Heroes Not of Our Time. Kharlamov, Tarasov, Yashin, Beskov in Stories of Their Relatives, Friends, and Students

Millions of lines have been written about each of the four great heroes of this book – Valery Kharlamov, Anatoly Tarasov, Lev Yashin, and Konstantin Beskov. However, the author of "Heroes Not of Our Time", renowned sports journalist and writer Igor Rabiner, took a different path that will allow you to see these individuals in a new light. Drawing from his conversations with Kharlamov's sister, Tarasov's daughter, and the wives of Yashin and Beskov, he has compiled stories about them from their relatives, friends, colleagues, and students. There is no place for pompous glorification or low-grade "yellow journalism"; instead, there are hundreds of stories that create four substantial collective portraits. Before you are people, not monuments, and their fates contain as many dramas, if not tragedies, as victories. They have long left us, but in this book, they come alive in all the brightness, scale, and often contradictions of their personalities.