History of Sports

Correspondent Christopher Clarey sits down with Federer and those closest to him to tell the story of the greatest player in men's tennis....

The World Cup is the largest sports event outside the summer Olympics: the progress of the 32 countries which qualify for the finals is watched by billions all over the globe...

In the 2008 Wimbledon men's final, Center Court was a stage set worthy of Shakespearean drama. Five-time champion Roger Federer was on track to take his rightful place as the most dominant player in the history of the game....

At 28,251 feet, K2 might be almost 800 feet shorter than Everest, but it’s a far harder climb. It will kill you on the way up and the way down....

By creating WrestleMania, jumping into the pay-per-view field, and expanding across North America, Vince McMahon changed professional wrestling forever....

The year 1971 was the one that changed Indian cricket forever. Boria Majumdar and Gautam Bhattacharya's book is a thrilling account of the 1971 twin tours that brings to life the on-field excitement and the backroom drama....

Manchester, 2018: Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho lead their teams out to face each other in the 175th Manchester derby....

Real Madrid is the most successful sports team on the planet. The soccer club has more trophies than any other sports team, including 11 UEFA Champions League trophies....

No man has affected more runners in more ways than Bill Bowerman....

On 13 July 2014, World Cup Final, the last ten minutes of extra time: Germany forward Mario Götze, receiving a floated pass from his international teammate André Schürrle....

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....

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend....

In the tradition of Seabiscuit, critically acclaimed author Neal Bascomb reaches back to the golden age of sport and crafts an utterly captivating narrative....

Using diaries, letters, published and unpublished accounts, Mick Conefrey presents the dramatic and compelling account of the first attempt to climb Mount Everest, published to coincide with the centenary of the expedition in 2022....

The 1989 Ironman World Championship was the greatest race ever in endurance sports....

This is the story of Barbara and Larry Savage's sometimes dangerous, often zany, but ultimately rewarding 23,000-mile global bicycle odyssey, which took them through 25 countries in two years. Miles from Nowhere is an adventure not to be missed....

Anfield, May 26th 1989. The final day of the Division One season. The rest of football stopped to watch as perennial champions Liverpool took on rank outsiders Arsenal in a head-to-head contest for the title....

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200....

The Olympic Games have become the single greatest festival of a universal and cosmopolitan humanity....

In 1965, 18-year old Lew Alcindor played basketball for Coach John Wooden at UCLA. It was the beginning of what was to become a 50-year long relationship....

Barcelona and Real Madrid: two of the most powerful and popular clubs in world football, and one of the world's most bitter sporting rivalries....

The astonishing history of the rise, fall and rise again of women's football, A Woman's Game explores the history of women's football from the Victorian era to the present day....

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....

This Is Your Brain on Sports is the audiobook for sports fans searching for a deeper understanding of the games they watch and the people who play them....

On the Warrior’s Path connects the martial arts with this larger perspective, merging subtle philosophies with no-holds-barred competition, Nietzsche with Bruce Lee, radical Taoism and Buddhism with the Star Wars Trilogy, traditional martial arts with basketball and American Indian culture.... 

Peter Golenbock brings to life baseball greats from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s through timeless stories told straight from the players themselves. Like the enduring classic The Glory of Their Times, this book features the reminiscences of baseball legends, pulled from hundreds of hours of taped interviews with the author.  The players interviewed were All-Stars, Hall of Famers, and heroes to many, and their impact on the national pastime is still seen to this day. Baseball history comes alive, offering a fascinating account of the golden age of baseball.

Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he listened, Balmer couldn't help but wonder how the fervor he heard related to religious practice. From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to religious life. 

Matt Warshaw knows more about surfing than any other person on the planet. After five years of research and writing, Warshaw, a former professional surfer and editor of Surfing magazine, has crafted an unprecedented, definitive history of the sport and the culture it has spawned. The History of Surfing reveals and defines this sport with a voice that is authoritative, funny, and wholly original. 

From 1976 to 1978, the Cornell men's lacrosse team went on a tear. Winning two national championships and posting an overall record of 42-1, the Big Red, coached by Richie Moran, were the class of the NCAA game. Christian Swezey tells the story of the rise of this dominant lacrosse program. Pulling from interviews with more than ninety former coaches and players from Cornell and its rivals, We Showed Baltimore paints a vivid picture of lacrosse in the 1970s and how Moran and the Big Red helped create the game of today.

En la historia moderna del deporte, nunca ha habido dos compañeros de equipo de tan alto nivel que se odiaran tanto como Shaquille O'Neal odiaba a Kobe Bryant y Kobe Bryant odiaba a Shaquille O'Neal. Desde enfrentamientos públicos, a altercados físicos y repetidas amenazas mutuas, aquello era la guerra. Y, sin embargo, a pesar de ocho largos años de luchas internas y de una hostilidad nunca antes vista, la figura de Phil Jackson emergió para instaurar la paz en el vestuario del equipo.