Showing titles in Sports History

Seventy-four minutes of laughter, anecdotes, and memories from cricket's best-loved umpire. Now collected for the first time in one audiobook, here are brilliant highlights from Dickie Bird's three best-selling recordings: My Autobiography, White Cap and Bails, and An Evening with Dickie Bird...

Bloomsbury presents Black Boots and Football Pinks written and read by Daniel Gray. A collection of lyrical sweet-nothings whispered to old-fashioned wingers, ramshackle dugouts, multiple cup replays and 47 other wonders that made us love football. Goalkeepers in trousers, proper division names...

In 1990, though no one knew it then, a fearless group of players changed the sport of soccer in the United States forever. Young, bronzed, and mulletted, they were America’s finest athletes in a sport that America loved to hate. Even sportswriters rooted against them. Yet this team defied massive odds and qualified for the World Cup, making possible America’s current obsession with the world’s most popular game. New Kids in the World Cup is the origin story of modern American soccer.

No man has affected more runners in more ways than Bill Bowerman. During his 24-year tenure as track coach at the University of Oregon, he won four national team titles and his athletes set 13 world and 22 American records. He also ignited the jogging boom, invented the waffle-sole running shoe that helped establish Nike, and coached the US track and field team at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and storm troopers looming, an African-American son of sharecroppers set three world records and won an unprecedented four gold medals, single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics Games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man.

For most of the 20th century, the “Mr. America” image epitomized muscular manhood. From humble beginnings in 1939 at a small gym in Schenectady, New York, the Mr. America Contest became the world’s premier bodybuilding event over the next 30 years. Interviewing nearly one hundred major figures in the physical culture movement (including 25 Mr. Americas) and incorporating copious printed and manuscript sources, John D. Fair has created the definitive study of this iconic phenomenon.

James J. Braddock, dubbed “Cinderella Man” by Damon Runyon, was a once promising light heavyweight for whom a string of losses in the ring and a broken right hand happened to coincide with the Great Crash. With one good hand, Braddock was forced to labor on the docks of Hoboken. Only his...

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s now time for the main event of book publishing. Steeped in history, the blue ribbon division has experienced some of the most awe-inspiring and exciting moments in sports. Today, in these very pages, we’ll pit the twenty greatest heavyweight boxers head-to-head to see who comes out on top. There will be no ducking tonight. Each warrior will fight the other in a fantasy league in some of the most exciting pugilistic combat to ever be written.

Why did Michael Jordan retire at the peak of his powers? What actually caused the Blackout at the Super Bowl? Was the Battle of the Sexes fixed by the Mob? Did Tom Brady really admit to taking air out of his reputation? This eight-part podcast peels back the shroud surrounding some of the most unbelievable stories in the history of sports.

Professional cycling has been around for more than 100 years, more than enough time for nearly anything imaginable to have happened. Whether it's the Tour de France racer who thought the worst thing that could happen to him was being forced to wear the Yellow Jersey, or the communist team director who insisted, on a whim, that a rider have a toe amputated or the fit of jealousy that started the Giro d'Italia, the sport has an endless supply of examples of human folly.

Bloomsbury presents Warming Up by Madeleine Orr, read by Deborah McBride. “Couldn’t be a bolder, more forthright SOS for sport” The Observer The world of sport has a new opponent: climate change. In recent years, a world championship marathon was held at midnight to avoid the blistering...

The official autobiography of Wasim Akram, the 'Sultan of Swing', one of the greatest fast bowlers in the history of cricket. For twenty years, Wasim Akram let his cricket do the talking - with his electrifying left-arm pace, his explosive striking as a batsman, and his inspirational leadership...

In Tales from Augusta’s Fairways, Jim Hawkins, who covered his first Masters in 1968, takes listeners behind the high, thick hedges of Augusta National Golf Club for an intimate, entertaining glimpse of the classic cathedral that is home to golf’s most enchanting event. Tales from Augusta’s Fairways takes an inside look at the greats, the amateurs, and the underdogs who have made the Masters the most revered, prestigious golf tournament in the world.

There have been few seasons by a professional sports team as bad as the New York Islanders' inaugural 1972-73 season. However, the lessons learned on and off the ice served as a crucial building block for the team's quick turnaround. And eventual, dynasty. 'Hapless Islanders' is the first-ever book to thoroughly study this era of the team, mixing brand new interviews with those directly involved, along with archival material. And also, serving as a study of the rough n' tough playing style of the NHL at the time, Long Island history, plus, the early '70s in general.

Bill Frindall, or Bearders, is well known to cricket fans from Test Match Special. Bearders took over the scoring for Test Match Special in June 1966, at the First Test against West Indies at Old Trafford. He was nicknamed the Bearded Wonder by Brian Johnston because of his encyclopedic...

Bloomsbury presents The Men Who Raised the Bar by Chris Waters, read by David Thorpe. Few sporting records capture the imagination quite like that of the highest individual score in Test cricket. It is the blue riband record of batting achievement, the ultimate statement of stamina and skill...

Revered as the most prestigious tournament in golf, the Masters commands international attention, even among nongolfers. David Sowell returns to Augusta now with the third edition of The Masters, adding more history and updating each hole with additional stories of greatness and tales of woe for a new generation of golfers led by Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Patrick Reed, as well as from an older guard represented by Bubba Watson, Adam Scott, and Sergio Garcia. The legends of the Masters are in full force in this lively look at America's golf classic.

With a Foreword by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe Available once again for a new generation, the first volume in Arthur Ashe’s epic trilogy that chronicles the remarkable legacy of Black athletes in the United States—a major addition to our understanding of American history and the fulfillment of...

In Boston, sports loyalty—and passion—runs deep. But for much of the twentieth century, the records of the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots were mixed, with some victories but also heartbreaking losses and endless talk of curses. And then, things changed. In the twenty-first century, Boston became the hub of the sports universe.

In the bestselling tradition ofthe The Eighty-Dollar Champion, the propulsive, inspiring Cinderella story of Stymie, an unwanted Thoroughbred, and Hirsch Jacobs, the once dirt-poor trainer who bought the colt on the cheap and molded him into the most popular horse of his time and the richest...