Game of Shadows

By: Mark Fainaru-Wada, Lance Williams

Narrated by: Arnie Mazer

The complete inside story of the shocking steroids scandal that turned the sports world upside down

For years, in the shadowy reaches of the world of sports, there were rumors that some of our nation’s greatest athletes were using steroids, human growth hormone, and other drugs to run faster, jump higher, and hit harder. But as track stars blazed their way to Olympic medals and sluggers brought fans back to baseball, sports officials, the media, and fans looked past the rumors and cheered on the athletes to ever-higher levels of performance. Then, in December 2004, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a tiny nutritional supplement company that, according to sworn testimony, was supplying elite athletes with banned drugs. The stories shocked the nation and the exposés led to congressional hearings on baseball's drug problems and a revived effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats.

Now, in GAME OF SHADOWS, Fainaru-Wada and Williams tell the complete story of BALCO and the investigation that has shaken the foundations of the sporting world. And at the center of the story is the biggest star of them all, Barry Bonds, the muscle-bound MVP outfielder for the San Francisco Giants whose suspicious late-career renaissance has him threatening Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record.

Shocking, revelatory, and riveting, GAME OF SHADOWS casts light into the shadows of American sports to reveal the dark truths at the heart of the game today.©2006 Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams; (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A sober, skillful and utterly damning account of not just the Bonds fiasco but the pervasive influence of steroids in sports."—Los Angeles Times

"Devastating. . . . groundbreaking. . . . Necessary reading for anyone concerned with the steroids era in baseball and track and field and its fallout on sports history."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"A compelling portrait of conspiracy. . . . Fascinating."—The Boston Globe

"Scorching. . . . A testament to baseball’s failure."—Newsweek

"Superb. . . . Important and disturbing."—San Francisco Chronicle

"The evidence is detailed, damning, and overwhelming. . . . It’s a growing bonfire of controversy. This book is one of the matches."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"[Fainaru-Wada and Williams] have got the goods and they reveal them methodically. Everything is well-sourced and meticulously explicated."—Chicago Tribune

“A shocking exposé of the seedy side of pro sports that underscores just how easy it is to cheat.”—Entertainment Weekly

THE book on steroid use by pro athletes.

This book definitely shows how so many top athletes used steroids that were undetectable for many years or used pro hormones that were still unregulated at the time but are now considered steroids.

The whole concept how it came to be is what makes this book so appealing.