Biographies Memoirs Sports

Mat Fraser is undisputedly the fittest man in CrossFit history for winning the CrossFit Games an unprecedented five times. A student of engineering, Fraser optimized his body like a machine, and his absolute dedication to the training program he designed for himself is now legendary. Fraser became a master of identifying his weaknesses and then seeking out training methods to improve them, and he's idolized in the fitness community for his relentless pursuit of peak performance. It's not hard to see why he achieved so much success - but how is a different question.

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 next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

Murphy’s life didn’t begin on a track that would lead to homelessness. He was smart, dedicated to hockey, and was a key player for the Oilers, Red Wings, and Blackhawks, among other teams. But one vicious body check changed his life forever. Despite being shaken by the hit, Murphy was cleared to return to the game. Soon after, his entire life seemed to change. Murphy became a journeyman, moving from team to team. Along the way, other NHLers said they noticed something different about him, too.

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.

The definitive, personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of Into the Wild. Read by the author. Also, hear a Fresh Air interview with Krakauer conducted shortly after his ordeal.

There are few people who have been in the wrestling business longer than Jim Ross. Slobberknocker is the story of how an Oklahoman farm kid with a vivid imagination and seemingly unattainable dreams became "The Voice of Wrestling" to record TV audiences and millions of fans around the world. Jim opens up about his life as an only child on a working farm, who became obsessed with professional wrestling having first seen it on his grandparents' TV.

For 36 years, Jerry Howarth ushered in eternal hope each spring and thrived in the drive of each fall as the voice of the Toronto Blue Jays. In 1982, the lifelong avid sports fan joined Tom Cheek as full-time play-by-play radio announcer for the Blue Jays, and for the next 23 years, “Tom and Jerry” were the voices of the franchise. Jerry became part of the fabric of a nation and a team, covering historic moments like the rise of the Blue Jays through the 1980s that culminated in back-to-back World Series Championships in 1992 and 1993.

The 1989 Ironman World Championship was the greatest race ever in endurance sports. In a spectacular duel that became known as the Iron War, the world's two strongest athletes raced side by side at world-record pace for a grueling 139 miles. Driven by one of the fiercest rivalries in triathlon, Dave Scott and Mark Allen raced shoulder to shoulder through Ironman’s 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike race, and 26.2-mile marathon. After 8 punishing hours, both men would demolish the previous record - and cross the finish line a mere 58 seconds apart.

I would like to take you on a journey. It’s going to be a journey across many oceans, over a lot of water but very much a journey of the human spirit. This is not a sailing story. It’s much more than that. My seven crew and I participated in the fatal 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race in which 6 men tragically died, 55 were rescued and a number of boats sank. On our boat, for 15 hours, we thought that we had found out how we were going to die. By a slim margin, we managed to survive that incredible cornerstone event in each of our lives.

It's never too late to chase your dreams: Before she discovered running, Nita Sweeney was 49-years-old, chronically depressed, occasionally manic, and unable to jog for more than 60 seconds at a time. Using exercise, Nita discovered an inner strength she didn't know she possessed, and with the help of her canine companion, she found herself on the way to completing her first marathon. In her memoir, Sweeney shares how she overcame emotional and physical challenges to finish the race and come back from the brink.

Stephen A. Smith has never been handed anything, nor was he an overnight success. Growing up poor in Queens, the son of Caribbean immigrants and the youngest of six children, he was a sports-obsessed kid who faced struggles, from undiagnosed dyslexia to getting enough cereal to fill his bowl. As a basketball player at Winston-Salem State University, he got a glimmer of his true calling when he wrote a newspaper column arguing for the retirement of his own Hall of Fame coach, Clarence Gaines.

Success story #1 du New York Times ! "Un rappel honnête et rafraîchissant de ce à quoi ressemble vraiment le chemin de la réussite commerciale", selon Bill Gates ! La biographie incroyable du fondateur de la marque au swoosh, Phil Knight, est la preuve que le rêve américain existe bel et bien. Un jour, ce gamin d'Oregon prend la courageuse décision de suivre son Idée Folle : il lance son entreprise avec 50 dollars de son père.

Iron Cowboy is an endurance memoir in the tradition of Dean Karnazes’s Ultramarathon Man - a lifetime’s worth of intensely lived experience packed into 20 riveting chapters. Listeners will discover the secret to redefining their own goals and achieving great success. When James Lawrence (aka the Iron Cowboy) announced his plan to complete 50 full-distance triathlons in 50 consecutive days in all 50 states, the only person who believed that he could pull it off was James himself (and his wife, Sunny).

From the lush fields of his boyhood in Jamaica, to the basketball courts of Oakville, where he came of age in one of Canada’s most thriving cultural mosaics, to his sprint toward double Olympic gold for Canada in Atlanta in 1996, Donovan Bailey got a long way on natural talent. But he also learned that in the bureaucratic world of Canadian sports, an athlete who didn't come up in the system needed to take charge of his fate if he was going to become the world’s best.

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.

Paret lay on the ground, quivering gently, a small froth on his mouth. The house doctor jumped into the ring. He knelt. He pried Paret's eyelid open. He looked at the eyeball staring out. He let the lid snap shut. He reached into his satchel, took out a needle, jabbed Paret with a stimulant. Paret's back rose in a high arch. He writhed in real agony. They were calling him back from death. One wanted to cry out, "Leave the man alone. Let him die."

Welcome to the Barkley Marathons, a fever dream of an ultra event, inspired by a prison break, heralded by a conch blast, paid for in cigarettes and socks, and completed only by a select few. A race in which competitors haul themselves up mountains, through extreme weather conditions, beyond pain and exhaustion, mile after mile. Completed 60 miles? That’s just the fun run. In the Spell of the Barkley is a story of sporting obsession, exploring what drives individuals to challenge themselves at the limits of what is possible – and what it takes to succeed.

The most accomplished mountain runner of all time contemplates his record-breaking climbs of Mount Everest in this profound memoir - an intellectual and spiritual journey that moves from the earth’s highest peak to the soul’s deepest reaches.

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.

Katie Ledecky has won more individual Olympic races than any female swimmer in history. She is a three-time Olympian, a seven-time gold medalist, a twenty-one-time world champion, eight-time NCAA Champion, and a world record-holder in individual swimming events. Time and again, the question is posed to her family, her coaches, and to her—what makes her a champion? Now, for the first time, she shares what it takes to compete at an elite level.