Dangerous collisions; kung fu fever
Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis
By Christopher Nowinski
Drummond, 195 pp., paperback, $14.95
Four Days to Glory: Wrestling With the Soul of the American Heartland
By Mark Kreidler
HarperCollins, 262 pp., illustrated, $24.95
American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch — An Odyssey in the New China
By Matthew Polly
Gotham, 366 pp., illustrated, $26
Christopher Nowinski might seem an unlikely candidate for authorship. He acknowledges that at various times during his life, "concentrating, reading, and carrying on a conversation" have made his head hurt. He's sensitive to bright lights. For about a week each month, he suffers debilitating migraines. Having been examined by a neurologist who specializes in cases like his own, Nowinski has concluded that his symptoms are the result of "dead chunks of brain."
Nowinski's problems have resulted from the numerous concussions he suffered as a college football player and a professional wrestler. Needless to say, he's now retired. His book, "Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis," represents his attempt to educate athletes, coaches, and parents to the dangers of multiple concussions, with particular emphasis on those suffered before the brain has recovered from a previous trauma.
The recently publicized stories of the deaths of former NFL players Mike Webster, Terry Long, and Andre Waters, and the brain damage retired New England Patriot Ted Johnson has recently acknowledged suffering, should have alerted even the most enthusiastic football fans to the dangers inherent in the game, and to the league's persistent unwillingness to adequately acknowledge the problem. "Head Games" provides not only anecdotes about brain-damaged players of all ages, but scientific analysis of the changes in the brains of players who have been rushed (or rushed themselves) back onto the field when they should have been quietly recovering from previous concussions.
Nowinski has done current and future football players a terrific service with this book. Now if only those players, coaches, and parents for whom it is meant will read it.
Elsewhere in the world of combat sports, an Iowa mother "is sprawled on all fours near the edge of the mat, pounding fists into the foam rubber and demanding a better performance" from her 5-year-old son, who is crying instead of wrestling. Mark Kreidler, the author of "Four Days to Glory: Wrestling With the Soul of the American Heartland," acknowledges that "there is nothing remotely fun about seeing a kindergartner get whipped by some other kindergartner," but he's certainly a fan of the brand of "glory" earned by high schoolers Dan LeClere and Jay Borschel , the four-time Iowa state champs whose stories provide the spine of his book. "They are champions and gods," Kreidler writes, "and they will start all over again in college, as nothings. . . . That's not a warning. It's the good news."
The bad news is that the pursuit of wrestling glory drives some of those who aspire to be "champions and gods" to lose a lot of weight very quickly, then regain it, then lose it again in the dangerous cycle the sport demands. It may also be bad news that the wrestlers Kreidler admires base their decisions about where to attend college solely on the resident wrestling coach, though the same can be said of an awful lot of football, basketball, and hockey players.
It was in part the inability of Matthew Polly to see himself as championship material that led him to drop out of Princeton 15 years ago and travel to the Shaolin Temple in China, determined to study kung fu with the Buddhist monks there. Inspired by TV kung fu master David Carradine, a.k.a. "Grasshopper," the author of "American Shaolin" imagined he would sit outside the gates of the temple until an especially perceptive monk intuited his potential as a martial artist, after which, perhaps having promised to use his powers only for good, he would be initiated into the mysteries.
Instead, Polly is jacked up by a couple of Chinese communist bureaucrats to the tune of $1,300 a month for a mat on the floor and use of an outhouse. Oddly enough, he perseveres. He even finishes second in a regional martial arts tournament in China, though in terms of entertainment value, that achievement pales compared with his "crazy foreigner kungfu," a bizarre display by which he frightens a shopkeeper into refunding the money one of the monks has foolishly spent on a cheap spice grinder.
Over the course of his sojourn in China, Polly not only learns a great deal about the martial arts, he comes to terms with the illusions that fueled his trip. "I was suffering from a minor case of Orientalism," he writes. "I felt like I had grown up in a shallow, materialistic society and wanted the Chinese to be wise and profound -- in short, bracingly poor -- so I could get my deepness fix before returning home. It had bothered me that while I was trying to become more like my romantic fantasy of the Chinese, they were trying to become more like their avaricious fantasy of Americans."
This is not to suggest that Polly's adventure was a failure, though he does not discover what he thought he was seeking. He concludes "American Shaolin" with the image of a peasant in his 70s who puts on a display of martial arts forms after a banquet. Watching the "grace" of the old man, Polly realizes that although he had come to China because he admired "the tremendous skill" of the kung fu masters, "as I watched this old man, what most impressed me was the devotion."
Bill Littlefield hosts NPR's "Only a Game" each Saturday at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. from WBUR in Boston. 
