A Concussion Book That Stands Out In A Crowded Field 

While the pile of concussion books in my office continues to grow taller, seemingly with every passing day, one that will stay at the top of the very short pile of my favorites is Back in the Game: Why Concussion Doesn't Have To End Your Athletic Career (Oxford University Press, New York 2016) by sports neurologist Jeffrey Kutcher, M.D., and award-winning sports journalist Joanne Gerstner.

About a month ago the folks at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt sent me a review copy of Dr. Bob Cantu's new book, Concussions and Our Kids: America's Leading Expert on How To Protect Young Athletes and Keep Sports Safe, which launched today and which he co-authored with sports journalist Mark Hyman.  I took it to read on the short train ride from Boston to New York the very next day, and was able to finish it before the train pulled into Penn Station.

While it has much to recommend it, the book is marred by several pieces of advice it gives - or omits to give - that seem to ignore critical changes in the thinking of concussion experts over the past decade, including some from Dr. Cantu himself. 

Rosemarie Scolaro Moser's  book, Ahead of the Game: The Parent's Guide to Youth Sports Concussion (University Press of New England) is just what it says it is: a practical, no-nonsense guide for parents about sport concussions.

I have added yet another book to my ever-expanding book shelf of sports concussion books: The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic by Linda Caroll and David Rosner (Simon & Schuster 2011).

There has been a flurry of books in recent years about concussions in sports, an issue MomsTeam and I began covering back in 2001, way before the crisis grabbed the attention of the media, politicians and the sports establishment. So, when I received a review copy of Throwaway Players: The Concussion Crisis from Pee Wee Football to the NFL by Gay Culverhouse, I was a bit skeptical that it could add anything new to the discussion.

I have been writing and speaking about concussions in youth sports for the past decade, so I was excited when a copy of Kids, Sports, and Concussion (Praeger 2011), by Dr. William P. Meehan, III, arrived at the office.