English Football History

In this fascinating and exhaustively researched book, the first of its kind in the English language, Tom Williams brings to life French football’s chequered coming of age over the last 40 years. Featuring exclusive interviews with great figures of the French game such as Alain Giresse, Jean-Pierre Papin, Emmanuel Petit and Blaise Matuidi, and with a cast of characters that also includes Michel Platini, Thierry Henry, Karim Benzema, Chris Waddle and Lionel Messi, it's a book no football fan will want to miss.

Goal! covers the history of the beautiful game from its origins in English public schools in the early 19th century to its current role as a crucial element of a globalized entertainment industry.

A sport unlike any other in the world, football has always been Australia's bellwether. But at a time when politics is increasingly conducted like sports - full of one-eyed tribalism, captain's calls and policy dictated by the Newspoll scoreboard - football is the one institution that's more...

James J. Braddock, dubbed “Cinderella Man” by Damon Runyon, was a once promising light heavyweight for whom a string of losses in the ring and a broken right hand happened to coincide with the Great Crash. With one good hand, Braddock was forced to labor on the docks of Hoboken. Only his...

Discover the unlikely story of the Toledo Troopers, the winningest team in the National Women's Football League, who won seven league championships in the 1970s—and gain full access to the players and key figures in the organization. Amid a national backdrop of the call to pass the Equal...

From the Super Bowl to the Thanksgiving game, millions of families gather throughout the week to watch their favorite teams duke it out. Kids and grandparents alike share the thrill of watching their team get that perfect tackle or last-minute save. Now you have the opportunity to share the history of the sport with your kids with one engaging guide. 210.2 million people follow the NBA league across its various social media platforms, making it the most popular sports league in the world. So why is it that no one really understands its history?

This wide-ranging history synthesizes scholarship and media sources to give the listener an inside view of the television contracts, labor issues, and other off-the-field forces that shaped the National Football League. Historian Richard Crepeau shows how Commissioner Pete Rozelle's steady leadership guided the league's explosive growth during the era of Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl's transformation into a mid-winter spectacle.

The Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s won an unprecedented and unmatched four Super Bowls in six years. A dozen of those Steelers players, coaches, and executives have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, and three decades later their names echo in popular memory: "Mean" Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Mike Webster, Jack Lambert, Lynn Swann, and John Stallworth.

Tom Brady marching the team upfield in the final minute of the 2001 Super Bowl. Troy Brown playing offense, defense, and special teams. The Tuck Rule. A rogue groundskeeper plowing a path for kicker John Smith at the end of a scoreless, snowy game. Gino Cappelletti setting the AFL record for points in a game against the Houston Oilers. These are the moments Patriots fans love to remember, now retold by the players who lived them.

With extensive reporting and engrossing storytelling, Jim Baker and Bernard Corbett give us the scenes of one of the NFL's most successful and popular franchises.

How Football Explains America is a fascinating, first-of-its-kind journey through the making of America's most complex, intriguing, and popular game. ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio explores just how crucial football is to understanding the American psyche. Paolantonio tackles varying American themes from Manifest Destiny to “fourth and one” as he goes deep in order to answer the age-old question: Why does America love football so much?

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. Since the very first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, there have been 18 finals, held every four years (with a 12-year break over the World War II period). The World Cup in South Africa will be the 19th. Brian Glanville, the distinguished journalist and World Cup historian, has written a fascinating history of the event.

In November 1934, the Princeton football team - unbeaten in its last 15 games - faced the 3-3 Yale Bulldogs, who gave new meaning to the term underdogs. As much a thrilling play-by-play account of college football at its finest as it is a fascinating work of sports history, this book chronicles the season that brought Princeton and Yale together in a game like no other since.

As the coach during professional football’s most storied era, Tom Landry transformed the gridiron from a no-holds-barred battlefield to the highly-technical chess match it is today. With his trademark fedora and stoic facade, he was a man of faith and few words, for twenty-nine years guiding “America’s Team” from laughingstock to well-oiled machine, with an unprecedented twenty consecutive winning seasons and two Super Bowl titles.

That afternoon was the last time the high-school Patriots would see one another for weeks; some teammates they'd never see again. Hurricane Katrina was about to tear their lives apart. Hurricane Season is the story of a great football coach, his team, his family, and their school - and a remarkable fight back from shocking tragedy.

Our view of football will never be the same again. Written by a world-respected football historian, this unique title reveals the global game’s greatest myths and untruths. Football has been completely mythologised, and many of the things football fans think they know about football and its history turn out not to be true. We want to believe the myths, and so they become accepted. So much football writing is not properly researched, and so the myths get repeated...again and again and again.

With over 300 interesting and entertaining questions, ranging from jersey numbers of the Lambeau Legends, down to when the first Packer game was played, this book is great for game nights or just sharpening your Packers IQ in a fun, relaxed way. In this book, you will learn a lot about the founding of the greatest NFL franchise and their long, eventful road to victory with all of the legends who shared a part in it. Think you know it all about the Green Bay Packers? Put your knowledge to the test with the all-new Packers trivia book.

A Brief History of Celtic Football Club, by Derek Monaghan. Step into the soul of one of football’s most iconic institutions. From its humble beginnings in 1887 as a charitable mission to feed Glasgow’s poor, Celtic Football Club has grown into a global symbol of pride, passion, and resilience. In this vivid and cinematic account, author Derek Monaghan traces Celtic’s journey through triumph and turmoil—from the glory of the Lisbon Lions and the genius of Jock Stein, to fierce Old Firm rivalries and unforgettable European nights.

Soccer has been the world’s most popular sport for the last century, and an irresistible game for political and social leaders seeking shortcuts to the hearts of their people. Sometimes it worked, momentarily, but as renowned sports journalist Luciano Wernicke writes in this fascinating and original audiobook, the game and its glories have survived them all.

In The Title, Scott Murray delivers a lively, cherry-picked history of the country's football narrative through the prism of the old First Division. Rich with humour yet underpinned with solid research, this is a glorious ramble across English football's varied terrain. With as much about Preston, Burnley, Wolves, Portsmouth and West Brom as the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, we learn the less well-known stories the sport has to tell, such as the plight of Glossop - the smallest club to ever play top-flight football.