Biographies Memoirs Sports

In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of engineers at the Glen Canyon Dam with an unprecedented emergency that may have resulted in the most catastrophic dam failure in history. In the midst of this crisis, the decision to launch a small wooden dory named “The Emerald Mile” at the head of the Grand Canyon, just fifteen miles downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, seemed not just odd, but downright suicidal.

Each week, when Sports Illustrated's 21 million readers open up their magazine, many turn right to the last page - because that's where to find SI's most popular feature: the Life of Reilly column, written by best-selling author Rick Reilly. This new collection includes 100 of Reilly's favorite columns from the last six years, along with an introduction by Lance Armstrong.

Honest, relatable, and raw, every listener will connect with Sally’s story and see how they too can overcome even the most difficult situations in life and sport. Choose Strong is a story for everyone from every age and walk of life looking to live their strongest life.

Lauren Fleshman has grown up in the world of running. One of the most decorated collegiate athletes of all time and a national champion as a pro, she was a major face of women’s running for Nike before leaving to shake up the industry with feminist running brand Oiselle and now coaches elite young female runners. Every step of the way, she has seen the way that our sports systems—originally designed by men, for men and boys—fail young women and girls as much as empower them. Written with heart and verve, Good for a Girl is a joyful love letter to the running life.

2025 is Sonnie Trotter’s 30th year climbing. He’s been at the forefront of the sport for most of that time, specializing in first ascents on rock faces most people cannot imagine scaling. In Uplifted, Sonnie recounts the most memorable moments of his career, also describing the rich relationships that are the spine of the sport. In addition, he investigates the psyche that draws one to and then evolves during years of engaging with this uniquely challenging endeavor.

LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century, and he’s in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined—the truth is vastly more interesting than that. LeBron tells the full, riveting saga of how a child adrift found the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict paints a vivid picture of LeBron’s epic origin story, showing the gradual rise of a star.

Olympian and World Champion Caster Semenya is finally ready to share the vivid and heartbreaking story of how the world came to know her name. Thrust into the spotlight at just 18 years old after winning the Berlin World Championships in 2009, Semenya’s win was quickly overshadowed by criticism and speculation about her body, and she became the center of a still-raging firestorm about how gender plays out in sports, our expectations of female athletes, and the right to compete as you are.

In his late thirties, Jeff Chu left his job as a magazine writer and found himself at Princeton Theological Seminary’s “Farminary”—a twenty-one-acre working farm where students learn to cultivate the earth while examining life’s biggest questions. Now, he unpacks what he learned about creating “good soil,” both literally and figuratively, drawing lessons from the rhythms of growth, decay, and regeneration that define life on the land. In gorgeous, transporting reflections, Chu introduces us to the cast of characters, human and not, who became his teachers.

Brantt Myhres wasn't around for the birth of his daughter. Myhres had played for seven different NHL teams, and had made millions. But he'd been suspended four times, all for drug use, and he had partied his way out of the league. This is his story, in his own words, of how he fought his way out of minor hockey into the big league, but never left behind the ghosts of a bleak and troubled childhood.

At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild: Adventures at the Edge of the Map, Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: “And most of that in small tents pitched in the world’s most remote regions.” It’s not a boast so much as an explanation. Whether at elevation or raising a family back at sea level, those years taught him, he writes, “to distinguish matters of consequence from matters of inconsequence.” He leaves it to his listeners to do the final sort of which is which.

Few names in the history of baseball evoke the excellence and dynamism that Rickey Henderson’s does. He holds the record for the most stolen bases in a single game, and he’s scored more runs than any player ever. “If you cut Rickey Henderson in half, you’d have two Hall of Famers,” the baseball historian Bill James once said. But perhaps even more than his prowess on the field, Rickey Henderson’s is a story of Oakland, California, the town that gave rise to so many legendary athletes like him.

The Color of Everything is a thrilling tale of risk and adventure, written by a man who has done it all: he’s stood at the top of the world, climbed imposing mountain faces alone in the dark and become the only American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter. But it is also the story of a tumultuous life--a stirring, lyrical memoir that captures the profound musings of a brilliant and unquiet mind grappling with the meaning of success, the cost of fame, addiction, and whether it is possible to outrun your demons.

On January 20, 2003, a thunderous crack rang out and a 100-foot-wide tide of snow barreled down the Northern Selkirk Mountains in British Columbia, Canada. More than a dozen skiers and snowboarders were thrust down the mountain, buried beneath several tons of rock-hard snow and ice in the Durrand Glacier Avalanche. A heroic search and rescue ensued. Among those buried was Craig Kelly—“the Michael Jordan of snowboarding”—a man who had propelled the sport into the mainstream before walking away from competitions, to rekindle his passion in the untamed alpine wilds of North America

Replete with all the high-octane tales and behind the scenes details you'd expect from a life lived next to the fast lane, Life in the Pitlane will detail the realities of life off the track; the good and the bad, with a particular spotlight on diversity and inclusion within the sport, and all the entertaining stories and behind the scenes details fans of F1 will be looking for. Life in the Pitlane brings a brand-new perspective to the sport.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of My Story by Steven Gerrard, read Michael Ryan. Steven Gerrard is the former captain of Liverpool football team and of the England national football team and is the only player ever to have scored in a FA cup final, a league cup final, a UEFA cup final and a champion's league final. His entire career, since 1998, has been spent at Anfield with Liverpool.

Nitro is a story about much more than WCW and the Monday Night Wars. It is a story of an era, a time in which the media and cultural landscape precipitated - and later supported - pro wrestling's mainstream popularity. It is a story of how a company made in the image of an intuitively brilliant risk-taker betrayed its original promise. It is a story of how a handful of men, each struggling with their own limitations, facilitated a public obsession that changed television forever.

Ross' ascent in WWE mirrors the rise of professional wrestling itself from a DIY sideshow to a billion-dollar business. Under the Black Hat traces all the highs and lows of that wild ride, in which Jim served not only as on-air commentator, but talent manager, payroll master, and even occasional in-ring foil to threats like Paul "Triple H" Levesque and Undertaker.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat.

Sultan tells the story of cricket's greatest left-arm bowler, and one of its enduring survivors, who was chosen from the streets of Lahore and groomed by Imran Khan to become champion of the world—he was Man of the Match in the final of the 1992 World Cup which Pakistan won. Along the way were unforgettable rivalries with the legends of his time, from Viv Richards and Ian Botham to Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne. All of this against a backdrop of conspiracy and intrigue over ball tampering and match-fixing, about which Wasim finally sets the story straight.

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the 45 original passengers and crew, only 16 made it off the mountain alive. For 10 excruciating weeks, they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, these men and women not only had to keep their faith; they had to make an impossible decision: Should they eat the flesh of their dead friends?