On the 50th anniversary of American Track and Field icon Steve Prefontaine's tragic death comes an essential reappraisal of his life and legacy, a powerful work of narrative history exploring the forces and psychology that made Prefontaine great and separating the man from the myths. In the fifty years since his tragic death in a car crash, Steve Prefontaine has towered over American distance running. One of the most recognizable and charismatic figures to ever run competitively in the United States, Prefontaine has endured as a source of inspiration and fascination - a talent who presaged the American running boom of the late 1970s and helped put Nike on the map as the brand's first celebrity-athlete face.Now on the anniversary of his untimely death, author Brendan O'Meara, host of the Creative Nonfiction podcast, offers a fresh, definitive retelling of Prefontaine's life, revisiting one of the most enigmatic figures in American sports with a twenty-first-century lens.
Mariner Books
|
9780063348967
|
Hardcover
Petty vs. Pearson
By Hembree, Mike
Get the detailed inside story on the legendary rivalry that helped propel NASCAR from regional curiosity to national phenomenon.The battle for NASCAR dominance was never more pronounced than when Richard Petty and David Pearson met on the track. In 551 head-to-head races between 1960 and 1986, they finished one-two an astounding 63 times (Pearson won 33, Petty 30) . Each showdown attracted more media attention and new fans, helping the sport to evolve evermore rapidly.Petty vs. Pearson is the only book to examine this storied relationship, beginning with their pre-Winston Cup careers. Award-winning motorsports journalist Mike Hembree details:The drivers' backgrounds - Petty earning his way up through a racing dynasty led by his father Lee; Pearson honing his skills as a DIY racer on local South Carolina dirt tracks Their first meeting in a Cup event, in 1960The memorable battles, including their legendary wild finish at the 1976 Daytona 500Parallel careers that coincided with seismic changes to NASCAR: the advent of superspeedways, the "aero wars," the injection of corporate money, and a new generation of star drivers in the 1980sWhile their rivalry produced amazing finishes and tense moments, Petty and Pearson were friends throughout.
Motorbooks
|
9780760393178
|
Hardcover
My Beautiful Sisters
By Popal, Khalida
Argo meets The Bookseller of Kabul in this incredible memoir from the Afghan women's soccer pioneer turned activist and feminist icon who has helped save more than 350 female soccer players from the dangerous rule of the Taliban. "Riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important . . . an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere." - MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Nobel Peace Prize laureateA story of survival, sisterhood and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban. In August 2021, Kabul fell under the control of the Taliban, a militant political and fundamentalist religious faction. For Khalida Popal, it signaled the beginning of the most important battle of an already extraordinary young life - to get female soccer players out of a city where they faced imminent threat of execution simply for playing sports.
Citadel Press
|
9780806544526
|
Hardcover
The Whiz Kids
By Snelling, Dennis
Before the 1950 World Series, the Philadelphia Phillies were infamous for a record-breaking lack of achievement that dated from their conception in 1883 through the 1940s. When twenty-eight-year-old Robert Carpenter Jr. took over in 1944, the Phillies had won only a single National League title in more than sixty years. For the next five years, Carpenter and the newly hired general manager, Herb Pennock, would overhaul the team’s operations, building a farm system from scratch and spending a fortune on young talent to build a team that would gain immense popularity and finally bring a National League pennant in 1950.
Nicknamed the “Whiz Kids” because they had so many players under thirty, the team caught lightning in a bottle for one season. Although they lost the World Series to the New York Yankees, the team became legendary in Philadelphia and beyond. The Whiz Kids is about a team that shocked everyone by winning, and then shocked everyone by never winning again. It includes a cast of characters and unusual storylines: a first baseman targeted for murder by a woman he had never met; a young catcher from Nebraska, Richie Ashburn, who became a Hall of Fame center fielder and later voice of the team for nearly three decades; a left fielder who lived and played in the shadow of his legendary father, then inspired Ernest Hemingway with the most legendary swing of a bat in franchise history; and a thirty-three-year-old bespectacled relief pitcher who won the Most Valuable Player Award with an undertaker as his personal pitching coach. The team succeeded under the watchful eye of its young owner, whose father handed him the team, and a college professor manager, only to see it slowly crumble as the slowest in the National League to integrate.
