Showing titles in History of Sports

Soccer has been America's Sport of the Future since 1972. The Men in Blazers are two English-born, soccer-obsessed broadcasters who have savored the dizzying growth of the game along with millions of Americans, as if it was a rollicking, sporting telenovela playing out in real life. Written in such a way that fully immerses Americans in the history and culture of the world's game, their Encyclopedia Blazertannica relives the careers of such greats such as George Best, Maradona, Beckham...and Alexi Lalas.

Stan Fischler, the dean of American hockey journalists and best-selling author of more than 60 books on hockey, profiles the heroes of Hockeytown in Detroit Red Wings: Greatest Moments and Players. One of the National Hockey League's "Original Six", few teams in professional hockey have enjoyed more success than the franchise in Detroit. Among the players Fischler glorifies are the immortal Gordie Howe, Terry Sawchuk, Ted Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio, and Sid Abel, all players whose numbers reside on banners in the rafters of Joe Louis Arena.

This is the book that fills in all the gaps, on and off the field, during the tumultuous years of Farhad Moshiri’s ownership, right up his sale of the club to The Friedkin Group in December 2024. More than a book about modern-day football, The Unofficial Everton Timeline documents unbridled ambition crashing into chaotic reality between 2014-2024. It is a comprehensive and detailed chronicle of important matches, big dreams, colossal financial investments, unproductive transfers, property deals and engineering marvels.

It's hard for modern listeners to truly grasp the spectacle that was arena sports in ancient Rome, which pitted man against man and man against beast in mortal combat. Our modern games of football and hockey, or even boxing and MMA, truly pale in comparison. The Gladiators is a comprehensive survey of these ancient sports, focusing on gladiatorial combat and the beast hunts (venationes).

Revered as the most prestigious tournament in golf, the Masters commands international attention, even among nongolfers. David Sowell returns to Augusta now with the third edition of The Masters, adding more history and updating each hole with additional stories of greatness and tales of woe for a new generation of golfers led by Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Patrick Reed, as well as from an older guard represented by Bubba Watson, Adam Scott, and Sergio Garcia. The legends of the Masters are in full force in this lively look at America's golf classic.

More than a century ago, a woman ran in the very first modern Olympic marathon. She just did it without permission. Award-winning journalist Maggie Mertens uncovers the story of how women broke into competitive running and how they are getting faster and fiercer every day—and changing our understanding of what is possible as they go.

In the last two decades, innovation, data analysis, and technology have driven a tectonic shift in the sports business. Game of Edges is the story of how sports franchises evolved, on and off the field, from raggedly run small businesses into some of the most systematically productive companies around.

When Kevin Garnett shocked the world by announcing that he would not be attending college - as young basketball prodigies were expected to do - but instead would enter the 1995 NBA draft directly from high school, he blazed a trail for a generation of teenage basketball players to head straight for the pros. That trend would continue until the NBA instituted an age limit in 2005, requiring all players to attend college or another developmental program for at least one year.

Today the salary cap is an NBA institution, something fans take for granted as part of the fabric of the league or an obstacle to their favorite team’s chances to win a championship. In the early 1980s, however, a salary cap was not only novel but nonexistent. The Cap tells the fascinating, behind-the-scenes story of the deal between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association that created the salary cap in 1983, the first in all of sports, against the backdrop of a looming players’ strike on one side and threatened economic collapse on the other.

On the Warrior’s Path connects the martial arts with this larger perspective, merging subtle philosophies with no-holds-barred competition, Nietzsche with Bruce Lee, radical Taoism and Buddhism with the Star Wars Trilogy, traditional martial arts with basketball and American Indian culture. At the center of all these phenomena is the warrior. Though this archetype seems to manifest contradictory values, author Daniele Bolelli describes the heart of this tension: how the training of martial technique leads to a renunciation of violence, and how overcoming fear leads to a unique freedom.

In this extraordinary tour de force, David Goldblatt tells the full story of soccer's rise from chaotic folk ritual to the world's most popular sport - now poised to fully establish itself in the USA. Already celebrated internationally, The Ball Is Round illuminates soccer's role in the political and social histories of modern societies, but never loses sight of the beauty, joy, and excitement of the game itself.

Award-winning sports journalist Scott Howard-Cooper uncovers the fascinating life story of a basketball legend. Kerr did not follow a traditional path to the NBA. He was born in Beirut to two academics and split his childhood between California and the Middle East. Though he was an impressive shooter, the undersized Kerr garnered almost no attention from major college programs, managing only at the last moment to snag the final scholarship at the University of Arizona.

More than any other sport, boxing has a history of being easy to rig. There are only two athletes and one or both may be induced to accept a bribe; if not the fighters, then the judges or referee might be swayed. In such inviting circumstances, the mob moved into boxing in the 1930s and profited by corrupting a sport ripe for exploitation. In Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science, Jeffrey Sussman tells the story of the coercive and criminal underside of boxing, covering nearly the entire 20th century.

Celebrated sports commentator Dan Patrick and comedy writer Joel H. Cohen team up with some of America’s greatest comedy writers to tell you everything and nothing about America’s sport.

From Monday Night Football to Super Bowl Sunday, the NFL is a dominating force in the lives of millions of fans who tune in and passionately cheer for their favorite teams. And when the games are over, the conversation is just getting started. Who's the greatest player of all time? Which coaches truly shaped the game we known and love today? Why is professional football such an undeniable part of our culture? Three-time Super Bowl winner Michael Lombardi has done it all—from scout to executive to coach—and now he sets the record straight on these questions and more.

Thirty-nine stories of hockey players who only scored one goal in their entire NHL career. From guys nobody has heard of to star goalies who managed to get one in the net, Ken Reid interviews these NHLers and finds out what that single point meant in the grand scheme of their lives.

The America’s Cup, first awarded in 1851, is the oldest trophy in international sports, and one of the most hotly contested. In 2000, Larry Ellison, co-founder and billionaire CEO of Oracle Corporation, decided to run for the coveted prize and found an unlikely partner in Norbert Bajurin, a car radiator mechanic who had recently been named Commodore of the blue collar Golden Gate Yacht Club.

Phil Hill, a lowly California mechanic who, defying all expectations, became the first American to win the Grand Prix championship. In the tradition of Seabiscuit and The Right Stuff, Cannell’s high-octane narrative evokes the lives of the daredevils who tempted fate each Sunday by driving well over 150 mph without benefit of seat belts or roll bars.

From the New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than 300 people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today.

The Tour de France may provide the most obvious fame and glory, but it is cycling’s one-day tests that the professional riders really prize. Toughest, longest and dirtiest of all are the so-called ‘Monuments’, the five legendary races that are the sport’s equivalent of golf’s majors or the grand slams in tennis. Milan–Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris­–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Tour of Lombardy date back more than a century, and each of them is an anomaly in modern-day sport. Peter Cossins tells the history of these extraordinary races and the riders they have immortalised.