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Berkshire Encyclopedia of Extreme Sports. Ed. by Douglas Booth and Holly Thorpe. Great Barrington, Mass.: Berkshire, 2007. 404p. alkaline $125 (ISBN 978-0-9770159-5-5).
As noted by editors Douglas Booth and Holly Thorpe, extreme sports are about more than risk taking, rule breaking, or having fun. Extreme sports "are also a major cultural, commercial, and media phenomenon" (ix) of increasing global interest. Booth and Thorpe, both professors in the Department of Sport and Leisure Studies at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and avid surfers and snowboarders, provide the first serious survey of extreme sports. An outgrowth of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World Sport (2005), Berkshire Encyclopedia of Extreme Sports offers multifaceted coverage of its topic, reporting on the sports and athletes on the surface of extreme sports (including such practical information as the "Rules of Mountain Bike Racing"), and also delving into underlying concepts and issues, such as history, philosophy, psychology and sociology. For example, the volume contains a lengthy essay...