Even before Harding hit Kerrigan, thousands of Canadians were glued to sets and frozen to bleachers, watching Stojko, Chouinard, and Philippe Candeloro, above, spinning around the ice all over the world. And given the relatively recent popularity of the sport, Key Porter has thoughtfully put together a catch-up primer in the form of Skate: 100 Years of Figure Skating by Steve Milton. With glossaries and chronologies appended, scads of pictures old, new, and newer, and a sort of melodrama not usually seen in sport (vicious gossip, romance, death, even a disastrous 1961 plane crash that killed an entire U.S. team), the book is both informative and surprisingly gripping.