Biographies Memoirs Sports

Written in collaboration with six-time New York Times bestselling author Armen Keteyian, Legends and Soles provides context and truth to the sensational media stories and headlines. Filled with in-depth stories and photos illuminating some of Sonny’s most treasured career memories, Legends and Soles is the long-awaited memoir of a giant of American sports.

On the last night of the 2021 CrossFit Games, ten thousand fans watched in horror as Brooke Wells’ elbow dislocated under the weight of a 190-pound barbell. This is the extraordinary story of what happened next: How Wells pulled off a highly improbable comeback that transformed her mentally and physically into one of the fittest women in the world. In Resilient, Wells provides a refreshingly honest, authentic account of how she overcame fear, self-doubt, and a slew of unexpected obstacles to return to the CrossFit Games less than a year after undergoing total elbow reconstruction.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war – the invasion of Okinawa—their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled.

Dale Scott's career as a professional baseball umpire spanned nearly forty years, including thirty-three in the Major Leagues, from 1985 to 2017. He worked exactly a thousand games behind the plate, calling balls and strikes at the pinnacle of his profession, working in every Major League Baseball stadium, and interacting with dozens of other top-flight umpires, colorful managers, and hundreds of players. What makes Scott's book truly different is his unique perspective as the only umpire in the history of professional baseball to come out as gay during his career.

In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter, Thomas Fuller’s, inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering war, wildfires, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story of this group of high school boys. It was uplifting. During the pandemic’s gloom, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one.

The riveting inside story of college basketball's fiercest rivalry among three coaching legends - University of North Carolina's Dean Smith, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, and North Carolina State's Jim Valvano - by the king of college basketball writers, number-one New York Times best seller John Feinstein.

Mountain search-and-rescue volunteer Bree Loewen's to-do list isn't quite the same as most people's. A former Mount Rainier climbing ranger and trained leader in mountain search-and-rescue, Bree shares the drama and the camaraderie of this work, as well as the challenges of trying to fit her other roles as wife and mother into what is still largely a masculine environment. In a fearless voice - disarming yet laced with dark humor - Bree guides us through intense recoveries, vivid wilderness landscapes, and the warmth she discovers in motherhood, community, and purpose.

The life and career of Nicklas Lidstrom almost reads like a real-life hockey fairy tale. Drafted by the Detroit Red Wings as a 19-year-old defenseman out of his native Sweden, Lidstrom spent the next two decades manning the Motor City blueline. During those years he became a Hockeytown legend, amassing a mind-boggling collection of accomplishments and accolades: four Stanley Cups, seven Norris Trophies as the NHL's best defenseman, a Conn Smythe Trophy, 12 All-Star selections, and gold medals in both the Olympics and World Championships.

Johan Cruyff is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in football history. Throughout his playing career, he was synonymous with Total Football, a style of play in which every player could play in any position on the pitch. Today his philosophy lives on in teams across Europe, from Barcelona to Bayern Munich, and players from Lionel Messi to Cesc Fabrecas.

One of rugby’s most ferocious flankers and biggest characters, James Haskell has had an extraordinary, global experience of the game, having played for the Lions, Wasps, England and in New Zealand, France and Japan . After 17 years and with 77 international caps under his sizeable belt, he has a shitload to say about rugby life - from pitch to pub and everywhere in between. In What a Flanker, Haskell sheds fresh light on the dynamics and the day-to-day of the game.

Plump, grumpy, slumped on the couch, and going nowhere fast at age 16, Phil Gaimon began riding a bicycle with the grand ambition of shedding a few pounds before going off to college. He soon fell into racing and discovered he was a natural, riding his way into a pro contract after just one season despite utter ignorance of a century of cycling etiquette. Now, in his book Pro Cycling on $10 a Day, Phil brings the full powers of his wit to tell his story.

Tania Aebi was an unambitious 18-year-old, a bicycle messenger in New York City by day, a Lower East Side barfly at night. In short, she was going nowhere - until her father offered her a challenge: Tania could choose either a college education or a 26-foot sloop. The only catch was that if she chose the sailboat, she'd have to sail around the world - alone. She chose the boat, and for the next two and a half years and 27,000 miles, it was her home.

Despite the howling protests from his peers, no one's ever been more willing to spill the beans on what it's really like inside the pro cycling peloton than the sarcastic scribe Phil Gaimon. Building on the outrageous success of his hilarious 2014 debut, Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro, Gaimon gathers the absolute gems from his monthly Q & A feature column in VeloNews magazine into his new book, Ask a Pro.

Fils du hockeyeur Henri Richard, Denis Richard, avec la collaboration de Léandre Normand, nous rappelle les exploits mais aussi les revers et les sautes d’humeur de son illustre père, le joueur le plus sous-estimé de l’histoire des Canadiens. Fougueux et déterminé, Henri a toujours mené son équipe par l’exemple plus que par la parole. Timide et renfermé, le « Pocket Rocket » a connu son lot d’heures glorieuses et d’autres plus difficiles aussi.

Aikau's legendary life and legacy, a pipeline into the exhilarating world of surfing, and an important chronicle of the Hawaiian Renaissance and the emergence of modern Hawaii. In the 1970s, a decade before bumper stickers and T-shirts bearing the phrase Eddie Would Go began popping up all over the Hawaiian islands and throughout the surfing world, Eddie Aikau was proving what it meant to be a "waterman."

Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes - she carried her mother Catherine's dreams. In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance.

Lex Luger, wrestling mega-sensation and three-time world heavyweight champion, ruled the ring for years as "The Total Package." Yet backstage, he was wrestling with addictions to sex, drugs, and alcohol - things he clung to even when his mistress died suddenly of a drug overdose and Lex went to jail. In Wrestling with the Devil, Lex Luger reveals never-before-told stories from his career, his struggle with personal demons, and how, through unexpected faith, grace, and redemption, he overcame all odds to fight the only battle that really matters.

Surfers and surfing aficionados worldwide will be enthralled with this fascinating autobiography of Nat Young, arguably one of the world's best surfers and a pioneer of the 'shortboard' style. With short stories, anecdotes and unbelievable adventures with some of surfing's most colourful and well known characters, Nat Young recounts his life from Australia to Hawaii to the Pacific Coast of America and beyond. This audiobook is a must-listen for any surfer!

Dave Hahn, a local of Taos, New Mexico, is a legendary figure in mountaineering. Elite members of the climbing community have likened him to the Michael Jordan, Cal Ripkin, or Michael Phelps of the climbing world. The 2015 expedition he would lead came just one short year after the notorious Khumbu Icefall avalanche claimed the lives of 16 Sherpas. Dave and his team spent weeks honing the techniques that would help keep them alive through the Icefall and the Death Zone. None of this could have prepared them for the earthquake that shook Everest and all of their lives on April 25, 2015.

In the middle of Oliver Horovitz's high school graduation ceremony, his cell phone rang: It was Harvard. He'd been accepted, but he couldn't start for another year. A caddie since he was 12 and a golfer sporting a 1.8 handicap, Ollie decided to spend his gap year in St. Andrews, Scotland - a town with the UK's highest number of pubs per capita, and home to the Old Course, golf's most famous 18 holes - where he enrolls in the St. Andrews Links Trust caddie trainee program.