Outdoors Memoirs

Jackie Chan has never told his own story in his own words. In I Am Jackie Chan, he tells the fascinating, harrowing, ultimately triumphant story of his life: How the son of refugees in 1950s Hong Kong became the disciplined disciple of a Chinese Opera Master. How, after years of plunging off skyscrapers and living to tell the tale, a once scared seven-year-old boy broke into the Hollywood big time by breaking almost every bone in his body.

Michael Owen's new autobiography will enable him to open up about his football life for the first time and set the record straight once and for all. It promises to make for an explosive listen and one of the most hotly anticipated football books of the year. The legendary striker published his first book, Off the Record, in 2004 but feels he didn't have a voice during his playing days, and now, six years after hanging up his boots, he can finally lift the lid on what really happened during his career.

L'incroyable histoire de Tommy Caldwell qui, avant de devenir l'un des meilleurs grimpeurs du monde, a dû faire un jour ce choix : mourir ou tuer. C'est l'histoire d'un enfant de trois ans qui découvre l'escalade avec son père et décide de ne plus jamais s'arrêter. C'est l'histoire de quatre jeunes grimpeurs partis découvrir les falaises du Kirghizistan. Pris en otage par des rebelles armés, le groupe doit son salut au courage de Tommy Caldwell qui pousse un de leurs ravisseurs du haut d'une falaise.

In the late 1880s, Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, a renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist, dreamed of cycling around the world. He finally got his chance by recasting himself as a champion of the downsized "safety-bicycle" with inflatable tires, the forerunner of the modern road bike that was about to become wildly popular. In the spring of 1892 he quit his accounting job and gamely set out west to cover 20,000 miles over three continents as a correspondent for Outing magazine. Two years later, after having survived countless near disasters and unimaginable hardships, he approached Europe for the final leg. He never made it....

Valentino Rossi is an icon: the most successful and most loved motorcycle racer of all time, he has transcended MotoGP to become a symbol of courage, risk and daring. To race for 23 years at the very highest level of the world's most dangerous sport is unprecedented. But then, there has never been a motorcycle racer like Valentino Rossi. He is a modern-day gladiator, a man who still risks his life every time he throws a leg over a motorcycle.

Tony (A. P.) McCoy has collected a record 20 consecutive jump jockey titles to date, and since 1992 he has ridden over 4,300 winners. This powerfully honest memoir looks at life at the very top in National Hunt racing - and beyond, discussing fatherhood, writing novels and his decision to retire while he's still a long way ahead. It is a definitive autobiography that is themed around A. P.'s 10 most important races: his first ride, first race, first fall, first win, greatest disappointment - and greatest triumph.

The story of one of the most recognisable and successful players in world football. Didier Drogba is renowned for his heading ability, sharp shooting and sheer strength. He has played for his native Ivory Coast and for clubs in France, China and Turkey, but it is as a Chelsea striker that he is best known. His feats with Chelsea, with whom he still plays, have made him a cult hero among supporters.

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.

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.

A lifelong Alaskan, Steve Kahn moved at the age of nine from the “metropolis” of Anchorage to the foothills of the Chugach Mountains. A childhood of berry picking, fishing, and hunting led to a life as a big-game guide. When he wasn’t guiding in the spring and fall, he worked as a commercial fisherman and earned his pilot’s license, pursuits that took him to the far reaches of the Alaskan wilderness. He lived through some of the most important moments in the state’s history.

In 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaïre, two African American boxers were paid five million dollars apiece to fight each other. One was Muhammad Ali, the aging but irrepressible "professor of boxing." The other was George Foreman, who was as taciturn as Ali was voluble. Observing them was Norman Mailer, a commentator of unparalleled energy, acumen, and audacity.

The battle between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns is remembered as one of the greatest fights of all time. But in the months before the two finally collided on April 15, 1985, there was a feeling in the air that boxing was in trouble.

Until five years ago, Alexandra Heminsley was decidedly not a runner. Nor was she athletic in any sense of the word. She was an ordinary, curvy woman who was convinced that sports of any kind, especially running, were beyond her. But she's made running part of her life, and gets to reap the rewards: not just the obvious things, like a touch of weight loss, health and glowing skin, but self-belief, and immeasurable daily pleasure.

Across Islands and Oceans is the memoir of 25 year-old James Baldwin and his epic two-year, solo circumnavigation in Atom, his trusty but aging 28-foot sailboat.

One of the most compelling figures ever to lace on a pair of skates, Carl Brewer was a gifted skater and stickhandler, renowned for his ability to control the pace of a game and goad opponents into costly errors. His talents made him an NHL All-Star and one of the cornerstones of a Toronto Maple Leafs dynasty. But he was also a loner playing a team game, a free spirit in an era when players were expected not to make waves. Teammates and management alike wrote him off as an eccentric, an enigma.

This is the story of Barbara and Larry Savage's sometimes dangerous, often zany, but ultimately rewarding 23,000-mile global bicycle odyssey, which took them through 25 countries in two years. Miles from Nowhere is an adventure not to be missed! Along the way, these near-neophyte cyclists encountered warmhearted strangers eager to share food and shelter, bicycle-hating drivers who shoved them off the road, various wild animals, rock-throwing Egyptians, overprotective Thai policeman, motherly New Zealanders, meteorological disasters, bodily indignities, and great personal joys.

Combining modern reportage with historical revelations, a multifaceted portrait of Caitlin Clark’s game-changing superstardom and the cultural foundation it was built upon.

In Home Ice, with equal parts humour and anguish, Angie Abdou charts a full season of life as an Atom-level hockey mom, from summer hockey camp to the end-of-season tournament. Her revealing stories and careful research on issues such as cost, gender bias, concussion, and family pressures offer a compellingly honest and complex insider’s view of parenting today’s young athlete in a competitive and high-pressure culture.

A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen’s career of adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners); twenty-five years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South Poles. Lynne Cox, adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica (“gripping”—Sports Illustrated) and Grayson (“wondrous, and unforgettable”—Carl Hiaasen), gives us in South with the Sun a full-scale account of the explorer’s life and expeditions.

You Are Looking Live! is about the genesis, success, and magic of a live television show that in 1975 captured the excitement of the country and launched four magnetic personalities to stardom: Brent Musburger, Phyllis George, Irv Cross, and Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder. It was the first NFL studio show to go live and the first to have both a Black and female cohost. Those four personalities battled each other and the competition, and America loved them for it. This is the story of how they got there, their drama and front-page headlines, and what happened after the magic ended.