The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports by Brian Kilmeade

The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports Reviews

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  SoulSurvivor

  3.8 stars. The power of sports to build character and encourage teamwork. Essays of diverse personalities such as Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Geraldo Rivera, Gerald Ford, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Burt Reynolds, James Brown, Oliver North, John Irving and a host of others. Very inspirational. I was particularly impressed with the story of Gerald Ford who stuck to it to become an All-American center, and part of the Michigan football team that were national college champions two years in a row. Worthwhile reading for people who enjoy sports and those interested in the stories of famous people.
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  Ted Hinkle

  Began reading sometime ago; pulled off shelf recently to continue reading. These vignettes give insight into the influence of sport in a cross section of 74 American leaders and well-known personalities. Entertaining for those of comparable age to the personalities interviewed; could have an impact on our youthful readers if revised to include some contemporary personalities. I appreciated the memorial of Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick, Todd Beamer, and Tom Burnett on Flight 93. I applaud Brian Kilmeade for helping us understand "The Games Do Count".
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  Semi-Academic Eric

  This may be necessary reading for educators that seem to want to cut out sports. Although I did not grow up with much of this in my earlier education, there seem to be lessons that are best learned while actively engaged in these types of activities. It made me more interested in playing these games that sometimes we have taken for granted. More importantly, it made me more interested in making sure to provide opportunities for our children to participate in sports.
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  Sean

  It's a nice book. The chapters are pretty short and are quick reads.
  
  For me, there are too many typos. For instance Tony Danza boxed in the Golden Gloves not the Golden Globes; Dr. J's name is Julius Erving, not Julius Irving. Those kind of errors, and they're all over the place, just detracted from my enjoyment of the book. In a book about sports, wouldn't you think that there wouldn't be so many sports reference errors?
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  Ryan

  The people I found interesting had a few nice stories. But, albeit it could be my issue, I didn't care about most of these people. And the ones I wanted to read were super short. An easy book to read a chapter if you have a few minutes here and there but I skipped quite a few due to lack of interest.
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  Dave

  The stories were not that remarkable but it was interesting to see what value sports played in these lives.
  
  Same old theme for me... great theme but not that great of a book.
  
  The author is one of the anchors on Fox and Friends on morning TV. Smart guy.
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  Katie

  The overall intention of this book, to show that sports are an important part of character development, was really appealing to me. I agree that participation in sports helps to shape a person and influence them all their life. However, there were lots of typos. Worth a casual read.
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  Glenn Liguori

  X
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  Jeff

  Loved this book. From the perspective of leaders, sports figures, CEO's and others, it's a great way to see how organized sports and coaches affected/changed their lives.
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  Nick Lloyd

  Famous people played sports too? The hell you say. Some crack reporting there, third-smartest host of Fox and Friends.
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  Louis Picone

  great concept for a book - it just got a little long & repetitive. I would have preferred cutting about 10 of the stories
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  Raymond Bial

  Very insightful book. Kilmeade did a very good job of assembling an interesting array of well-known people who share their experiences in a variety of sports.
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  Jennifer

  This book provides insight into the part that sports have played in the lives of an interesting assortment of successful people.
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  Phillip

  This mini-series comes in two parts: The Games Do Count and It's How You Play the Game. Not knowing any better, I read the books in reverse order. Ha ha! Even though both books were incredible reads, I enjoyed The Games Do Count a lot better than the second one. I believe it was because the subjects of the little vignettes were more familiar and recognizable. There were still quite a few whom I didn't know. Nonetheless, I enjoyed and appreciated all the stories hearing how sports carried someone forward in life from the lessons learned. This is at least the third book of the author's I have read and will continue on with his other books. Don't let how easy of a read these books are fool you. They will still impact your life by the content. The only negative takeaway from the books came from less-than-ideal editing: occasional poor grammer, syntax, and punctuation to name a few. Other than that, please read!
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  Marlena

  I picked this book up years ago because I saw Condoleeza Rice was one of the folks featured in it. I finally got to read it only to discover Hannah Storm (I looked up to her so much as a kid) was in it too. Great takeaways from celebrities, politicians and others. I did not play sports (two left feet) but I covered sports and have worked in sports for a very long time so the stories resonated with me.
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  Jonathan Bechtel

  I would give this book a 3.5 if I could.