The acclaimed author of A Season on the Brink follows the eventful 1996-1997 season in college basketball's most competitive league, the Atlantic Coast Conference, offering vivid, behind-the-scenes portraits of the nine top teams and coaches in action. 250,000 first printing. In terms of work ethic, John Feinstein is the sports equivalent of Stephen King: he's tireless, prolific, and multifaceted. With a past-performance line that includes A Season on the Brink , A Good Walk Spoiled , and A Civil War , he's regularly in the running for his genre's MVP. A March to Madness , which chronicles the 1996-97 Atlantic Coast Conference's ineluctable journey to March Madness, continues his string. Exhaustively reported, and penned with as much poignancy as panache, it's the story of the most competitive college basketball conference in the U.S., filtered through the eyes--and complex lives--of its head coaches. Coaching young in-your-faces is never easy; it's even harder in a pressure cooker such as the ACC, where expectations are enormous, winning is essential, and an NCAA tournament bid is requisite for survival. Feinstein had remarkable access to his high-profile, high-strung subjects, such as Dean Smith, Bobby Cremins, and Mike Krzyzewski, and the drama he records is every bit as fast-paced and stunning as a close Duke-North Carolina game with the final seconds ticking off the clock. The list of great sports books about anything but baseball is limited, but Feinstein (A Civil War, LJ 10/1/96) has increased it by one with this tour-de-force. Similar to his book about Indiana University Coach Bob Knight, A Season on the Brink (S. & S.,1988), Feinstein's latest covers one year with all of the teams in the perennially powerful Atlantic Coast Conference. After introducing each of the schools, their teams, their coaches, and their expectations for the 1996/97 basketball season, the book describes their progress week by week, culminating with Dean Smith's run to the NCAA Final Four. Such a detailed accounting of a sports season could seem interminable to readers, but Feinstein has again produced a narrative that is not only interesting but often exciting. He conveys the exhiliration of a road conference win and the gloom of a home loss. This book should appeal to all readers, not just to sports fans. Highly recommended for all libraries.?William O. Scheeren, Hempfield Area H.S. Lib., Greensburg, Pa. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. After writing about football (A Civil War, 1996) and golf (A Good Walk Spoiled, 1995), bestselling author Feinstein returns to his true love, college basketball in the ACC. With such perennial superpowers as Duke and North Carolina, the Atlantic Coast Conference is the place to go for particularly dramatic and hard-fought hoops glory. Last season's ACC, the subject of Feinstein's book, had no shortage of drama, with Duke's head coach Mike Krzyzewski coming back from a year of surgery and burnout, UNC legend Dean Smith aiming for the record as winningest basketball coach in college history, and Wake Forest senior star Tim Duncan eschewing an early exit to the pros. Feinstein was given unprecedented access: Seven of the league's nine head coaches allowed him to attend all practices, locker-room sessions, and staff meetings, and two others permitted him unusually lengthy interviews. As he has proven repeatedly, this writer knows how to use such access to great advantage, finding the telling moment or detail, reading the mindset of participating athletes and coaches with uncommon astuteness. This volume is no exception. Moreover, he pulls off the difficult feat of keeping nine narratives moving relatively seamlessly. The coaches are the primary focus here, and Feinstein is particularly good at conveying the exhausting pressures of a high-profile coaching job in which everything one does is subjected to endless media scrutiny and public comment. Regrettably, one wishes that he had devoted more attention to the sociology of big-college sports. By avoiding some of the political and social ramifications, Feinstein ends up with a volume that feels a bit thinner than his best work. On the other hand, since Smith's surprising retirement announcement in October, the book does take on the added luster of recounting the final season of a remarkable career. Whatever this book's shortcomings, Feinstein still has a great shooting touch, and this one is a three-pointer from downtown. Swish! (For a look at Hoosier high-school hoops, see William Gildea's Where the Game Matters Most, p. 1685.) (Book-of- the-Month Club selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. With A Season on the Brink , Feinstein showed that spending a year with a subject could yield an intimate, instructive tale. But it seems that he wrote his masterpiece the first time out. The Feinstein formula may sell a lot of books, but here's hoping that in the future Feinstein channels his