Showing titles in History of Sports

Wartime Athletes is an unusual combination of sports history and military history in major wars. Profiles of more than 80 professional athletes are intertwined with the narrative about American history and stories of its heroes. During more than a century of warfare, athletes were side by side with many other heroic soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Hall of Famers in every major sport join relatively unknown athletes who sacrificed their lives, their limbs and their careers for their country.

The cage door clangs shut. The lock slides into place. The voice in my head drowns out everything else. What the hell is wrong with me? Follow the journey of Mark Tullius, former cage fighter and boxer turned author and stay-at-home dad as he puts his love of fighting and his sociology degree from prestigious Brown University to use. What began as a personal exploration to unlock his reasons for continuing to train and pursue a fight career evolved into an in-depth sociological study of why competing in mixed martial arts (MMA) appeals to fighters.

Simon Kuper travelled to twenty-two countries from South Africa and Italy to Russia and the USA to examine the way football has shaped them. At the same time, he tried to find out what lies behind each nation's distinctive style of play, from the carefree self-expression of the Brazilians to the anxious calculation of the Italians. During his journeys he met an extraordinary range of players, politicians and - of course - the fans themselves, all of whom revealed in their different ways the unique place football has in the life of the planet.

On September 3, 1970, the New York City Marathon was run for the first time. One hundred twenty-seven runners paid a $1 entry fee. The race was won by a Long Island firefighter who came to the starting line straight from his overnight shift. Only one woman competed. All but one runner was a New York resident. Fifty-four years later, nearly fifty thousand runners finished the same race. Nearly half were women. More than three times as many runners applied, and over two million spectators watched. Today, runners from all over the world run the NYC Marathon, and many others like it.

In College Sports, historians Eric A. Moyen and John R. Thelin tell the story of the success—and excess—of American college sports from their inception to today. Arguing that the modern American university's structure spurred the growth of big-time sports, they also highlight the treatment of marginalized groups in athletics and the role that commercialization and the media have played.

Una biografía íntima y original del eterno campeón del tenis: Rafa Nadal Una biografía íntima y original de nuestro mayor campeón del tenis: Rafa Nadal Rafa Nadal, el rey de la tierra y el tenis Rafa Nadal, la biografía del mejor deportista español de todos los tiempos La biografía de Rafa Nadal, un deportista épico Después de su impresionante semblanza de Roger Federer, Christopher Clarey, uno de los mejores escritores de tenis a nivel mundial, se sumerge en la figura de Rafa Nadal, todo un símbolo del deporte español y uno de los deportistas más inspirador del mundo.

In this fascinating and exhaustively researched book, the first of its kind in the English language, Tom Williams brings to life French football’s chequered coming of age over the last 40 years. Featuring exclusive interviews with great figures of the French game such as Alain Giresse, Jean-Pierre Papin, Emmanuel Petit and Blaise Matuidi, and with a cast of characters that also includes Michel Platini, Thierry Henry, Karim Benzema, Chris Waddle and Lionel Messi, it's a book no football fan will want to miss.

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.

When Chloe Dalton was eight years old, she would practise her goal kicks in the half-time break of her brothers' rugby matches, all the while telling impressed onlookers: 'Girls don't play rugby.' Sixteen years later, Chloe Dalton won Olympic gold playing rugby sevens for Australia and is now a fixture in the AFLW. In 2020, she started her own news platform, The [Female] Athlete Project, because while she was surrounded by women achieving incredible things in sport, nobody was hearing about them.

A groundbreaking work—named one of the five most influential sports books of the decade by Sports Illustrated—How Soccer Explains the World is a unique and brilliantly illuminating look at soccer, the world’s most popular sport, as a lens through which to view the pressing issues of our age, from the clash of civilizations to the global economy.

The incredible, untold true story of the 1952 Dallas Texans—the worst team in the craziest season in NFL history.
Rattlesnakes on the practice field, fist fights on the team plane, paternity suits, stadium fields covered in circus elephant dung, humiliating defeats, miraculous wins, and even a future Hall of Fame coach stealing a cab.

Julia Mullié en Tim de Vries kruipen in het wiel van knechten en kampioenen en diepen alle tot en met 2024 verreden Tours grondig uit. Over het mannenwielrennen, en zeker de Tour de France, verschijnt er genoeg, maar we vonden het allebei een groot gemis dat er nog geen allesomvattend boek is over de geschiedenis van de Tour voor vrouwen.

This compelling and moving story of Manchester United's rejuvenation after the Munich Air Crash revisits an era that is fundamental to the club's place in the modern game. The 1958 Munich Air Crash that ripped the heart from one of Britain's greatest ever teams. Barton focuses on the five years immediately after the tragedy, how the shattered ambitions of the club were revived and rejuvenated by recovering manager Matt Busby and his assistant Murphy. The engrossing story is told through in-depth research and exclusive interviews with many players from the era.

From Klopp to Slot, from pressing to precision, Liverpool Football Club: Premier League Winning Formula 2024/25 charts the Reds' triumphant return to the top. A NEW ERA BEGINS WITH ARNE SLOT. Slot didn’t try to replace Jurgen Klopp’s legacy. He refined it. His first season brought a transformed team—controlled, tactical, yet fiercely Liverpool at heart. APRIL 27, 2025 – A NIGHT TO REMEMBER.

Scyld Berry attended his first Test match in a professional capacity in June 1973, as EW Swanton's 'amanuensis'. With his 501st Test now on the horizon – an achievement never reached by any other greats of the cricket-writing world – Berry has watched the sport evolve like no other. Test cricket is a steady stream: England have not had a winter off-season since 1972, some Test series almost overlap with the next, and players span eras.

In the early 1970s, playground courts across the United States were jammed with hoops buffs experimenting with showy moves and aerial shots that were changing the look and feel of a sport once stubbornly earthbound. Out of this scene emerged a pair of incomparable yet dissimilar streetball sensations, both of whom would make their name in the American Basketball Association, an upstart professional league characterized as much by flamboyance as invention. Julius Erving, better known as Dr. J, became a mythic figure whose airborne acrobatics inspired an army of high-flying acolytes.

The experiences of heroic older women have traditionally been dismissed or buried in history books, and the skateboarding industry has mirrored this trend. Female skateboarders rarely get mentioned beyond a token paragraph, and stories of their contributions and barrier-breaking have almost never been told. Until now. With enthusiasm and empathy, Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides celebrates the relentless participation of women in skateboarding from the 1960s onward who defied a hostile industry to carve out their own space through underground networks.

A Hero’s Journey Beyond Little Norway and Olympia Sports Camp is a compiled history of the Olympia Sports Camp in Huntsville, Ontario, through the lens of its founder and inspiration, Dave Grace, the hero of the book’s title. The hero’s journey of the title is Dave Grace’s adaptation of the writings and teaching of philosopher Joseph Campbell.

This book tells the story of women's football in England since its 19th-century inception through pen portraits of its trailblazers. The game might have once been banned because of its popularity – find out about the subversive women who kept organising their teams and matches despite the prohibition, who broke barriers and set records – the legends of the game who built the foundations of the stage upon which today's stars flourish.

Since 2015, Fred Segal has chronicled "unprophetic" sports predictions on the internet. His Freezing Cold Takes social media pages feature quotes and predictions from members of the sports world that have aged poorly or were, in hindsight, flat-out wrong. The pages have become a guilty pleasure for hundreds of thousands of sports fans who love to see sports media's infamous "hot takes" that went cold.