I had wanted to read this book for a very long time, but never got around to it. I knew all about Barry Bonds and steroids in baseball from the media reports and endlessly ESPN conversations, so I suppose I never really felt the need to pick it up and read it.

Well I finally got around to it, and I have to say that I genuinely regret having gone this long without reading it.

First and foremost, this was some incredible reporting. After exhaustingly chasing down this information, countless interviews, and even acquiring sealed Grand Jury testimony, it really is amazing to see how some intrepid reporters can tell an incredibly detailed story of a major operation like this, as protected and closed off as it was to the outside world.

My biggest takeaway from the book was -- and I don't think I'm alone on this -- the impression it left with me of Barry Bonds.

I'm originally from the Bay area, and have kind of, sort of cheered for the Giants over the years. So I knew about Bonds and his reputation. He's an preening, egomaniacal jerk. That much has always been apparent just by watching him over the years.

But after reading this account of the BALCO scandal, I was left with the impression that he is one of the more contemptible human beings on the face of this planet.

Yes, I grant you, this is a "one-sided" story that focuses on his hypocrisy, his lying, his cheating, and portrays for you all of his most negative personality traits. His abusiveness. His unchecked paranoia. His degrading treatment of the women in his life. His inherent racism. His disgusting treatment of basically everyone. I get that. I realize I didn't just read any accounts of him giving a bat to a kid with cancer or read about his love of Shakespeare, or anything positive like that.

Still, the picture painted of him makes him out to be an incredibly pathetic, jealous, abrasive asshole obsessed with the glorification of his own massive ego.

That aside, even if he was a great guy, the account of the drug ring that he helped create and sustain was, in and of itself, enough to form a negative opinion of the man. Some of the things you read in here are just stunning.

In fact, I went into the book sort of, kind of thinking to myself that I would vote for him for the Hall of Fame, steroids and all, were I a baseball writer. After reading this, I actually don't think I would.

Of course, Bonds wasn't the only figure highlighted in this book. It is actually about the BALCO lab itself and its interactions with sports stars in many different athletic arenas. You get a lot of information about track and field, Marion Jones, and so on and so forth. Plenty of criticism to go around.

At the end of the day, though, this is really about the systematic process by which sports was corrupted by performance enhancing drugs in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. How it was done. Who did it. Why they did it. What they did.

Depressing, really, but so worth it to read.

I’m a huge baseball fan so obviously the steroid story was something I followed closely. I finally got around to reading this book and I’m glad I did. I thought the story about how multiple investigations came together to a common source was really interesting. This obviously will not be for everyone but if you give it a shot I think you will find it quite a good read.

Incredibly well-written with an interesting premise and main characters. However the mid-point of the book felt repetitive and the ending was underwhelming.

Pretty eye-opening stuff in this book. I was a huge fan during this era and always wondered what really happened. What happened was a multi-industry sham that permeated many sports leagues, magazine companies and even Congress.

This book has a lot of great insight even if it does get into ‘a source close to Bonds says’ territory towards the back half of the book. It’s astonishing that you can get Barry Bonds signed baseballs on his website almost absolved of any wrong doing. Plus the MLB is facing yet another fiasco these days (contract manipulation).

Barry Bonds used to be one of the most iconic baseball players the MLB had ever seen, by hitting monstrous homeruns into McCovey Cove while also being the son of hall of famer Willie Mays. But than when Bonds was later found out to be linked to BALCO and abusing steroids his life took a turn for the worst. This book gives you an elaborate description of how Bonds' steroid abuse caused his life to spiral downwards, from his days in Pittsburgh till he retired. Many of the people that knew of the scandal and a part of Bonds' life also help display the changes they started to see in not just his physical attributes but along with his everyday life. We see how the home run king is striped of his crown and everything he ever works for, due to bad decisions and pressure put on him to be the best.


Fainaru-Wada's style can seem very lengthy at times along with going into too much depth on some matters that seem like he could do without, but for the most part he has a solid writing style that is easy to read. At Times this can be one of the most exciting books and hard to put down, due to the great imagery and the author allowing you to feel as if you are right next to Barry throughout most the book makes up for the lengthy parts. Although at some points it seems as if the author takes a side upon wether what Bonds did was right or wrong at some points, he mostly stays unbiased about Bonds.


Fans of sport stars that are effected by steroids will enjoy this book. If you enjoy Biographies that make you think what if, Game of Shadows is for you.

This book taught me a lot that I didn’t know. While I was aware of the steroid scandal that plagued baseball in the early 2000’s, I’d never took the time to really do a deep dive in to it.

The authors do a great job of conveying a lot of information. This is both a positive (for the reader who is largely unaware of the topics) and a negative. It could be seen negatively where readers are already informed ontopics. The level of detail can occasionally be exhausting.

