Popular books in Sports

Title: Leifer: The Golden Age of American Football

No pain, no gain: The most memorable moments since the birth of pro football in America “If you are a sports fan, you have to be a Neil Leifer admirer, for you have been seeing his pictures and they’ve been shaping your impressions and memories for five decades.” —Bob Costas In 1958, journalist Neil Leifer took the picture that remains one of his most famous to this day. The day he got the shot—Alan Ameche’s game-winning “sudden death” touchdown—was Leifer’s 16th birthday. This game, called “the greatest ever played,” signaled football’s emergence as America’s new national pastime; formerly half-empty stadiums welcomed sold-out crowds seemingly overnight, while football surpassed baseball in national television ratings. Starting then, on any given Sunday Leifer was most likely shooting a football game somewhere in America... While best known for his iconic photograph of Muhammad Ali towering over a fallen Sonny Liston, it is his football pictures Leifer considers his best. This collection represents the best of his best, culled from over 10,000 rolls of film on the sport. With an introduction assembled from the best football columns of the era by famed sports columnist Jim Murray, and incisive captions detailing the legendary players, coaches, and games, this volume carries the guts and glory of the game into the end zone.

Author(s): Neil Leifer

ISBN 13: 9783836500302
Pages: 280

Title: Stephen Curry: the Inspiring Story of One of Basketballs Sharpest Shooters

An Amazon Best Seller, Stephen Curry: The Inspiring Story of One of Basketball's Sharpest Shooters, outlines the inspirational story of one of basketball's premier point guards, Stephen Curry. Stephen Curry has had an electrifying basketball career playing in the National Basketball Association. In this Stephen Curry biography, we will learn about how Steph became the star point guard that he is today. Starting first with his childhood and early life, we'll learn about Steph Curry prior to entering the NBA, his time in the NBA, along with his impact on the communities of Davidson College and Golden State. Steph Curry's success is not an accident. It is hard to believe that a player who once was overlooked at every point in his career has made himself such an impactful and influential player to the game of basketball today. Steph Curry has transformed the Golden State Warriors franchise from a lottery-bound team to a perennial contender, spearheading the Warriors to a 2015 NBA Championship over LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Following an MVP season with extraordinary numbers early into the 2015-2016 NBA season, the future is bright for young Curry as he works to lead the Warriors to a back-to-back championship this year alongside his supporting cast of Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Andrew Bogut.

Author(s): Clayton Geoffreys

ISBN 13: 9781499118094
Pages: 72

Title: Greatest Of All Time: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali

GREATEST OF ALL TIME: A TRIBUTE TO MUHAMMAD ALI is a book with the power, courage, depth, creativity, and dazzling energy of its extraordinary subject. Slimmed down from the heavyweight Collector’s Edition, this bantamweight edition is smaller in size, but pulls no punches on its expertise, passion, and insight on The Champ. With thousands of images, including photography, art, and memorabilia and two gatefold sequences, the book pays vivid tribute to The Greatest both in and outside of the ring. Original essays and five decades’ worth of interviews and writing explore the courage, convictions, and extraordinary image-building that made Ali one of the most recognizable and inspirational individuals on the planet, an icon not only as an extraordinary athlete, but also as an impassioned advocate of social justice, interfaith understanding, and peace.

Author(s): Benedikt Taschen

ISBN 13: 9783836520676
Pages: 650

Title: Im Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies

In the aftermath of the Steroid Era that stained the game of baseball, at a time when so many players are so rich and therefore have a sense of entitlement that they haven't earned, ESPN baseball commentator Tim Kurkjian shows readers how ...

Author(s): Tim Kurkjian

ISBN 13: 9781250077936
Pages: 256

This book is in (2) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty

Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player ever. Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player ever. His lifetime batting average is still the highest in history, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don’t tell half of Cobb’s tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: When the Hall of Fame began in 1936, he was the first player voted in. But Cobb was also one of the game’s most controversial characters. He got in a lot of fights, on and off the field, and was often accused of being overly aggressive. Even his supporters acknowledged that he was a fierce competitor, but he was also widely admired. After his death in 1961, however, his reputation morphed into that of a virulent racist who also hated children and women, and was in turn hated by his peers. How did this happen? Who is the real Ty Cobb? Setting the record straight, Charles Leerhsen pushed aside the myths, traveled to Georgia and Detroit, and re-traced Cobb’s journey from the shy son of a professor and state senator who was progressive on race for his time to America’s first true sports celebrity. The result is a “noble [and] convincing” (The New York Times Book Review) biography that is “groundbreaking, thorough, and compelling…The most complete, well-researched, and thorough treatment that has ever been written”

Author(s): Charles Leerhsen

ISBN 13: 9781451645798
Pages: 464

Title: Game 7, 1986: Failure and Triumph in the Biggest Game of My Life

Every little kid who's ever taken the mound in Little League dreams of someday getting the ball for Game Seven of the World Series. Ron Darling got to live that dream - only it didn't go exactly as planned. In New York Times bestselling Game 7, 1986, the award-winning baseball analyst looks back at what might have been a signature moment in his career, and reflects on the ways professional athletes must sometimes shoulder a personal disappointment as their teams find a way to win. Published to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the 1986 New York Mets championship season, Darling's book will break down one of baseball's great "forgotten" games - a game that stands as a thrilling, telling, and tantalizing exclamation point to one of the best-remembered seasons in Major League Baseball history. Working once again with New York Times best-selling collaborator Daniel Paisner, who teamed with the former All-Star pitcher on his acclaimed 2009 memoir, "The Complete Game," Darling offers a book for the thinking baseball fan, a chance to reflect on what it means to compete at the game's highest level, with everything on the line.

