Also of interest...in the lives of athletes

Black Ball by Theresa Runstedtler (Bold Type, $29)

Theresa Runstedtler’s new book is “a wise, engaging, and frankly overdue survey of a crucial moment in sports history,” said Chris Vognar in the Los Angeles Times. The author, a sports historian and former NBA dancer, presents the 1970s as the decade when the Black athletes who dominated pro basketball walked a delicate line to seize player rights while facing pushback from white fans and owners. It’s a reminder that “you simply can’t divorce sports from the times in which they are played.”

Serving Herself by Ashley Brown (Oxford, $30)

This nuanced biography “should go a long way to remedy the unpardonable disappearance of Althea Gibson from the American imagination,” said Tunku Varadarajan in The Wall Street Journal. A trailblazer who was both “pivotal and confounding,” Gibson was the first Black tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles event, and then added four more. But the Harlem middle-school dropout refused to be a crusader for racial justice. This “sprawling and in many ways outstanding biography” helps explain why.

Don’t Think, Dear by Alice Robb (Mariner, $30)

Alice Robb’s candid look at ballet life is “powered by love of the art form,” said Fiona Sturges in The Guardian. Robb, who spent three years at the School of American Ballet, wants to believe there’s a cure for the toxic culture she and her classmates experienced. Alas, “she can’t deny the intrinsic weirdness of 21stcentury women willingly submitting themselves to a life of physical and psychological torment, conceived of and often enforced by men, for a picture-book fantasy of femininity.”

The Longest Race by Kara Goucher (Gallery, $28)

Kara Goucher’s memoir should have been a victory lap, said Mythili Rao in The Washington Post. Instead, the champion long-distance runner offers “something much grittier: a closeup look at the uncertain and often unhealthy climb toward stardom for women in organized sports.” In a book that often “reads like legal testimony,” the two-time Olympian levels numerous detailed allegations against her former Nike coach Alberto Salazar, including fat shaming, locker-room spying, and sexual assault.