Barry Bonds has had a bit of an image salvation in recent years. After reading this, I’m not so sure he should

As far as the investigation goes the authors did a solid job, but there is a lot of exaggeration and a number of baseless assertions and counterfactual claims that harm the book. The authors repeatedly claim Bonds was the best hitter ever. By any objective statistical analysis this is not true. The authors claim synthol is a drug that expands the muscle. It is neither a drug nor does it expand the muscle. It's an injectable oil that sits on top of the muscle. Think saline implants. Look up Gregg Valentino to see how ridiculous it makes someone appear.

There are a number of parallels between Bonds and ARod - talented assholes hated by rivals and teammates alike, both of whom turned to a steroid dealer in a non-descript building to improve their performance through better chemistry. Bonds is worse by most accounts, in that he's a racist and possibly abusive toward women, though it's hard to feel any pity for his girlfriend Kimberly Bell, seeing as how she knew he was married and then basically sued him because he refused to buy her a house.

In any case, 3 takeaways - 1. It's hypocritical to condemn athletes like Bonds, Marion Jones & others for taking PEDs when anabolic steroids are advertised during the world news every single night in the form of treatment for "Low T"

2. The reasons society seems OK with football players and bodybuilders taking steroids and HGH is because almost everyone in the sport is on it. It's a level playing field and therefore fair. This was not the case in baseball, as Griffey on drugs would have likely hit 80 home runs and Ruth, had steroids existed in his day, would have more than 100. These numbers are based on the comparison of their drug-free home run totals compared to the league during their respective time frames. So for Bonds to be remembered as a better player than those he was statistically less than before he began doping harms the integrity of the sport.

3. Bonds never won a damn thing and even though he finally stopped choking at the plate in the playoffs in 2002 he still managed to boot a ball in crunch time as his team blew a 5-0 lead in the 7th inning on Game 6. After Bonds left the Giants won two World Series in five years with dominant pitching, a star offensive player who is as wholesome and upstanding as they come, as well as a large collection of hitters who had been cut from other teams. The team was simply better without Barry. Bonds deserves a spot in the HOF, but as the ~50th best player to ever play, not as a top 5 player. Because without an unlevel playing field, that's what he was.

This is an okay book which follows the Balco scandal and the emergin culture of steroid use in sports particularly in baseball and track and field. The book seems to go back and forth between chapter on Barry Bonds and his bulking up and the track and field athletes, in particular Marion Jones, that Balco is working with. It ends prior to Jones’s confession and being stripped of her medals and of the Bond’s trial so a lot of information is left out as the case has not concluded at the end of the book.

Really enjoyed this non fiction book on Victor Conte and Balco raid.
I knew about all the rumors about athletes using steroids but had no idea that it was this prevalent and common.

A good read, but too many facts get in the way of what should be a remarkable novel: its protagonist is the world's greatest athlete, but no one gives him the respect he so-rightly commands! He hits home runs, people. SO many home runs... Your eyes might just bug out of your head if you knew how many bombs he hit. Despite all these jacks, the so-called "reporters" in the story can dig up only a few years' worth of damning evidence. Think about it: on one hand, you've got a number of files and doping calendars, some eye-witnesses, a couple of confessions...peanuts, really; on the other, all those freaking home runs! Are you crazy? The injustice of it all smacks of collusion, of conspiracy, of unadulterated jealousy. By the novel's close, however, my righteous anger gave way to sadness: the king sits atop his throne all alone, loved by none. I cried for a week after reading it. I even bought the updated and expanded paperback in the hopes of finding my hero vindicated. I've been totally disappointed up to this point. But seriously, dude hits home runs.

In the end, I'm not sure what the authors intent was with the book. At times it seemed like it hoped to educate on the state of performance enhancing drugs in sports. At other points (including the title...) it seemed focused on Bonds and trying to prove his guilt. The book included plenty of data that was repeated time and time again; the type of thing I might expect if the book was a carefully thought out formal proof, but I might also expect if the authors were lacking material. It didn't feel particularly organized, jumping from topic to topic. To the degree that the book was trying to prove Bonds' guilt, I would have expected footnotes that I could immediately reference. There were none. It was only after I completed the book that I noticed there were chapter by chapter explanations of their sources, but I'd have to nearly read the book again to synch these to the text, and I wasn't willing to do so. Finally, I found it a bit disingenuine that the book talked about the involvement of the San Francisco Chronicle without any mention of the authors association with the paper.

All in all, I think the authors had some good information. The book certainly educated me to some extent about the state of performance enhancing drugs in sports today, and certainly did nothing to change my belief that Bonds almost assuredly intentionally skirted the rules during his climb to fame. In the end, however, the book just wasn't very well written, and that undermined whatever the authors hoped to accomplish to some extent.

Like this book a lot more than I thought I would. Great account of the steroid era of baseball. Must have on any sports fan bookshelf