Also String Theory (which is a collection of essays about Tennis).

Also, is there a fad of hating him? Do his books have controversial content (like Ayn Rand, for example, who divides people)?

String Theory was incredible, David Foster Wallace really a pleasure to read.

Disclaimer: I'm a physicist who didn't finish the Phd and went to work in the tech field instead.

I wish physicists would stop writing these bullshitty popular science books. A lot of the books are popularizing unverified / unverifiable things like String Theory or Multiverse or Arrow of Time. And when they're talking about more plain things like Special Relativity, then I still cringe, because it's not something that's worth explaining to lay people: there is no situation in which some high-level bullshitty understanding of GR or SR or QM will be helpful or relevant in life, at best it will confuse you.

It is a good and necessary thing to tell students about this, so some of them become physicists, but you don't need popular science books for that, it should happen in schools, for free.

If you're going to speak about Physics to lay people, at least do it it in a way that's relevant to them, eg. look at how Feynman taught Physics. Explain how a boomerang works, or how thermodynamics relates to photosynthesis.

As far as sportswriters go, if you're interested in the sentimental, I always used to flip to Rick Reilly's column in Sports Illustrated before reading any other part of the magazine (back when I was in school and could snag my dad's SI before he got home from work). He moved on to ESPN at some point but he has a few anthologies out.

In general, if you know what kind of articles to look for, there are some good stories out there by the major players. I really enjoyed the relatively recent (in the grand scheme of things; "totally old" as far as news goes) articles about the rise of wine's popularity among NBA players ([1]) and a look into NHL dentists ([2]) on ESPN.

If you're interested in writers who happen to be writing about sports, this year I got sidetracked from my original to-read list exploring the oeuvre of the late great David Foster Wallace, who has a handful of tennis essays that I thought were fantastic. He's such a talented writer that I must recommend you seek out his essay collections individually (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Consider the Lobster, and Both Flesh and Not) but if you're strictly interested in his tennis essays, they were taken from those three and reprinted in a collection called String Theory. As a taste, the title essay of Both Flesh and Not is readable online (as "Roger Federer as Religious Experience", [3]).

EDIT: this was more directed at the grandparent comment than the parent, but well, hey, all of HN is free to take my recommendations (or not!)

[1] https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29517070/inside-nba-secr...

[2]
https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/27851359/the-ugly-gory-b...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed...

String Theory is one of my favorite essays of all time. Discusses the incredible gap between journeymen, low-ranked tennis pro's and the elite players in both ability and quality of life, as well as the gap between journeymen and highly competive amateurs.

Definitely recommend Infinite Jest like probably anyone else in this thread, but would recommend reading his non-fiction first. Jumping into Infinite Jest, I thought Wallace was some wierdo crank for a long time before I "got" his style and what he was going for. Even then, it took a long time before I enjoyed it and he very quickly became one of my favorite authors.

I think Infinite Jest and GEB are two of the only epic books that accomplishes so much, but in two entirely different contexts. They both build intense, well founded and well structured frameworks that lead up to epic resolutions, despite being respectively fiction and non-fiction.

I really like the way he limits his list to 4 books. Most other thought leaders/influencers/CEOs do lists of 10, 20 "hot topic" books that you know they probably haven't read. I find the volume also diminishes the individual importance of each book on the list.

I'll have to pick up String Theory (I love that Bill Gates reads DFW) and The Grid per his recommendations.

Post Match interviews are utterly inane. Naomi Osaka is doing more to promote the French open and tennis via this controversy by refusing to do them.

If they need the inanity to feed hundreds of third rate Sports writers they should be able to send anyone from their entourage who attended in the players' box.

Edit: String Theory [1] which i read in a "Year's best Sports writing" compilation is the best tennis journalism I've read. The author went on to literary super-stardom for other reasons. Tragedy is involved. I really don't know anything about any of it, haven't read it, I'm not such a literary person. The tennis article is great. I don't recall press conferences being crucial to its success.

[1] https://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david...

Not the parent, but I like String Theory [1], which is about non-superstar pro tennis, and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again [2], which is about a vacation on a cruise ship.

The second one looks a lot like snarky "I'm the only cool person here" journalism, but IMO that sort of (typically bad) journalism exists in large part because Wallace could do it really well.

Oops, I misread your comment as "what", not whom. For whom, I dig George Saunders. Here's a piece he wrote about a visit to the mysterious "Buddha boy" a while back [3]. Saunders to me is pretty much Wallace's spiritual successor as far as style and tone goes.

[1] http://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david-...

[2] https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazi...

[3] http://reprints.longform.org/the-incredible-buddha-boy

Here's my favorite essay from String Theory that really sums everything that book is about: http://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david-... This version is a bit of pain though since the footnotes are collected at the end and you would have to swap back and forth to read them; the book allows space on each page to make it much more convenient. I think I'm in the minority, but I really wish Infinite Jest handled footnotes in the same way.