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CHOICE Review

This excellent collection contains the proceedings from a 1984 scientific congress held as part of the preface events for the US Women's Olympic Trials Marathon, May 12, 1984. Contributors include many of the women who provided the basic scientific data supporting women's efforts to run an Olympic marathon. Papers are short, focused, well annotated, and contain current references, and all authors have credentials in their areas of expertise. The issues covered are salient for women endurance athletes and include short, databased, well-documented and well-argued analyses of performance factors, physiology, biomechanics of distance running, nutrition, effects of marathon running on blood chemistry profiles, athletic amenorrhea, and injuries-with a view to how these parameters impact on female distance runners. Two chapters deserve special mention. One by Joan S. Hult is a brief but masterfully presented historical survey of the female American runner from 1880 to the present. The other, written by the book's editor, tackles the issue of sex and age differences in thermoregulation. Drinkwater puts this issue (often raised informally and in the literature to support arguments that women should not participate in endurance athletics) into perspective. Although current studies are not definitive enough to allow her to draw positive conclusions, she points out some of the problems with extant studies and emphasizes that the definitive study has not yet been done in this area. This volume is appropriate for general academic collections and should be part of any well-rounded women's studies or exercise physiology collection.-D.J. Douglas, University of Wisconsin-Madison