The Whiz Kids recounts the history of a team that, though hand-built to be champions, fell short—yet remains legendary anyway.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781496242686
|
Live Life Like a Kung Fu Master
By Moy, William
Live Life Like a Kung Fu Master is William Moy’s personal invitation to become your teacher or “sifu,” as he presents over twenty attributes/techniques that will contribute to living a life made better by possessing Kung Fu. Attributes such as balance, structure, distance awareness, relaxation and traveling the shortest route between two points are presented both in terms of self-defense and in making an impact on your daily life—at home, school, work, business and social encounters. The text also features positional sketches drawn by William, as well as links to a number of videos in which William demonstrates physical techniques for students to model.
William is joined on this literary Kung Fu journey by this long-time student and disciple, multi-award-winning author Paul Volponi. In turn, the co-authors are joined by several renowned martial artists, including Sammo Huang, Karen Sheperd, Grandmaster Tak Wah Eng, Grandmaster Doc-Fei Wong and Sifu Leo Imamura. A score of contributors such as basketball Hall of Famer Dave Cowens, two-time Olympic Gold medalist Kayla Harrison, glass-ceiling breaking baseball pitcher Ila Borders, famed tightrope walker Denis Josselin and World Scrabble Champion Joel Wapnick discuss how the attributes of Kung Fu relate to their many successes.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781510781252
|
Champion Mindset
By Mouratoglou, Patrick
From legendary tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou comes a motivational and inspirational guide to help readers achieve new success in any endeavor. Superstar coach Patrick Mouratoglou knows what it takes to win. An international icon in the world of tennis, he coached Serena Williams for a decade at the height of her career. Now he currently coaches four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka and has worked with numerous top players over the years, including Holger Rune, Coco Gauff, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and many more. In Champion Mindset, Mouratoglou distills his lifetime of coaching excellence into ten commandments applicable to achieving success in all aspects of life, not just the court. Mouratoglou's emphasis on coaching the player's mindset is what makes him singularly successful as a tennis coach and effective in helping the rest of us reach our goals.
Workman Publishing Company
|
9781523527878
|
Hardcover
Uncommon Favor
By Staley, Dawn
For the first time, Dawn Staley shares her inspiring life story.A three-time Olympic Gold medalist, six-time WNBA All-Star, and the first person to win the Naismith College Player of the Year award as both a player and coach, Staley has shattered expectations at every level of the game. While her name resonates with both longtime WNBA fans and newcomers, she has kept her personal life private. Uncommon Favor reveals the journey that led to Staley's success, including the challenges she faced. From dealing with sexism on the court to feeling isolated in new environments, Staley honed her skills and learned valuable life lessons about mental fortitude and maturity that have grounded her throughout her career. Beginning with her humble origins on the North Philadelphia basketball court and her rise to national fame at the University of Virginia - where she led her team to three Final Fours - Staley recounts the key moments that shaped her winning mindset.
Atria/Black Privilege Publishing
|
9781668023365
|
Hardcover
Gamechangers and Rainmakers
By Stubley, David
Starting in the playing fields of Harrow, the book moves swiftly into the 1960s and on to 1980, by which time the Olympics had become toxic and English football was in trouble. We learn about the rainmakers who turned the fortunes of both around.
In 1984, sports marketing soared to new heights with the success of the LA Olympics, the NFL, Nike and the impact of Michael Jordan and Bernie Ecclestone. The book explores what happened next, with the launch of the Premier League, the Champions League and Sky. In the new millennium we discover how fans got hooked on videogames and online gambling, while emerging nations wanted to host leading sports events and overseas investors sought to buy football clubs. The author reveals how this firehose of money led to rogue behavior by some, and argues this is an industry that needs to reset if it wants to keep younger fans interested.
