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What: “The Long Program: Skating Toward Life’s Victories”

Author: Peggy Fleming, with Peter Kaminsky

Publisher: Pocket Books ($24.95)

This generously illustrated, 200-page autobiography traces the life and career of one of America’s earliest skating sweethearts in her most fluid and affirmative style.

Beginning with her childhood in the Bay Area when she discovered skating at age 9, up until last year when she became a grandmother, turned 50 and began her fight against breast cancer, Fleming is adept at delicately broaching awkward, sad and uncomfortable subjects that would make most people wince. She matter-of-factly recalls her father’s drinking and “bad health” habits, her mother’s quick temper and stubborn will, the tragedy that took the lives of 18 members of the U.S. Olympic team and the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan soap opera.

Coaches played a huge part in her athletic career--there were 10 along the way--and a whole chapter is devoted to the late Carlo Fassi, who first watched the teenage Junior National champion skate in Long Beach.

Perhaps the most important hallmark of this book is that it puts Fleming’s career into historical perspective, starting in the late ‘60s when this country dealt with turmoil in Vietnam and two assassinations, yet embraced a graceful, gracious young woman who skated to fame in a homemade chartreuse outfit.

What makes Fleming’s autobiography appealing is her confidence and philosophy toward sports and life: “The real Long Program isn’t about perfection,” she writes. “It’s about being ready for change and welcoming change for the good it can bring. We all fall down, but . . . get up and keep going.”