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What: “The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics” by David Wallechinsky.

Price: $14.95 (Overlook Press).

The three most asked questions by American media at next month’s Winter Games in Nagano:

“Do you speak English?”

“What exactly are we eating here again?”

“Anybody got a copy of Wallechinsky?”

David Wallechinsky’s series of Olympic reference books have been de rigueur in press rooms at every Olympics since 1984, when the first edition was printed, having bailed out countless journalists under the crunch of deadline and in desperate need for a pithy anecdote about the 1948 men’s figure skating competition at St. Moritz.

But anyone with an interest in the Winter Olympics and their history will appreciate this compendium of statistics augmented by such little-known factual tidbits as Eleanor Roosevelt once taking a run down the bobsled course at the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics.

The numbers are meticulous, but the strength of this book lies in Wallechinsky’s eye for quirky detail and his ability to tell a good story in short time. “The Complete Book of the Olympics,” now in its sixth printing, is approaching the status of Bud Greenspan’s films--essential to the tradition of Olympic record-keeping and story-telling.