Sports Science

Tennis means life and death for the residents of the magical kingdom of Nova, and for 12-year-old Legacy, it’s the only thing getting her through the long days taking care of the other kids at the orphanage. That’s all about to change when she hears about Silla’s tournament. Silla, the ruler of Nova, hosts an annual tournament for the less fortunate of her citizens to prove themselves and win entrance to the Academy, where they can train to compete at nationals. The prize is Silla’s favor and enough cash to keep open the orphanage, and Legacy has her heart set on both.

Undefeated galactic heavyweight champion Korak the Cutter has defeated all challengers, destroying everyone in his path, but the wins aren't as easy as they used to be. After a decade of perfect fighting, his age is catching up with him. For a Quyth Warrior, that means he's slowing down, and speed is the name of the game in mixed martial arts.

What is competitive gaming, and where did it come from? What makes it so exciting? The bitter esports team and country rivalries, the scandals, the money, the last-minute Hail Mary plays; it’s all here, brought to you with the trademark wit - and access - of the industry’s most respected and experienced broadcaster. He’ll even tell you how to spell it. This is the world of esports according to its most famous presenter.

In May 1996 the media scrambled to document the gripping story of 16-year-old Mark Pfetzer's expedition to Mount Everest. Not only was he the youngest climber ever to attempt the summit, he also witnessed the tragedy documented in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, in which eight climbers perished in a sudden storm. Within Reach is Mark's extraordinary account of this experience and of his triumphs over several other challenging peaks. At once triumphant and tragic, this story will be an inspiration to climbers, athletes, and armchair enthusiasts alike.

According to investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, for decades the National Football League has had a strong and unspoken understanding with a dangerous institution: Organized crime. In his classic expos, Interference, Moldea bares the dark, sordid underbelly of America's favorite professional team sport, revealing a nest of corruption that the league has largely ignored since its inception.

What if running in beautiful places was paradoxically contributing to the destruction of those precious environments and causing irreversible global harm to people and animals, too? In We Can’t Run Away from This, ultrarunner Damian Hall examines the impact of running in our climate and ecological emergency. Packed with insights from experts, it is an enlightening book that will prompt us all to really think about our kit, food, and travel and to identify simple changes we can make to our running and wider lives.

Why does a football spiral? How do some athletes jump so high? The answer is science! The Secret Science of Sports helps kids better understand concepts of science, technology, engineering, and math through the sports they love to play and watch.

Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.

What does it mean to be a sporty woman in the 21st century? From the launch of Net-A-Sporter, serving up sports clothing for fashionistas, to the introduction of #plankie as the new Instagram selfie for yoga bunnies, exercise for women has finally gone mainstream. But if sweating has never been so hot for female celebrities, then why are there still so many obstacles for girls and women when it comes to sport?

Journalist Jeff Bercovici spent extensive time with professional and Olympic athletes, coaches, and doctors to find how today's sports superstars seemed to be able to defy the limits of physical aging that inevitably sideline their competitors. Through fascinating profiles and first-person anecdotes, Bercovici illuminates the science and strategies extending the careers of elite older athletes, uncovers the latest advances in fields from nutrition to brain science to virtual reality, and offers empowering insights about how the rest of us can find peak performance at any age.

While sportswriters rushed into Major League Baseball locker rooms to talk with players, MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn barred the lone woman from entering along with them. That reporter, twenty-six-year-old Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke, charged Kuhn with gender discrimination, and after the lawyers argued Ludtke v. Kuhn in federal court, she won. Her 1978 groundbreaking case affirmed her equal rights, and the judge's order opened the doors for several generations of women to be hired in sports media.

After the 1969 season, the St. Louis Cardinals traded their star center fielder, Curt Flood, to the Philadelphia Phillies, setting off a chain of events that would change professional sports forever. At the time there were no free agents, no no-trade clauses. When a player was traded, he had to report to his new team or retire. Unwilling to leave St. Louis and influenced by the civil rights movement, Flood chose to sue Major League Baseball for his freedom.

Every spring, billions of birds sweep north, driven by ancient instincts to return to their breeding grounds. This vast parade often goes unnoticed, except in a few places where these small travelers concentrate in large numbers. One such place is along Lake Erie in northwestern Ohio. There, the peak of spring migration is so spectacular that it attracts bird watchers from around the globe, culminating in one of the world’s biggest birding festivals. Now climate change threatens to disrupt patterns of migration and the delicate balance between birds, seasons, and habitats.

In Knowing the Score, philosopher David Papineau uses sports to illuminate some of modern philosophy's most perplexing questions. As Papineau demonstrates, the study of sports clarifies, challenges, and sometimes confuses crucial issues in philosophy. The tactics of road bicycle racing shed new light on questions of altruism, while sporting family dynasties reorient the nature v. nurture debate. Why do sports competitors choke? Why do fans think God will favor their team over their rivals? How can it be moral to deceive the umpire by framing a pitch?

In this groundbreaking new book, the author, a trans man, trains to fight in a charity match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence. Through his experience boxing - learning to get hit and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body - McBee examines the weight of male violence....

For more than twenty-five years, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a column called “The View of Life” for Natural History magazine. More than thirty entries from that column comprise this collection, which covers topics from dinosaurs to baseball and nearly everything in between related to natural history and evolution.

At first glance, Josh Hanagarne seems an improbable librarian. He stands 6'7", competes in strongman contests, and was diagnosed in high school with Tourette's syndrome. But books are his first love - Josh's earliest memories involve fantastic adventures between the pages of Gulliver’s Travels and a passionate infatuation with Fern from Charlotte’s Web. Everything in Josh’s life - from his Mormon upbringing, to finally finding love, to learning to control his tics through lifting - circles back to a close connection with books.

This Is Your Brain on Sports is the audiobook for sports fans searching for a deeper understanding of the games they watch and the people who play them. Sports Illustrated executive editor and best-selling author L. Jon Wertheim teams up with Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers to take listeners on a wild ride into the inner world of sports.

Nick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small, green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second work, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Echoes. Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing.

When thousands of Somali refugees resettled in Lewiston, Maine, a struggling, overwhelmingly white town, longtime residents grew uneasy. Then the mayor wrote a letter asking Somalis to stop coming, which became a national story. While scandal threatened to subsume the town, its high school's soccer coach integrated Somali kids onto his team, and their passion began to heal old wounds.