title: Federer and Me: A Story of Obsession
author: William Skidelsky
description: "The author is at his best when describing Federer's skill and innovation, and fans of the player will likely not dispute the assertions of his grace on court." (Amanda Mastrull <i>Library Journal (Starred review)</i>)<br /><br />"With his careful attention to the evolving talent of Federer and the debates around surface, rackets, strategy matches, and celebrity, Skidelsky scores." (<i>Publishers Weekly</i>)<br /><br />[Skidelsky] situates the Swiss in historical context, describing him as simultaneously a throwback to traditional tennis and an avatar of modern technology and training . . . Hell certainly get no argument from the Fed-heads when he observes that the contemporary game of relentless baseline retrieving is boring compared with their mans graceful, instinctive construction of points. (<i>The Washington Post</i>)
zlib_text: 
  
  
  _Acknowledgements_
  
  
  My heartfelt thanks to Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology at Oxford
  University and author of seminal works on the Russian mafia, for his creative
  and ever-patient counsel; to Bérengère Rieu, who took me backstage at the
  Roland Garros Stadium; to Eric Deblicker, who gave me the tour of an exclusive
  tennis club in the Bois de Boulogne not so dissimilar to my Club des Rois; to
  Buzz Berger for correcting my tennis shots; to Anne Freyer, my wise and
  faithful French editor; to Chris Bryans, for his advice on the Mumbai stock
  market; to Charles Lucas and John Rolley, bankers of probity, who sportingly
  advised me on the practices of less scrupulous members of their profession; to
  Ruth Halter-Schmid, who spared me many wrong turnings on my journeying through
  Switzerland; to Urs von Almen, for guiding me through the wilder byways of the
  Bernese Oberland; to Urs Bührer, Direktor of the Bellevue Palace Hotel in
  Berne, for allowing me to stage an embarrassing episode 