the above records indicate and that he did so knowingly (This confession has later been denied).
5) Other evidence that I either can't remember, would take a long time to explain, or was smaller in scope.

Combine this with the testimonies of several people near him, like his former mistress and former agent, and it is an open and shut case. If his name remains in any of baseball's record books or if he gets in the hall of fame, it would be a tragedy. See my Dr. King quote.

This book is terrific. If you are even mildly interested in the steroid scandal that rocked baseball and the Olympics, this book is startling. The depth of information you get truly reveals the extreme level of cheating and thus the pathological denial of the athletes as they chemically manipulated their bodies. Don't be fooled, they cheated. Rest assured that if a name is mention in this book, they cheated using performance enhancing drugs regardless of their public denials. If they say anything other than they cheated they are lying and this book proves it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Lots of good quotes and interesting discussions about the scandal - it wasn't groundbreaking exciting but great information.

This was very good read and a lot of good material. My challenge in reading this book was that the author seemed to have it in for Bonds exclusively. His chapters and references regarding Bonds are filled with speculation and conjecture. Also, the writer only loosely mentions that performance enhancing drugs were NOT illegal when Bonds-if it's true, Giambi, Sheffield and others were juicing.

I also found it interesting (and hypocritical) that at the end of the book the authors seem to be asking the judge to lighten up on them (and not send them to jail) for NOT revealing the sources who leaked grand jury testimony info to them. The author even says that same statement that he attributes to some of the players; "We didn't hurt anyone by leaking the sources..."

To me, that was interesting because it actually provides the reason why people are afraid to give grand jury testimony; The information provided is supposed to be expressly confidential. If grand jury testimony is NOT confidential and is made public, ILLEGALLY, it compromises the whole purpose of it being private and more people will perjure themselves. In the end, it seems that the authors were less law-abiding than the players.

Good book for those interested in the rise and fall of track and field superstars and the impact of performance enhancing drugs on steroids.

This book was okay. The writing was smooth and easy to read. But I felt Barry Bonds could have been taken out of the title. The Olympic athletes were actually a bigger focus of the book than Bonds' involvement.

Of course, the most ironic statement came near the end of the book. "Still, Selig and Fehr tried to insist that this new (steroid) program would solve whatever problem existed" (p. 263). I read this statement just a couple of days before MLB dropped the axe on Ryan Braun, A-Rod and some other players. I could do nothing more than shake my head.