Sports Culture

The adviser to Senator Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and President Bill Clinton proves that small is big by identifying 75 hidden-in-plain-sight trends that are moving America, revealing that the nation is no longer a melting pot but a collection of communities with many individual tastes and...

In Pinstripe Nation, Will Bishop explores the myriad of ways in which the Yankees and their successes (or spectacular failures) became interwoven with the nation's larger cultural narrative. As this informative and entertaining audiobook amply shows, the Yankees have, through all their ups and downs, retained a hold on the American imagination unmatched by any other sports franchise.

This book chronicles the long and tortured history of the NCAA's attempt to maintain the myth of amateurism and the student-athlete, along with the attendant fiction that the players academic achievement is the top priority of Division-I athletic programs. It is an indictment of the current system, making the case that big-time college sports cannot continue its connection to universities without undermining the mission of higher education. It concludes with bold proposals to separate big-time college sports from the university, transforming them into on-campus business operations.

Eager to celebrate its history, and display its athletic potential, the United States hosted the nation’s first Olympic games in 1904 St. Louis. But within a few years, the publication of Coubertin’s memoirs turned the praised Olympics into the failed Olympics. America’s First Olympics corrects common misconceptions that began with Coubertin’s memoirs, and presents a fresh view of the 1904 games, which featured first-time African American Olympians, an eccentric and controversial marathon, and documentation by pioneering photojournalist Jessie Tarbox Beals.

In 2017 the Houston Astros won their first World Series title, a particularly uplifting victory for the city following Hurricane Harvey. But two years later, the feel-good energy was gone after The Athletic revealed that the Astros had stolen signs from opposing catchers during their championship season, perhaps even during the playoffs and World Series.

Drawing on decades of expertise, visionary leader and team expert Michael G. Rogers presents an unparalleled approach to team development that sets this audiobook apart from any other in the leadership genre. With captivating stories, relatable examples, introspective activities, and actionable exercises, this audiobook challenges your team’s mindset and equips them with the tools to elevate their personal performance and that of your entire team.

Introduced shortly after the United States declared its independence, poker's growth and development has paralleled that of America itself. As a gambling game with mass appeal, poker has been played by presidents and peasants, at kitchen tables and final tables, for matchsticks and millions. First came the hands, then came the stories - some true, some pure bluffs, and many in between. In Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America's Favorite Card Game, Martin Harris shares these stories while chronicling poker's progress.

South Africa revels in its reputation as a sport-loving country. Yet just beneath the surface lurks a dark underbelly that reeks of cheating and illicit shenanigans, where shady characters and willing athletes are prepared to do whatever it takes to come out on top. South African sport is awash with steroids, a habit that formed in the late 1980s and continues unabated today, with participants and champions alike opting to play dirty.

When Gerald Eskenazi started reporting, sports journalism had a different look than it does today. Eskenazi gives a behind-the-scenes look into the journalistic techniques that go into crafting a story, as well as the pitfalls reporters fall into. There are cautionary tales of journalistic excess, as well as moments of triumph such as the time Eskenazi got Joe Namath to open up to him by admitting he was a sportswriter who knew nothing about football. Along the way, Eskenazi discusses interviewing other reluctant subjects and writing under the intense pressure of a deadline.

In From Sandlots to the Super Bowl, Craig R. Coenen recounts the NFL's ascension from a cash-strapped laughingstock to a perennial autumn obsession for millions of sports fans. It offers an in-depth summary of the NFL's early years and its struggles to build an identity. This book approaches the history of the National Football League not only with stats and scores but with what happened beyond the gridiron.

From “the master of new journalism [who always] hits it over the fence” (The New York Times) and “one of the finest writers on sports anywhere” (USA TODAY), the scintillating story of lacrosse—the game invented by the Haudenosaunee, played with more passion than any other, that...

An experienced Iditarod racer, Gary Paulsen brings his love of the sport to readers on a personal level in this intimate essay about the life of a litter of pups born to pull sleds across the snowy frontier - and the marvel he experiences as he watches them grow and learn.

In Praise of Famous Horses is an A-Z companion to perhaps the most loved of all domesticated animals. The book's entries include a wealth of unexpected, fascinating and serendipitous information, from horse-slang phrases to horses in British pub signs and from the horse in advertising to the horse as a food item. Themes such as the horse in warfare and the horse in folklore abound.

Learn some amazing truths about sports, science, history, and more with this interactive trivia book asking you to spot the lie—perfect for a personal challenge or group game night! Was Cleopatra the last Egyptian pharaoh? Can you really make diamonds out of tequila? Is the platypus actually...

An incisive narrative about a teen rape case that divided a Rust Belt town, exposing the hostile and systemic undercurrents that enable sexual violence, and spotlighting ways to make change. In football-obsessed Steubenville, Ohio, on a summer night in 2012, an incapacitated sixteen-year-old...

In 1963, the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James posed the deceptively benign question: "What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" A challenge to the public to reconsider cricket and its meaning by placing the game in its true social, political, and economic context. Different Class does not simply challenge the widely accepted orthodoxy of English cricket, it demonstrates how the values and belief systems at its heart were intentionally developed in order to divide the English along class lines at every level of the game.

In Soccer in American Culture: The Beautiful Game’s Struggle for Status, G. Edward White seeks to answer two questions. The first is why the sport of soccer failed to take root in the United States when it spread from England around much of the rest of the world in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The second is why the sport has had a significant renaissance in America since the last decade of the 20th century, to the point where it is now the fourth largest participatory sport in the United States and is thriving at the high school, college, and professional levels.

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.

Why is the athlete so important to us? Few public figures can dominate the public imagination with such power and authority. Drawing from art, literature, politics, and history, Something like the Gods explores the powerful grip the athlete has always held on the Western imagination. Amidon examines the archetype of the competitor as it evolved from antiquity to the present day, from athlete-warriors such as Achilles and Ulysses to global media icons like Ali, Jordan, and Tiger Woods.

In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September, more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That timeless, live quality makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and noisier.