Do yourself a favor. The moment you grab a copy of the new The Ecstasy of Defeat: Sports Reporting at Its Finest by the Editors of the Onion – a collection of the best articles Onion Sports has to offer – flip immediately to the Forward, and then the Acknowledgements.

You’ll have plenty of time for fantastic Onion Sports pieces like “Brett Favre Demands Trade to 1996 Packers,” and “Barry Bonds Took Steroids, Reports Everyone Who Has Ever Watched Baseball” – just make sure you stretch out first with the Forward by Anabolic Steroids. Follow the exhilarating journey of this little performance-enhancer as it conquers the World Series, horse races and little league championships. “They say my time has come and gone, a brief violent explosion of human potential and shattered records, of strained connective tissue and ever-thicker necks, of towering home runs and unstoppable defense linemen,” explains Steroids. “Not a bad career for a simple synthetic hormone with relatively humble aspirations.”

The Ecstasy of Defeat is the first book presented by Onion Sports – and it has been a long time coming explains head writer and associate editor, Seth Reiss. “We’ve been working hard at it for a while,” Reiss says. “And it’s kind of cool to see the content that the editors like – and want to put in – all in one package.”

Reiss actually got his start at The Onion as a writer for Onion Sports. Now, aside from editing riffs on current events, Reiss contributes to McSweeney's, and performs in his sketch comedy group Pangea 3000. (FYI, Pangea 3000 are Sound of Young America alums and Reiss is a loyal donor). As far as The Ecstasy of Defeat goes, Reiss has few qualms about kicking the pedestal out from under major sports figures. “They’re so larger than life that it’s already so silly anyway, so its kind of funny to just bring them down a little bit,” Reiss says. “Even if a sports figure is known for being really nice, it’s funny to make him do really awful things.”

Reiss says he is a sports fan, “[b]ut I feel like my in-depth knowledge ends at about 1998.” Reiss grew up in Connellsville, Pennsylvania – a sports heavy environment just 45 minutes south of Pittsburgh – where football, hockey and high school wrestling were all huge. When asked if he was ever an athlete, Reiss answers, “I played basketball in 9th grade, and I played golf throughout high school, but overall no,” he says with a laugh.

Speaking of back home – Reiss contemplates what Ecstasy of Defeat story his mom might like best, or rather, what he might show off to convince mom her son is a funny human being. Reiss settles on “Kobe Bryant Scores 25 In Holy Shit We Elected A Black President” and maybe “Mr. Met Having Trouble Sleeping in New Home.” With Dad? “It’s even worse – he thinks I’m less funny than my mom,” Reiss says. “Anything that has to do with Pittsburgh or the Steelers he’ll probably like.” Reiss decides upon “Michael Vick Fails To Inspire Team With ‘Great’ Dogfighting Story.”

The sports world is always a whirring beehive of events and scandals, and now Ecstasy of Defeat has been added to the mix. “People are so passionate about their teams and their favorite players that it really is always a good time for sports,” Reiss says. “Because to some people sports is one of the most important things in the world.”

Well said.

This review and interview was created by intrepid MaxFun reporter Lauren Cusimano.

There is so much terrific alumni news this week that I've had to break it apart by genre! Here's all the latest excitement from TSOYA alums in the publishing world:

• The Oakland Museum of California will mount an exhibit of the works of cartoonist Daniel Clowes in April 2012. That same month, Abrams ComicsArts will publish the first monograph on Clowes entitled The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist. The book will include essays by other TSOYA alums, including Chip Kidd, and will tie into an international touring retrospective of Clowes' work that will launch from the Oakland exhibition.
• Jim Lehrer has hosted eleven presidential debates. Now, he has written a book to share his unique insider perspective on the experience. Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain was released by Random House last week.
• Walter Mosley's novels about private investigator Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins will soon be fashioned into a television series for NBC called "Easy Rawlins". Mosley will be personally involved in the adaptation.
• Want more proof that we have excellent taste in reading material? Two TSOYA alums are finalists for this year's Thurber prize: David Rakoff for his wonderful essay collection Half Empty (which just came out in paperback last week) and Mike Birbiglia for Sleepwalk with Me: and Other Painfully True Stories. The winner will be announced on Monday, October 3rd at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City where James Thurber once lived.
• Finally, multi-talented Emmy host Jane Lynch released her memoir Happy Accidents last week.

Aha! Fictional character Alan Partridge will soon release an "autobiography" recounting the many sad, funny and ridiculous adventures surrounding his increasingly desperate efforts to find success as a television and radio chat show host. Bearing the suitably immodest title of I, Partridge: We Need to Talk about Alan, the book was actually written by Partridge's creators, actor Steve Coogan and director Armando Iannucci, and will be released on September 29th.

Here's a clip of Coogan, in character as Partridge, discussing the book.

If you're involved in independent media making of any kind, this piece by Cory Doctorow is worth your time. It's about books - Doctorow, if you don't know, is a writer by trade - but it's also about what independent media really means for the creator.

Doctorow asks writers considering self-publishing to ask themselves the question "why should anyone care?" It's an important one, and one that's not asked enough. So often, we get so tied up in our own passions, the ones that drove us to create in the first place, that we forget to consider what our audience might want.

That should be an essential question when you create: how will this excite people enough that they will want it? Want it so much that they'll pay for it, or seek it out when it's inconvenient? Am I, as a creator, willing to pave that road?

So yeah: worth your time.