Sports Science

Until 1894 there were no female sport stars, no product endorsement deals, and no young mothers with the chutzpah to circle the globe on a bicycle. Annie Kopchovsky changed all of that.

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

Smart Ball follows Major League Baseball's history as a sport, a domestic monopoly, a neocolonial power, and an international business. MLB's challenge has been to market its popular mythology as the national pastime with pastoral, populist roots while addressing the management challenges of competing with other sports and diversions in a burgeoning global economy. Baseball researcher Robert F. Lewis II argues that MLB for years abused its legal insulation and monopoly status.

A dreamer may ride the rough tides of a great struggle, emboldened, or be struck by a sweet moment of genius. Nevertheless, as evidenced by the likes of Federer, Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos and others of their ilk, for any dream to become real it must satisfy the demands of necessity, specificity, durability and scalability. Not only that!

Recently recovered from his epic bicycle journey that took him from the Delaware shore to the Oregon coast, distinguished climate scientist David Goodrich sets out on his bike again to traverse the Western Interior Seaway - an ancient ocean that once spread across half of North America. When the waters cleared a geologic age ago, what was left behind was vast flat prairie, otherworldly rock formations, and oil shale deposits.

It’s high-stakes, win-or-die football action in the far future, as aliens and humans fill positions based on physiology and leave their blood, sweat and tears on gridirons across the galaxy. Last season, 19-year-old rookie quarterback Quentin Barnes overcame his racism and unified his team. He led the Ionath Krakens to a lower-tier championship, a championship that earns them promotion into the meat grinder known as “Tier One.”

John Barnes spent the first dozen years of his life in Jamaica before moving to the UK with his family in 1975. Six years later, he was a professional footballer, distinguishing himself for Watford, Liverpool and England, and in the process, becoming this country's most prominent Black player. Barnes is now an articulate and captivating social commentator on a broad range of issues, and in The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism, he tackles head-on the issues surrounding prejudice with his trademark intelligence and authority.

David Falkner, noted author of five previous books about baseball, deftly portrays the rise to stardom of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play on a major-league team in baseball’s modern era. As Falkner traces the development of Robinson’s natural skill and tireless dedication, he focuses on the strengths that earned Robinson a unique place on the diamond and in the struggle for civil rights. This compelling biography illuminates a critical intersection of sports and cultural history.

Das Gesicht des IOC ist ein Deutscher. Seine Geschichte und die des immer wieder kriminellen IOC laufen seit Jahrzehnten parallel. Hier wird sie erstmals erzählt. Thomas Bach ist der Mann arabischer Scheichs und chinesischer Staatskommunisten, und vor allem: der Olygarch Putins. Dieser investigative Report verwebt die Stränge von Sport, Politik, Geld und Propaganda. Es ist eine Reise durch mehr als 40 Jahre IOC, die in der Wahl Bachs und dessen Russland-freundlicher Politik mündet.

With every touchdown, home run, and three-pointer, star athletes represent an American dream that only an elite group blessed with natural talent can achieve. However, Kimball concentrates on what happens once these modern warriors meet their untimely demise. As athletes die, legends rise in their place.

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball - a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures - including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians - that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so.

Gleason's Gym is the last remaining institution of New York's Golden Age of boxing. Jake LaMotta, Muhammad Ali, Hector Camacho, Mike Tyson - the alumni of Gleason's are a roster of boxing greats. Founded in the Bronx in 1937, Gleason's moved in the mid-1980s to what has since become one of New York's wealthiest residential areas - Brooklyn's DUMBO. Gleason's has also transformed, opening its doors to new members, particularly women and white-collar men. Come Out Swinging is Lucia Trimbur's nuanced insider's account of a place that was once the domain of poor and working-class men of color but is now shared by rich and poor, male and female, black and white.

As the crack epidemic swept across inner-city America in the early 1980s, the streets of Baltimore were crime ridden. For poor kids from the housing projects, the future looked bleak. But basketball could provide the quickest ticket out, an opportunity to earn a college scholarship and perhaps even play in the NBA. Dunbar High School had one of the most successful basketball programs, not only in Baltimore but in the entire country, and in the early 1980s, the Dunbar Poets were arguably the best high school team ever.

Joseph Denton was a man happy with his life. Oh sure, he would do a few things a little different if he had the chance. If he could get a do-over, he would be an architect instead of a pharmacist. It's not that he doesn't like being a pharmacist, but he always wanted to design buildings. If he could do it one more time, he would make it so his wife and he could have kids. He was sure he would enjoy being a father, but his wife would have loved being a mother even more. More money would be nice, but do-overs don't exist.

Among many legendary episodes from the life and career of men's basketball coach Dean Smith, few loom as large as his recruitment of Charlie Scott, the first African American scholarship athlete at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Drawn together by college basketball in a time of momentous change, Smith and Scott helped transform a university, a community, and the racial landscape of sports in the South.

While birding literature is filled with tales of expert observers spotting rare species in exotic locales, John Yow reminds us that the most fascinating birds can be the ones perched right outside our windows. In thirty-five engaging and sometimes irreverent vignettes, Yow reveals the fascinating lives of the birds we see nearly every day. Following the seasons, he covers forty-two species, discussing the improbable, unusual, and comical aspects of his subjects' lives.

Ann Meyers Drysdale is one of the greatest stars in the history of basketball. But her rise wasn't without controversy. Her 1979 NBA bid to play with the Indiana Pacers brought a barrage of criticism. But Ann simply wanted to play among the best. She had always competed with the guys. A female first in many categories, Ann Meyers Drysdale was the first woman ever signed to a four-year athletic scholarship to UCLA, where she remains the only four-time Bruin basketball All American, male or female.

Jackie Robinson heroically broke the color barrier in 1947. But how—and, in practice, when—did the integration of the sport actually occur? Bill Madden shows that baseball’s famous black experiment” did not truly succeed until the coming of age of Willie Mays and the emergence of some star players—Larry Doby, Hank Aaron, and Ernie Banks—in 1954. And as a relevant backdrop off the field, it was in May of that year that the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation be outlawed in America’s public schools.

Dass es in der Welt des Fußballs immer weniger um den Sport und immer mehr um schmutzige Geschäfte geht, ahnen die Fans nicht erst seit den Skandalen um die Fifa und die vermeintlich gekaufte WM 2006 in Deutschland. Die "Football Leaks" bieten nun erstmals Einblicke in die Schattenwelt der Branche, offenkundig wird die grenzenlose Gier, die hinter den Kulissen des Weltfußballs herrscht.

During the Great Depression, out in drought stricken North Dakota, one of the most improbable teams in the history of baseball was put together by one of the sport's most unlikely champions. In Bismarck, a decade before Jackie Robinson broke into the Major Leagues, car dealer Neil Churchill signed the best players he could find, regardless of race, and fielded an integrated squad that took on all comers in spectacular fashion.