For tennis fans too young to remember the glory days of the 1970s and the early 1980s, High Strung: Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and the Untold Story of Tennis' Fiercest Rivalry is a thoroughly researched guide to an era when the game was on the front pages of the world's sports consciousness in a way it hasn't been since those days.

Players will want to read this book for its many interesting anecdotes and because it may arm them to win drinks at tennis gatherings by betting on either of the following obscure tennis history questions: Who was the youngest Wimbledon winner for over 50 years until Boris Becker's first title in 1985? And, who is the only tennis player in history to win Wimbledon by default?

Right before the Grateful Dead played “Johnny B. Goode,” guitarist Jerry Garcia used to announce, “This is the one that started it all off.” For tennis memoirs, the same can be said about A Handful of Summers by former South African tennis pro Gordon Forbes. A Handful of Summers is a coming of age story set against the cosmopolitan background of the pro tour in the 1950s while it was still segregated between amateurs and pros.

You might not think a 35-page pamphlet could take a reader on a rollercoaster ride with stops that pose questions about death, the nature of time, the mysteries of the male anatomy, the limits of language and whether a truly stellar performance by a ballboy can win back the love of a ball girl.

Among the many fascinating tidbits of tennis history, the reader can glean from The Education of a Tennis Player by Rod Laver with Bud Collins is that accusations of stinginess between top rivals didn’t start with Andre Agassi’s jokes about Pete Sampras being a lousy tipper.

Eleanor Dwight’s story of the life of Jimmy Van Alen, the man who gave tennis the tie-breaker, presents a much more versatile and accomplished figure than I’d expected to encounter. I’m a hardcore tennis fan, sure, but if the only interesting thing Jimmy Van Alen did in his life was to invent the tie-breaker, I might have told Long Island Tennis Magazine readers they could pass on Dwight’s Tie Breaker: Jimmy Van Alen and Tennis in the 20th Century.

First things first ... it’s hard to talk about Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open without touching on the shocking substance abuse revelations in the book.

I have never been a fan of reading encyclopedias. So it was with some trepidation that I opened Randy Walker’s book On This Day in Tennis History. The thought of reading about things that happened in tennis from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 through the years sounded slightly, but only slightly, more fun than curling up with a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.