Showing titles in History of Sports

Brought to you by Penguin. A provocative look at how grassroots GAA interacts with life in Ireland, from the wittiest Gaelic games pundit at work today The GAA is Ireland's largest civil society organisation, woven into the fabric of families and communities - and yet most books about Gaelic...

When James Montague first began covering football in the Middle East two decades ago, people asked him what future there could possibly be for the beautiful game in one of the most volatile regions in the world. In the years that followed, it would become one of the biggest stories in global sport, from the from revolutionary ultras of the Arab Spring and the takeover of some of the world's biggest clubs by the Emirati super rich, to Qatar's controversial journey towards hosting the 2022 World Cup finals.

The iconic captain Brendon McCullum, England's T20 visionaries Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler and Trinidad's Kieron Pollard and Sunil Narine, who rose to become among the first T20 millionaires, explain how they shaped T20 - and how it shaped them. Test greats Rahul Dravid and Ricky Ponting recount what a sea-change T20 represented and decode T20 strategy. AB de Villiers explores the limits of modern batting. Venky Mysore, the cricket revolutionary you have never heard of, reveals how the game is changing off the field.

From its beginnings in the northeastern United States in the 1880s, golf has seen its popularity, and its fortunes, wax and wane, affected by politics and economics, reflecting tensions between aristocratic and democratic impulses. The Kingdom of Golf in America traces these ups and downs, ins and outs, in the growth of golf as a community. Moss describes the development of the private club and public course and the impact of wealth and the consumer culture on those who play golf and those who watch.

The Circuit des Champs de Bataille (the Tour of the Battlefields) was held in 1919, less than six months after the end of the First World War. It covered 2,000 kilometres and was raced in appalling conditions across the battlefields of the Western Front, otherwise known as the Zone Rouge. The race was so tough that only 21 riders finished, and it was never staged again. With one of the most demanding routes ever to feature in a bicycle race, and plagued by appalling weather conditions, the Circuit des Champs de Bataille was beyond gruelling, but today its story is largely forgotten.

Thoroughbred racing was one of the first major sports in early America. Horse racing thrived because it was a high-status sport that attracted the interest of both old and new money. It grew because spectators enjoyed the pageantry, the exciting races, and, most of all, the gambling. In The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime, author Steven Riess fills a long-neglected gap in sports history, offering a richly detailed and fascinating chronicle of thoroughbred racing's heyday.

An entertaining look at one of sport's greatest rivalries - The Ashes - by former England spin bowler Graeme Swann. Graeme Swann leads us on a compelling adventure through one of world sport's most engrossing rivalries. He knows as much as anybody about the heat of England v Australia battles...

In the 1960s, on the heels of the “Greatest Game Ever Played”, professional football began to flourish across the country - except in Texas, where college football was still the only game in town. But in an unlikely series of events, two young oil tycoons started their own professional football franchises in Dallas the very same year: the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, and, as part of a new upstart league designed to thwart the NFL’s hold on the game, the Dallas Texans of the AFL. Almost overnight, a bitter feud was born.

Dave Lowry juxtaposes his singular experience as an adept student of kenjutsu (the art of swordsmanship) under a Japanese teacher in St. Louis with a riveting account of the samurai tradition in Japan. Intertwining tales of the masters with reflections on his own apprenticeship in the samurai's arts, he reveals in their time-honored methods a way of life with profound relevance to modern times.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend. “Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a...

In The Little Wonder, Robert Winder traces the central role the game has played in national life for so long. The book's 150th anniversary in 2013 is the ideal time to tell the extraordinary story of Wisden's - and cricket's - journey from Victorian times to the modern world. New every year, it feels as though it has been with us for ever.

Through all the pain, all the glory, and all the moments of absurdity, fans of the Atlanta Falcons have always had one thing in common - passion. Now those stalwart supporters will get to relive all the history of their favorite franchise in this newly updated edition of Tales from the Atlanta Falcons Sideline. Since their inauspicious beginnings in 1966, the Atlanta Falcons have risen to become one of the powerhouse teams of the NFC South. In this riveting collection of misbegotten woes and tireless efforts, Matt Winkeljohn captures an epic journey of athletic redemption.

Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy, brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London.

The greatest tennis match ever played pitted the dominant Don Budge against the seductively handsome Baron Gottfried von Cramm. This deciding 1937 Davis Cup match, played on the hallowed grounds of Wimbledon, was a battle of titans: the world's number one tennis player against the number two; America against Germany; democracy against fascism. For five superhuman sets, the duo's brilliant shotmaking kept the Centre Court crowd—and the world—spellbound.

African Americans were making moves in basketball generations before the rise of the NBA. Their pioneering efforts helped popularize the sport in big cities and small towns alike and shaped the game we know and love today. From the invention of the game in 1891 to the racial integration of all-White professional leagues in the 1950s, dozens of teams—then often called “fives”—of African American players were founded and flourished.

El audiolibro cuenta la meritoria historia del Deportivo de La Coruña, el equipo de fútbol que en los años noventa se ganó el cariño de los aficionados españoles por sus heroicas gestas en la Liga y en la Copa del Rey. El equipo, gracias a la ambiciosa gestión de su presidente, incluso llegó a codearse con la realeza del fútbol europeo.

Before agents and TV mega-rights ushered in multi-millionaire players, footballers’ wages were capped, with even the game's biggest names earning barely more than a plumber or electrician. Footballing legends shared a bond of borderline penury with the crowds they entertained on Saturday afternoons, on pitches that were far away from the pristine lawns of the modern era. Instead of the sports cars driven by today's top players, the stars of yesteryear travelled to matches on public transport and returned to homes as modest as those of their supporters.

Father David Bauer changed lives - at the rink, in the classroom, and at the pulpit. Bauer's dream created the first truly national Canadian hockey team. In 1963 that unique group represented Canada abroad and were committed to both country and to Father Bauer. Whether shepherding the hockey program at St. Michael's College in Toronto or the men's national team out of the University of British Columbia, Bauer was both spiritual leader and trailblazer.

It was the team finals of women's gymnastics in the 2012 Olympics, and McKayla Maroney was on top of her game. The 16-year-old US gymnast was performing arguably the best vault of all time, launching herself unimaginably high into the air and sticking a flawless landing. When her score came, many were baffled: 16.233. Three-tenths of a point stood between her and a perfect score. If that vault wasn't perfection, what was?

Professional cycling has been around for more than 100 years, more than enough time for nearly anything imaginable to have happened. Whether it's the Tour de France racer who thought the worst thing that could happen to him was being forced to wear the Yellow Jersey, or the communist team director who insisted, on a whim, that a rider have a toe amputated or the fit of jealousy that started the Giro d'Italia, the sport has an endless supply of examples of human folly.