The Front Runner
By O'meara, Brendan
On the 50th anniversary of American Track and Field icon Steve Prefontaine's tragic death comes an essential reappraisal of his life and legacy, a powerful work of narrative history exploring the forces and psychology that made Prefontaine great and separating the man from the myths. In the fifty years since his tragic death in a car crash, Steve Prefontaine has towered over American distance running. One of the most recognizable and charismatic figures to ever run competitively in the United States, Prefontaine has endured as a source of inspiration and fascination - a talent who presaged the American running boom of the late 1970s and helped put Nike on the map as the brand's first celebrity-athlete face.Now on the anniversary of his untimely death, author Brendan O'Meara, host of the Creative Nonfiction podcast, offers a fresh, definitive retelling of Prefontaine's life, revisiting one of the most enigmatic figures in American sports with a twenty-first-century lens.
Petty vs. Pearson
By Hembree, Mike
Get the detailed inside story on the legendary rivalry that helped propel NASCAR from regional curiosity to national phenomenon.The battle for NASCAR dominance was never more pronounced than when Richard Petty and David Pearson met on the track. In 551 head-to-head races between 1960 and 1986, they finished one-two an astounding 63 times (Pearson won 33, Petty 30) . Each showdown attracted more media attention and new fans, helping the sport to evolve evermore rapidly.Petty vs. Pearson is the only book to examine this storied relationship, beginning with their pre-Winston Cup careers. Award-winning motorsports journalist Mike Hembree details:The drivers' backgrounds - Petty earning his way up through a racing dynasty led by his father Lee; Pearson honing his skills as a DIY racer on local South Carolina dirt tracks Their first meeting in a Cup event, in 1960The memorable battles, including their legendary wild finish at the 1976 Daytona 500Parallel careers that coincided with seismic changes to NASCAR: the advent of superspeedways, the "aero wars," the injection of corporate money, and a new generation of star drivers in the 1980sWhile their rivalry produced amazing finishes and tense moments, Petty and Pearson were friends throughout.
My Beautiful Sisters
By Popal, Khalida
Argo meets The Bookseller of Kabul in this incredible memoir from the Afghan women's soccer pioneer turned activist and feminist icon who has helped save more than 350 female soccer players from the dangerous rule of the Taliban. "Riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important . . . an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere." - MALALA YOUSAFZAI, Nobel Peace Prize laureateA story of survival, sisterhood and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban. In August 2021, Kabul fell under the control of the Taliban, a militant political and fundamentalist religious faction. For Khalida Popal, it signaled the beginning of the most important battle of an already extraordinary young life - to get female soccer players out of a city where they faced imminent threat of execution simply for playing sports.
The Whiz Kids
By Snelling, Dennis
Before the 1950 World Series, the Philadelphia Phillies were infamous for a record-breaking lack of achievement that dated from their conception in 1883 through the 1940s. When twenty-eight-year-old Robert Carpenter Jr. took over in 1944, the Phillies had won only a single National League title in more than sixty years. For the next five years, Carpenter and the newly hired general manager, Herb Pennock, would overhaul the team’s operations, building a farm system from scratch and spending a fortune on young talent to build a team that would gain immense popularity and finally bring a National League pennant in 1950. Nicknamed the “Whiz Kids” because they had so many players under thirty, the team caught lightning in a bottle for one season. Although they lost the World Series to the New York Yankees, the team became legendary in Philadelphia and beyond. The Whiz Kids is about a team that shocked everyone by winning, and then shocked everyone by never winning again. It includes a cast of characters and unusual storylines: a first baseman targeted for murder by a woman he had never met; a young catcher from Nebraska, Richie Ashburn, who became a Hall of Fame center fielder and later voice of the team for nearly three decades; a left fielder who lived and played in the shadow of his legendary father, then inspired Ernest Hemingway with the most legendary swing of a bat in franchise history; and a thirty-three-year-old bespectacled relief pitcher who won the Most Valuable Player Award with an undertaker as his personal pitching coach. The team succeeded under the watchful eye of its young owner, whose father handed him the team, and a college professor manager, only to see it slowly crumble as the slowest in the National League to integrate. The Whiz Kids recounts the history of a team that, though hand-built to be champions, fell short—yet remains legendary anyway.
