East Germany was once a power in international sports. Its athletes established world records and set new standards for athletic performance. But many people correctly suspected that these achievements were the result of the use of steroids and other illegal substances. Ungerleider, director of a nonprofit research corporation that specializes in substance abuse prevention, looks into the doping of athletes and the subsequent rise of the East German sports empire. He successfully uses trial records and an athlete's testimony to trace the use of steroids in state-sponsored training programs. This intriguing book captures the reader's attention, but at times the narrative becomes melodramatic. Nevertheless, Ungerleider does an excellent job of showing the extreme steps that political leaders will take to achieve glory in sports and how young, na ve athletes are negatively affected in this process.

—Thomas A. Auger, Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta