Outdoors Memoirs

For years, the national media has been left unchecked for its careless, incomplete, and often inaccurate portrayal of Todd Marinovich’s meteoric rise to fame, cataclysmic collapse, and unsteady path to self-realization. Now, for the first time, Todd tells his story in his own words, and nothing is off limits. Marinovich dives into the making of America’s first “test-tube athlete,” detailing Todd’s upbringing under his father’s unconventional care and his early entry into elite athletics along with its relentless spotlight.

Relive the greatest Giants moments through the eyes of the players themselves - newly revised to include Super Bowl XLVI! The New York Giants have long been one of the NFL’s most popular and storied franchises. Now fans of this dynamic football powerhouse will relive all the greatest gridiron moments through the eyes of the players themselves in this newly updated edition of Game of My Life New York Giants.

More than any baseball player of his generation, Clayton Kershaw has embodied the burden of athletic greatness, the prizes and perils that await those who strive for it all. He is a three-time Cy Young award winner, the first pitcher to win National League MVP since Bob Gibson, and a surefire, first-ballot Hall of Famer. Many of his peers consider him the greatest pitcher to ever climb atop a big-league mound.

In 1930, two novice paddlers - Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port - launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe from the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages.

From the wounds left by the civil war to the teams’ recent global domination, historian and expert on Spanish football, Sid Lowe lifts the lid on sport’s greatest rivalry. Lowe has spoken to the biggest names and the forgotten heroes who defined their clubs. Men like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Johan Cruyff as well as the only survivor of the most politically charged game in history, the Barcelona striker who knocked Madrid out of the European Cup for the first time ever, and the president who celebrated his club’s defining moment by taking a midnight dip in the Thames.

When Pride Still Mattered is the quintessential story of the American family: how Vince Lombardi, the son of an immigrant Italian butcher, rose to the top, and how his character and will to prevail transformed him, his wife, his children, his players, his sport, and ultimately the entire country.

When Susan quit her job in London and set sail off the south coast of England on her beloved sailboat, Isean, she was unaware this spontaneous departure would lead to a three-year journey spanning several countries across the continent. With only the very basics on board, resourcefulness becomes an unexpected source of joy and contentment. But for all the physical and navigational challenges of her journey, the other side of her story reveals a more important change - an inner journey - that took place along the way.

One Breath is a gripping and powerful exploration of the strange and fascinating sport of freediving, and of the tragic, untimely death of America's greatest freediver Competitive freediving - a sport built on diving as deep as possible on a single breath - tests the limits of human ability in the most hostile environment on earth.

It’s now the norm for NBA and collegiate teams to have international players dotting their rosters. The Olympics are no longer a gimme for Team USA. Both via fans streaming from all over the globe and leagues starting in countries throughout the world, the international presence of the game of basketball is a force to be reckoned with. That all started with Hakeem “the Dream” Olajuwon. “Dream,” for short. Award-winning hoops journalist Mirin Fader explores the life and legacy of pioneering international basketball superstar Hakeem Olajuwon.

The cruising tale is full of the sights and sounds, the fragrances and native customs of foreign lands, especially Central American and the Caribbean. It is a story of a leisurely sail through the Gulf of Cortez and on through Panama Canal to the Azores and England. Cruising in Seraffyn is also a carefully thought out guide to living aboard a small boat, with fun and economy as the guiding principles. Four appendices provide data that is vital for anyone comtemplating long-distance cruising.

Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history and best-selling author of Reach for the Summitt and Raise the Roof, tells for the first time her remarkable story of victory and resilience as well as facing down her greatest challenge: early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Pat Summitt was only 21 when she became head coach of the Tennessee Vols women's basketball team. For 38 years, she has broken records, winning more games than any NCAA team in basketball history.

By the time he was twenty-two years old, goaltender Corey Hirsch had realized his childhood dream of playing in the NHL, won an Olympic medal and drunk from the Stanley Cup. While he excelled on the ice, out of the net Hirsch was plagued by persistent dark thoughts and ceaseless anxiety. On days when he could barely get out of bed, he was able to push aside the endless loop of dark thoughts running inside his brain long enough to win a game. But as soon as he got back home, the agonizing cycle started all over again.

Kenny Smith was a star at the University of North Carolina before his storied NBA run, in which he won two championships with the Houston Rockets. His popularity skyrocketed when he joined TNT’s new show, Inside the NBA, which has thrived for twenty-four years and won multiple Emmys, receiving enormous acclaim for the insight, humor, social commentary, and unrivaled basketball coverage from Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Ernie Johnson, Jr. Kenny is known to fans for his laser-sharp analysis and eloquent observations of the basketball scene and culture.

Andre Ward was the undefeated light heavyweight boxing champion of the world when he walked away from the ring and did not look back. Now that he has taken off his gloves for the final time, the Olympic gold medalist is ready to share the heartbreaking and uplifting stories of his formative years and unprecedented boxing career. Rich with colorful characters, fascinating detail, and biblical truths, this is the story of a man known for his integrity outside the ring, his warrior's instinct inside it, and his unrelenting bond with the God who called him to the greatest victory of all.

Prior to his untimely death, in 2010, Captain Phil Harris was a star of Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch, the hit show that follows the exhilarating lives of Alaskan crab fishermen as they brave the vicious Bering Sea. He led his crew through hurricane-force winds and four-story-high waves, hauling in millions of pounds of crab and raking in millions of dollars. Phil worked hard, but he played even harder....

One of WWE's most unlikely champions of all time and also one of its most popular, Bryan has proved to the world and to all of WWE that looks can be deceiving. Just ask anyone who's ever underestimated him . . . right before he went out and whipped the WWE universe into a frenzy. This is Bryan's behind-the-scenes story told for the first time ever by the "YES!" Man himself---from his beginnings as a child wanting to wrestle to his ten years circling the globe on the independent circuit and his remarkable climb to the upper ranks of WWE.

In 1997 Tiger Woods was already among the most-watched and closely examined athletes in history. But it wasn't until the Masters Tournament that his career would definitively change forever. Woods, then only 21, won the Masters by a historic 12 shots, which remains the widest margin of victory in the tournament's history, making it an iconic moment for him and sports.

As the face of the NBA's new world order, Giannis Antetokounmpo has overcome unfathomable obstacles to become a symbol of hope for people all over the world, the personification of the American Dream. But his backstory remains largely untold, and Fader unearths new information about the childhood that shaped "The Greek Freak"—from sleeping side by side with his brothers to selling trinkets on the side of the street with his family to the racism he experienced in Greece.

By age twenty, at the height of the Jazz Age, Trudy Ederle was the most accomplished swimmer in the world. She’d won Olympic gold and set a host of world records. But the greatest challenge remained: the English Channel. Only a few swimmers, none of them women, had ever made the treacherous twenty-one mile crossing. Trudy’s failed first attempt seemed to confirm what many naysayers believed: No woman could possibly accomplish such a thing. In 1926, Ederle proved them wrong.

Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell is surfer and former war reporter Chas Smith's wild and unflinching look at the high-stakes world of surfing on Oahu's North Shore - a riveting, often humorous, account of beauty, greed, danger, and crime. For two months every winter, when Pacific storms make landfall, swarms of mainlanders, Brazilians, Australians, and Europeans flock to Oahu's paradisiacal North Shore for surfing's Triple Crown competition. Smith reveals how this influx transforms a sleepy strip of coast into a lawless, violent, drug-addled, and adrenaline-soaked mecca.