TIME FOR KIDS

Shoutouts to rising and established stars in 18 sports, from soccer to skateboarding.

Confining his selections to athletes active at the beginning of 2024, Buckley dishes up an alphabetically arranged gallery of greats and potential greats that is thoroughly diverse in terms of age, race, nationality, gender, and sport. Some, such as LeBron James and Aaron Judge, will be familiar even to nonsports fans, but there are plenty of achievers who may be less well known for various reasons—golfer Lilia Vu, lacrosse champion Lyle Thompson of the Haudenosaunee Nationals, and Jessica Long, billed as “the most dominant Paralympic swimmer in the world,” for example. Each profile includes a color action photo and a frothy descriptive comment highlighting select exploits both athletic and otherwise. The author commends Simone Biles not only for being gymnastics’ GOAT (Greatest of All Time), but also for how she spoke out about the importance of mental health during the Tokyo Olympics. The athletes’ names are listed in neither the table of contents nor the index, and not all will still be active by the time this book reaches its audience (soccer great Alex Morgan, for one, retired in September 2024). Still, the general focus on early- or mid-career figures will extend the freshness date.

A broad cross-section of athletic luminaries.