Live Life Like a Kung Fu Master
By Moy, William
Live Life Like a Kung Fu Master is William Moy’s personal invitation to become your teacher or “sifu,” as he presents over twenty attributes/techniques that will contribute to living a life made better by possessing Kung Fu. Attributes such as balance, structure, distance awareness, relaxation and traveling the shortest route between two points are presented both in terms of self-defense and in making an impact on your daily life—at home, school, work, business and social encounters. The text also features positional sketches drawn by William, as well as links to a number of videos in which William demonstrates physical techniques for students to model. William is joined on this literary Kung Fu journey by this long-time student and disciple, multi-award-winning author Paul Volponi. In turn, the co-authors are joined by several renowned martial artists, including Sammo Huang, Karen Sheperd, Grandmaster Tak Wah Eng, Grandmaster Doc-Fei Wong and Sifu Leo Imamura. A score of contributors such as basketball Hall of Famer Dave Cowens, two-time Olympic Gold medalist Kayla Harrison, glass-ceiling breaking baseball pitcher Ila Borders, famed tightrope walker Denis Josselin and World Scrabble Champion Joel Wapnick discuss how the attributes of Kung Fu relate to their many successes.
Champion Mindset
By Mouratoglou, Patrick
From legendary tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou comes a motivational and inspirational guide to help readers achieve new success in any endeavor. Superstar coach Patrick Mouratoglou knows what it takes to win. An international icon in the world of tennis, he coached Serena Williams for a decade at the height of her career. Now he currently coaches four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka and has worked with numerous top players over the years, including Holger Rune, Coco Gauff, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and many more. In Champion Mindset, Mouratoglou distills his lifetime of coaching excellence into ten commandments applicable to achieving success in all aspects of life, not just the court. Mouratoglou's emphasis on coaching the player's mindset is what makes him singularly successful as a tennis coach and effective in helping the rest of us reach our goals.
Uncommon Favor
By Staley, Dawn
For the first time, Dawn Staley shares her inspiring life story.A three-time Olympic Gold medalist, six-time WNBA All-Star, and the first person to win the Naismith College Player of the Year award as both a player and coach, Staley has shattered expectations at every level of the game. While her name resonates with both longtime WNBA fans and newcomers, she has kept her personal life private. Uncommon Favor reveals the journey that led to Staley's success, including the challenges she faced. From dealing with sexism on the court to feeling isolated in new environments, Staley honed her skills and learned valuable life lessons about mental fortitude and maturity that have grounded her throughout her career. Beginning with her humble origins on the North Philadelphia basketball court and her rise to national fame at the University of Virginia - where she led her team to three Final Fours - Staley recounts the key moments that shaped her winning mindset.
Gamechangers and Rainmakers
By Stubley, David
Starting in the playing fields of Harrow, the book moves swiftly into the 1960s and on to 1980, by which time the Olympics had become toxic and English football was in trouble. We learn about the rainmakers who turned the fortunes of both around. In 1984, sports marketing soared to new heights with the success of the LA Olympics, the NFL, Nike and the impact of Michael Jordan and Bernie Ecclestone. The book explores what happened next, with the launch of the Premier League, the Champions League and Sky. In the new millennium we discover how fans got hooked on videogames and online gambling, while emerging nations wanted to host leading sports events and overseas investors sought to buy football clubs. The author reveals how this firehose of money led to rogue behavior by some, and argues this is an industry that needs to reset if it wants to keep younger fans interested.