Showing titles in Sociology of Sports

Sports media superstar Clay Travis wants to save sports from the social justice warriors seeking to turn them into another political battleground. Have you ever tuned into your favorite sports highlights show, only to find the talking heads yammering about the newest Trump tweets or what an...

Professional wrestling is both a cultural phenomenon and a multibillion-dollar industry that has launched some of the biggest names in entertainment. But what does it take for a wrestler to break through? In Rough House, journalist Alison Lyn Miller introduces Hunter James, an aspiring star born into a family of wrestlers in Georgia. Hunter lifts, runs, and pounds protein, sculpting himself into a human action figure with the goal of being signed by a major promotion and finishing what his father started.

The GAA is Ireland's largest civil society organisation, woven into the fabric of families and communities - and yet most books about Gaelic games focus on the greatest players and inter-county teams. This is the Life is a book about the 99 per cent: a witty and provocative look at grassroots GAA from the most intelligent and interesting Gaelic games pundit at work today.

Are you a young athlete looking to compete with the best? How about a seasoned professional wanting to stay at the top of their game? One of the toughest aspects of being an athlete is consistency; not just performing well at one event, but being the best every time you enter a competition. No matter how hard you train or tweak your diet, you might feel like you’ve hit a plateau. You might not be making any more progress at all. You aren’t alone!

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.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Secret Footballer: What Goes on Tour by The Secret Footballer. Since his first book was published in 2012, The Secret Footballer has been able to take the listener behind the scenes of footballers' lives like no other player has been or will ever be able to do. Anonymity has been a potent weapon in revealing the real world of football stars, and five years on, he has now penned the work that all his fellow professionals have been urging him to do from the start: The Secret Footballer: What Goes on Tour.

After covering the American sports scene for 15 years, Chuck Culpepper suffered from a profound case of Common Sportswriter Malaise. He was fed up with self-righteous proclamations, steroid scandals, and the deluge of in-your-face PR that saturated the NFL, the NBA, and MLB. Then in 2006, he moved to London and discovered a new and baffling world - the renowned Premiership soccer league. Culpepper pledged his loyalty to Portsmouth, a gutsy, small-market team at the bottom of the standings. As he puts it, “It was like childhood, with beer.”

From Major League Baseball's inception in the 1880s through World War II, team owners enjoyed monopolistic control of the industry. Despite the players' desire to form a viable union, every attempt to do so failed. In the mid-1960s, star players Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale staged a joint holdout for multiyear contracts and much higher salaries. Their holdout quickly drew support from the public; for the first time, owners realized they could ill afford to alienate fans, their primary source of revenue.

So rapid has this national transformation been that it has taken place within the lifetimes of these remarkable young sportsmen. Colombia Es Pasión! How a New Generation of Cyclists Changed a Nation explores the lives and dreams of each of Colombia's leading cyclists. Theirs are inspiring stories of overcoming poverty and violence, sickness and corruption - of the emergence of the indigenous to global sporting glory.

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...

From the beginning, ’68 was a season rocked by national tragedy and sweeping change. Opening Day was postponed and later played in the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral. That summer, as the pennant races were heating up, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was later followed by rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But even as tensions boiled over and violence spilled into the streets, something remarkable was happening in major league ballparks across the country. Pitchers were dominating like never before, and with records falling and shut-outs mounting, many began hailing ’68 as “The Year of the Pitcher".

Acclaimed sports writers Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. Davidson tackle the most pressing issues in sports, why they matter, and how we can do better. For the authors, "sticking to sports" is not an option - not when our taxes are paying for the stadiums, and college athletes aren't getting paid at all. But simply quitting a favorite team won't change corrupt and deplorable practices, and the root causes of many of these problems are endemic in our wider society.

Are you ready to join the club? If your desire is to build a stronger and well-chiseled body naturally without steroids; then this is the book for you! It will not only enable you shape the body of your dreams, but it will also empower you to stay the course.

Get Fit, Get Happy isn't about just transforming the way you look. It's about transforming the way you feel. Part memoir in which Harry Judd - member of the hugely successful bands McFly and McBusted - tells the life lessons that he has learned and part richly researched fitness plan to get you feeling more positive, Get Fit, Get Happy is a fitness revolution to help people find a little more happiness in their lives.

“How can the NCAA blithely wreck careers without regard to due process or common fairness? How can it act so ruthlessly to enforce rules that are so petty? Why won’t anybody stand up to these outrageous violations of American values and American justice?” In the four years since Joe...

The bad*ss story of the female, queer, bi, and nonbinary skaters who charted a path to the Olympics and changed the face of skateboarding. Who gets to tell the story of skateboarding? Drop In is the first book to recognize and historicize the female, queer, bi, and nonbinary humans who blazed...

The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams is the “revelatory” (New York Times), “deeply empathetic” (New Yorker) true story of four teenagers attempting to escape the cycles of poverty, crime, and despair in 1990s Brooklyn by getting recruited to play college basketball. With poignant intimacy, Darcy Frey chronicles the aspirations of these young men, including the future superstar Stephon Marbury, who are among the most promising players in Coney Island.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A riveting look at what is really said and done behind closed doors with the New York Yankees, the most famous and wealthiest sports franchise in the world Using the 2018 baseball season as the backdrop, Inside the Empire gives readers the real, unvarnished...

This is Your Brain on Sports is the book for sports fans searching for a deeper understanding of the games they watch and the people who play them. Sports Illustrated executive editor and bestselling author L. Jon Wertheim teams up with Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers to take readers on a wild...

Only available in audio! Listen to never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes as recounted by sports journalism legend John Feinstein. Hear John's once-in-lifetime personal interactions with some of the most monumental figures and moments in sports history: from Bob Knight and “the night...