Byrne's Book of Great Pool Stories
George  Plimpton, who knows a few things about sports writing, once  observed that the smaller the ball, the better the writing, which tucks  pool in there neatly between baseball and golf. With an anthology that  racks up short stories by writers including Aleksandr Pushkin, Leo  Tolstoy, Saki, John O'Hara, Wallace Stegner, and A. A. Milne (he was  evidently as familiar with the corner pocket as he was with Pooh  Corner), Byrne, a top pool player and prolific writer himself, runs the  table with that small-ball theory. His compilation is consistently  compelling; these 31 stories--some dark, some comic--all take their aim  at the human condition, and hardly miscue.