Spitting in the Soup

"Johnson’s book explores the history of doping in sports, going back 150 years.”

“This may go down as the most important book on doping ever written. A fantastic work.”

“Mark Johnson is a long-time, in-the-trenches cycling journalist whose many years of reporting shine through in his book. Johnson… uses academic rigor combined with a journalist's grind-it-out research and solid, accurate writing to give us a fast-moving history.”

“Johnson's book shows that doping is so intertwined with sports that it will take a long time for Olympic athletes and their federations to quit using drugs to win.”

“Mark Johnson takes the subject of anti-doping as his focus and serves up a dose of Gladwellian counter-intuitive paradigm-shifting, challenging your perception of today's anti-doping system. . . A rewarding read.”

“In Spitting in the Soup, Mark Johnson argues that blaming only the athletes ignores larger cultural influences; teams, coaches, sports federations, and even spectators play a role. He also points to the problem of singling out the use of performance-enhancing drugs in a society in which Prozac and Adderall are prescribed routinely.”

“In his new book, Spitting in the Soup, Mark Johnson dives into the history of performance-enhancing drugs and investigates the political, commercial, medical, social, and athletic currents that have shaped our attitudes toward them.”

“It’s readable, it’s compelling, it’s thought provoking. Mark Johnson will have you questioning your critical thinking skills.”

“Spitting in the Soup is fantastic, but then you would not expect less from Mark Johnson. I am in no way a scholar of doping, but I have always figured my personal experience within the sport of cycling would qualify me as a bit of an expert in its culture of doping. Mark’s book introduced me to history I didn’t know and colored in a lot of story gaps elsewhere. I’ve always believed that cycling is more beautiful warts-and-all, with full disclosure, without revisionist history, and without plastic surgery. The topic of doping in sports is not a black-and-white issue, no matter how much so many people want it to be that simple. Spitting in the Soup only strengthens that feeling for me. Every fan of cycling should read it.”

“Spitting in the Soup is a hard-hitting, comprehensive, and highly readable analysis of the varying societal and historical forces driving our love-hate relationship with sports and doping… It’s is a fascinating book that should be of interest to anyone heavily invested in sports, whether as an athlete, coach, sport scientist, or fan.”