Recent years have seen a huge explosion in the popularity and commercial viability of women’s sports – with new professional leagues for women to play in, new magazines to cover them, and recognition for female athletes that is overtaking that of men. Nike Is a Goddess tells the dramatic story of the rise of women’s sports over the last century in a series of original narratives focusing on the great female athletes whose success has changed the game and paved the way for the women and girls of today. From historic boundary breakers like Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Althea Gibson to modern-day superstars like Tara Lipinski, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Rebecca Lobo, from Gertrude Ederle’s historic swim across the English Channel to Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, Nike Is a Goddess tells the inspiring stories of women opening up an arena that had been closed to them. Written by top female sportswriters from such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Conde Nast Sports for Women, Women’s Sports and Fitness, The Miami Herald, and Sports Illustrated, Nike Is a Goddess pays tribute to the athletes who led the way and serves as inspiration to those who will come after.
Both a gathering and a celebration, Nike brings together some of the best women writers on sports to chronicle, sport by sport, the struggles and the politics that permeate the arena, and the achievements of the achievers who’ve broken through to rise above. “The story of women in sports,” writes former Stanford basketball star Mariah Burton Nelson in the introduction, “is a personal story, because nothing is more personal than a woman’s bone, sinew, sweat and desire, and a political story, because nothing is more powerful than a woman’s struggle to be free.”
Sport by sport, the history of women in sports unfolds in sweeping, breezy narratives: Shelley Smith on basketball, Grace Lichtenstein on tennis, Malanie Hauser on golf, Amy Nutt on baseball, Karen Karbo on swimming, Kathleen McElroy on track and field–and the list goes on. And, of course, heroes emerge: Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Althea Gibson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Gertrude Ederle, Billie Jean King, and scores of others who’ve slipped through memory’s net and are finally rescued here.
Clearly assembled to inspire, Nike indeed does. But it also instructs. “This book shows what women can do when they work hard, when they team up, when they hurdle the barriers that are placed in front of them,” writes Nelson. “It’s about them, but it’s also about us. By revealing their past, it points the way toward our future.” And in Nike, so much of what’s revealed borders on revelation. –Jeff Silverman
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