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By Liza Horan

Millions of fans have been entranced with Monica Seles ever since she held aloft the silver Coupe Suzanne Lenglen in 1990. She was 16 years old and had just beaten top-seeded Steffi Graf in straight sets. Becoming the youngest winner at Roland Garros was just one of the records she would set. The win would be the first of eight major singles titles. She'd go on to amass 53 singles and six doubles trophies on the WTA Tour, and represent the United States in Fed Cup and Olympic play. For 13 consecutive years—except one—Seles finished in the Top 10. Conspicuously absent from her world-class pro tennis resume is 1994.

That infamous  year—when a psychotic fan of Graf lunged to the sideline of the court to sink a knife into the back of the 19-year-old Seles as she rested on a changeover in a quarterfinal match at the German Open in Hamburg—would stand alone in many ways. The WTA Tour suspended Seles' ranking and protected it until she decided to compete again. Twenty-seven months later, Seles stepped out on court again, sharing the No. 1 ranking with Graf.

The incident in 1994 forever changed both Seles and pro tennis, as player security became a priority.

She wrote about it in her 1996 book, "From Fear to Victory," which chronicled the emotions she experienced from the stabbing and how she managed to compete again. But that wasn't the whole story.

Now, 15 years later, fans are getting the real dope from a 35-year-old woman with perspective, confidence and the guts to tell her story in a way that services others. "Getting a Grip: On My  Body, My Mind, My Self," published by Avery, hits book stores today.

In the Introduction, Seles writes, "Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different results. I wish I'd paid better attention to those words. When I was 19 years old, my life was turned upside down and for the next 10 years I was caught in the grip of that kind of madness."

Binge-eating*.

In this excruciatingly honest and uplifting biography, Seles talks about her obsessions to be skinny. As driven a competition she was to hoist tennis trophies, that goal was overshadowed by her constant heart-, mind- and gut-wrenching efforts to be thin. Among the details, are her admission how the benefits of six hours of working out could be obliterated by a 20-minute chowdown.

"The pounds piled on until I'd gone up four sizes and 40 pounds," she writes. "The bigger I got, the smaller I felt as a person."

In this book, Seles has dropped her guard and let us in. We learn she is human and that even at the heights of her pro tennis days, she was fighting herself. It makes her story all the more accessible and compelling.

Tennis fans will love the behind-the-scenes details that take you inside the locker room at Wimbledon and other tournaments, and on court with legends like Nick Bollettieri, Chris Evert, and Gabriela Sabatini, and totally off court with Johnny Carson and Axl Rose. Readers will learn what went through Seles' mind as she walked along the Great Wall of China.

"Getting a Grip" is an intriguing read for those who enjoy tennis—or don't. It's a story of a girl (undaunted to chase her dream) who becomes a teenager (with the requisite naivete of invincibility), then grows into a woman of spectactular strength and spirit. This is a coming-of-age story that can resonate with everyone.

*Some press reports call Seles' condition bulimia, but she and her publisher do not identify her struggle as that disease; perhaps it was not formally diagnosed. They name binge-eating and depression as the root of her struggle.