Author(s): Ron Darling

ISBN 13: 9781250069191
Pages: 256

Title: The Boys in the Boat

Traces the story of an American rowing team from the University of Washington that defeated elite rivals at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, sharing the experiences of such contributors as their enigmatic coach, a visionary boat builder and a ...

Author(s): Daniel Brown

ISBN 13: 9780143125471
Pages: 404

This book is in (2) other book lists, learn more.

Title: American Pharoah

History was made at the 2015 Belmont Stakes when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown, the first since Affirmed in 1978.

Author(s): Joe Drape

ISBN 13: 9780316268844
Pages: 256

This book is in (2) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero

No player in the history of baseball has left such an indelible mark on the game as San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds. In his twenty-year career, Bonds has amassed an unprecedented seven MVP awards, eight Gold Gloves, and more than seven hundred home runs, an impressive assortment of feats that has earned him consideration as one of the greatest players the game has ever seen. Equally deserved, however, is his reputation as an insufferable braggart, whose mythical home runs are rivaled only by his legendary ego. From his staggering ability and fabled pedigree (father Bobby played outfield for the Giants; cousin Reggie Jackson and godfather Willie Mays are both Hall of Famers) to his well-documented run-ins with teammates and the persistent allegations of steroid use, Bonds inspires a like amount of passion from both sides of the fence. For many, Bonds belongs beside Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron in baseball's holy trinity; for others, he embodies all that is wrong with the modern athlete: aloof; arrogant; alienated. In Love Me, Hate Me, author Jeff Pearlman offers a searing and insightful look into one of the most divisive athletes of our time. Drawing on more than five hundred interviews -- with former and current teammates, opponents, managers, trainers, friends, and outspoken critics and unapologetic supporters alike -- Pearlman reveals, for the first time, a wonderfully nuanced portrait of a prodigiously talented and immensely flawed American icon whose controversial run at baseball immortality forever changed the way we look at our sports heroes.

Author(s): Jeff Pearlman

ISBN 13: 9780060797539
Pages: 384

Title: The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports

Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times the salary of all NFL quarterbacks combined. Pitchers are the lifeblood of the sport, the ones who win championships, but today they face an epidemic unlike any baseball has ever seen. One tiny ligament in the elbow keeps snapping and sending teenagers and major leaguers alike to undergo surgery, an issue the baseball establishment ignored for decades. For three years, Jeff Passan, the lead baseball columnist for Yahoo Sports, has traveled the world to better understand the mechanics of the arm and its place in the sport’s past, present, and future. He got the inside story of how the Chicago Cubs decided to spend $155 million on one pitcher. He sat down for a rare interview with Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, whose career ended at 30 because of an arm injury. He went to Japan to understand how another baseball-obsessed nation deals with this crisis. And he followed two major league pitchers as they returned from Tommy John surgery, the revolutionary procedure named for the former All-Star who first underwent it more than 40 years ago. Passan discovered a culture that struggles to prevent arm injuries and lacks the support for the changes necessary to do so. He explains that without a drastic shift in how baseball thinks about its talent, another generation of pitchers will fall prey to the same problem that vexes the current one. Equal parts medical thriller and cautionary tale, The Arm is a searing exploration of baseball’s most valuable commodity and the redemption that can be found in one fragile and mysterious limb.

Author(s): Jeff Passan

ISBN 13: 9780062400369
Pages: 368

This book is in (3) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Summer of 49

With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize–winningauthor David Halberstam returns us to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat. The year was 1949, and a war-weary nation turned from the battlefields to the ball fields in search of new heroes. It was a summer that marked the beginning of a sports rivalry unequaled in the annals of athletic competition. The awesome New York Yankees and the indomitable Boston Red Sox were fighting for supremacy of baseball's American League, and an aging Joe DiMaggio and a brash, headstrong hitting phenomenon named Ted Williams led their respective teams in a classic pennant duel of almost mythic proportions—one that would be decided in an explosive head-to-head confrontation on the last day of the season.

