St. John, Allen

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St. John, Allen

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Sports writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Received top honors from North Jersey Press Club, North American Ski Journalists Association, and United States Tennis Writers Association.

WRITINGS:

Skiing for Dummies, foreword by Jonny Moseley, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 1999.

Bicycling for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 1999.

The Exercise Training Diary for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 2001.

The Runner's Training Diary for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 2001.

The Weight Training Diary for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 2001.

The Triathlete's Training Diary for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 2001.

(With Christopher Russo) The Mad Dog 100: The Greatest Sports Arguments of All Time, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2003.

Clapton's Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument, Free Press (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Christopher Russo) The Mad Dog Hall of Fame: The Ultimate Top-Ten Rankings of the Best in Sports, additional reporting by Matthew Shepatin, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2006.

Made to Be Broken: The 50 Greatest Records and Streaks in Sports, Triumph Books (Chicago, IL), 2006.

Also author of book and CD-ROM The Way Basketball Works. Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Maxim, Salon, Popular Mechanics, Playboy, Men's Journal, and Maxim. Columnist, "By the Numbers," Wall Street Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Allen St. John is an award-winning sports writer and columnist. Many of his books try to explain to amateurs the often complex workings of different sports. The amateur, in this case, may be interested in sport as a potential participant (as in Bicycling for Dummies or The Triathlete's Training Diary for Dummies) or as an interested observer or fan (as in Made to Be Broken: The 50 Greatest Records and Streaks in Sports or The Mad Dog 100: The Greatest Sports Arguments of All Time). The latter book, written with radio talk-show host Christopher Russo, examines the sorts of questions that Russo deals with on his program. "This title," wrote Larry R. Little in a Library Journal review, "is a fun, thought-provoking collection of seasoned opinions that challenges the reader to think—and defend."

Clapton's Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument falls outside the niche St. John has carved for himself as a sports writer. In this volume, St. John chronicles the work of a master luthier through the process of building a guitar for rock star Eric Clapton. "If you're an acoustic guitar player, it doesn't get much better than having Wayne Henderson, of Rugby, Virginia, craft you one of his signature models," explained Dave Shiflett in the Weekly Standard. "That's akin to having Bill Gates whip you up a personalized computer program, or having Fidel Castro roll you a box of cigars." "St. John's descriptions of Henderson [at work] …," concluded a Publishers Weekly critic, "are as detailed, refined and playful as the instruments Henderson creates."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2005, review of Clapton's Guitar: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument, p. 838.

Library Journal, July, 2003, Larry R. Little, review of The Mad Dog 100: The Greatest Sports Arguments of All Time, p. 94; September 1, 2005, Eric C. Shoaf, review of Clapton's Guitar, p. 144.

Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2005, review of Clapton's Guitar, p. 225.

Weekly Standard, April 24, 2006, Dave Shiflett, "Guitar Artist: The Stradivarius of the Shenandoah Valley, and His Instruments."