Product Description

The controversial follow-up to "Into the Bear Pit", this title pulls no punches in discussing the substantial fall-out from the publication of James' first book, the verbal spat with Nick Faldo that led Faldo waging a campaign to have his European Tour colleague removed from the Tournament Committee, and Mark's eventual resignation as Ryder Cup assistant. "After the Bear Pit" also chronicles the former Ryder Cup captain's greatest battle - a six-month long, hard struggle against testicular cancer. James takes a look at the illness that threatenend to end more than just his golfing career.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3365164 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'The book that's rocking golf' Daily Mail; 'delivers a damning verdict on the American's behaviour at Brookline' Sun; 'caused a furore inside and outside the game' The Times

Sun
'delivers a damning verdict on the American's behaviour at Brookline'

The Times
'caused a furore inside and outside the game'

Customer Reviews

Very disappointing
I was very disappointed in this book because I really enjoyed Into The Bear Pit.

After the Bear Pit has three essential themes. It describes James' battle with cancer, the fallout from his Ryder Cup captaincy, and his experiences as a European Tour player. The first and third of these are interesting, but one gets the feeling the real purposes of the book are for Mark James to get some things off his chest and make some money by capitalising on the success of Into the Bear Pit.

The book was obviously rushed to print. Even the title is misleading -- they obviously wanted to retain the link with Into the Bear Pit, but it's not strictly accurate because what is, in my view, the best part of the book happened before 1999. The book does not tie together the three main themes in any meaningful way. There are three chapters of utter tripe that have no purpose other than to use up space: a rehash of some stuff from Into the Bear Pit, James' assessment of each player on the US and Europe teams for the 2002 Ryder Cup, and - wait for it - his hole-by-hole assessment of the Belfry. Even by Christmas when I read it, a lot of it was out of date.

In general I would characterise this book as petty and small-minded. It is full of little digs at the likes of Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, Seve Ballesteros, the Ryder Cup committee, and indeed anyone who has ever had the temerity to disagree with Mark James.

A lot of the irritation I felt when reading this book was down to the writing style and for that some of the criticism must be directed at Martin Hardy, the ghost writer, for failing to do more with the subject matter at hand.

In the end, this is a book with little to say, but what it does say is said badly.