"Glory Days" is fantastic about taking a piece of non-fiction and making it read like fiction.

While I am neither a history buff nor an avid basketball fan. I love sport and, more importantly, stories that change how we look at sports. While I knew that the Summer of 1984 was an important part of sports history, I never truly understood why until I read this book.

This was an eye-opening experience and "Glory Days" does not shy away from the truly ugly moments of the era. This book serves to highlight how impactful sport is as well as show how commercialism and politics have changed and continues to affect sports. This is a dense story in terms of the amount of information and truly helped me with understanding what changed in the sports scene. It documents how athletes become superstars and the mechanisms have brought sports to this level of commercialisation and profitability.

I love how simplistic the language used in "Glory Days" was and as someone who routinely struggles to read non-fiction, I appreciated the accessibility that L. Jon Wertheim's writing shows in "Glory Days". While I do recommend reading the first chapter first and the last chapter last, the rest of the book is written in such a way that you can pick and choose the parts you want to read in any order.

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for giving me an e-arc to read in exchange for an honest review. All opinions stated are my own.

Being a teenager in 1984, this book brought me back to my glory days. Gretzky, Jordan, wrestling, David Sterb's moustache,... It was an easy read that allowed me the time to connect the written word with real life experiences as I often found myself daydreaming back to where I was when what I was reading was happening. Great coverage of the L.A. Summer Olympics as well.

While for me this was a five-star book, I am only giving it 4 since it was quite basketball heavy. I'm a huge fan so it spoke to me, but if I was to pitch this book to a non-fan of basketball, I'd have to attach a warning that you might lose a little interest at times.

I love these type of books that break down a year with highlights of things that happen (see One Summer: America, 1927). I didn't realize how much went down 1984. Such a fun read for sports fans and history buffs alike.

The blurb compares this book to the products of Bill Bryson, and honestly, and I found this to be much better than anything Bryson has ever written. Don’t sell yourself short! That said, I was initially interested in this book because I was born in the summer of 1984, so I wanted to know more about my origin story. This piece filled me in on everything I missed in a detailed way that was always interesting and never boring. Nice work!