Author(s): David Halberstam

ISBN 13: 9780060884260
Pages: 384

Title: House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge

"Tough, straight, upsetting, and strangely beautiful. One of the best sports autobiographies I've ever read. It comes from the heart." —Stephen King Eclipsing the traditional sports memoir, House of Nails, by former world champion, multimillionaire entrepreneur, and imprisoned felon Lenny Dykstra, spins a tragicomic tale of Shakespearean proportions -- a relentlessly entertaining American epic that careens between the heights and the abyss. Nicknamed "Nails" for his hustle and grit, Lenny approached the game of baseball -- and life -- with mythic intensity. During his decade in the majors as a center fielder for the legendary 1980s Mets and the 1990s Phillies, he was named to three All-Star teams and played in two of the most memorable World Series of the modern era. An overachiever known for his clutch hits, high on-base percentage, and aggressive defense, Lenny was later identified by his former minor-league roommate Billy Beane as the prototypical "Moneyball" player in Michael Lewis's bestseller. Tobacco-stained, steroid-powered, and booze-and-drug-fueled, Nails also defined a notorious era of excess in baseball. Then came a second act no novelist could plausibly conjure: After retiring, Dykstra became a celebrated business mogul and investment guru. Touted as "one of the great ones" by CNBC's Jim Cramer, he became "baseball's most improbable post-career success story" (The New Yorker), purchasing a $17.5-million mansion and traveling the world by private jet. But when the economy imploded in 2008, Lenny lost everything. Then the feds moved in: convicted of bankruptcy fraud (unjustly, he contends), Lenny served two and a half harrowing years in prison, where he was the victim of a savage beating by prison guards that knocked out his front teeth. The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, channeling the bewildered fascination of many observers, declared that Lenny's outrageous rise and spectactular fall was "the greatest story that I have ever seen in my lifetime." Now, for the first time, Lenny tells all about his tumultuous career, from battling through crippling pain to steroid use and drug addiction, to a life of indulgence and excess, then, an epic plunge and the long road back to redemption. Was Lenny's hard-charging, risk-it-all nature responsible for his success in baseball and business and his precipitous fall from grace? What lessons, if any, has he learned now that he has had time to think and reflect? Hilarious, unflinchingly honest, and irresistibly readable, House of Nails makes no apologies and leaves nothing left unsaid.

Author(s): Lenny Dykstra

ISBN 13: 9780062407368
Pages: 352

Title: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more--including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster. By writing Into Thin Air, Krakauer may have hoped to exorcise some of his own demons and lay to rest some of the painful questions that still surround the event. He takes great pains to provide a balanced picture of the people and events he witnessed and gives due credit to the tireless and dedicated Sherpas. He also avoids blasting easy targets such as Sandy Pittman, the wealthy socialite who brought an espresso maker along on the expedition. Krakauer's highly personal inquiry into the catastrophe provides a great deal of insight into what went wrong. But for Krakauer himself, further interviews and investigations only lead him to the conclusion that his perceived failures were directly responsible for a fellow climber's death. Clearly, Krakauer remains haunted by the disaster, and although he relates a number of incidents in which he acted selflessly and even heroically, he seems unable to view those instances objectively. In the end, despite his evenhanded and even generous assessment of others' actions, he reserves a full measure of vitriol for himself. This updated trade paperback edition of Into Thin Air includes an extensive new postscript that sheds fascinating light on the acrimonious debate that flared between Krakauer and Everest guide Anatoli Boukreev in the wake of the tragedy. "I have no doubt that Boukreev's intentions were good on summit day," writes Krakauer in the postscript, dated August 1999. "What disturbs me, though, was Boukreev's refusal to acknowledge the possibility that he made even a single poor decision. Never did he indicate that perhaps it wasn't the best choice to climb without gas or go down ahead of his clients." As usual, Krakauer supports his points with dogged research and a good dose of humility. But rather than continue the heated discourse that has raged since Into Thin Air's denouncement of guide Boukreev, Krakauer's tone is conciliatory; he points most of his criticism at G. Weston De Walt, who coauthored The Climb, Boukreev's version of events. And in a touching conclusion, Krakauer recounts his last conversation with the late Boukreev, in which the two weathered climbers agreed to disagree about certain points. Krakauer had great hopes to patch things up with Boukreev, but the Russian later died in an avalanche on another Himalayan peak, Annapurna I. In 1999, Krakauer received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters--a prestigious prize intended "to honor writers of exceptional accomplishment." According to the Academy's citation, "Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer. His account of an ascent of Mount Everest has led to a general reevaluation of climbing and of the commercialization of what was once a romantic, solitary sport; while his account of the life and death of Christopher McCandless, who died of starvation after challenging the Alaskan wilderness, delves even more deeply and disturbingly into the fascination of nature and the devastating effects of its lure on a young and curious mind.

Author(s): Jon Krakauer

ISBN 13: 9780385494786
Pages: 368

This book is in (4) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Michael Jordan: The Life

The definitive biography of the most legendary basketball player of all time. Drawing on personal relationships with Jordan's coaches; countless interviews with friends, teammates, family members, and Jordan himself; and decades in the trenches covering Jordan in college and the pros, Roland Lazenby provides the first truly definitive study of Jordan: the player, the icon, and the man. When most people think of Michael Jordan, they think of the incredible moments so ingrained in basketball history that they have their own names: The Shrug, The Shot, The Flu Game. But for all his greatness, there's also a dark side to Jordan: a ruthless competitor, a gambler. There's never been a biography that balanced these personas-until now.

Author(s): Roland Lazenby

ISBN 13: 9780316194761
Pages: 720