Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio" in Sports & Outdoors

"That Others May Live" is a mantra that defines the fearless men of Alaska's 212th Pararescue Unit, the PJs, one of the most elite military forces on the planet. Whether they are rescuing citizens injured and freezing in the Alaskan wilderness or saving wounded Rangers and SEALs in blazing firefights at war, the PJs are the least known and most highly trained of America's warriors. Never Quit is the true story of how Jimmy Settle, an Alaskan shoe-store clerk, became a Special Forces Operator and war hero.

Hockey player Leo Trevi has spent the last six years trying to do two things: get over the girl who broke his heart, and succeed in the NHL. But on the first day he's called up to the newly franchised Brooklyn Bruisers, Leo gets checked on both sides. First by the team's coach, who has a long simmering grudge, and then by the Bruisers' sexy, icy publicist - his former girlfriend Georgia Worthington. Saying goodbye to Leo was one of the hardest things Georgia ever had to do - and saying hello again isn't much easier.

In 1996, Allan Weisbecker sold his home and his possessions, loaded his dog and surfboards into his truck, and set off in search of his longtime friend and surfing companion, Christopher, who had vanished into the depths of Central America. In this rollicking memoir of his quest from Mexico to Costa Rica to unravel the circumstances of Christopher's disappearance, Weisbecker intimately describes the people he befriended, the bandits he evaded, and the waves he caught and lost en route to finding his friend.

First and foremost a book about running, The Longest Race takes listeners alongside ultramarathoner Ed Ayres as he prepares for, runs, and finishes the JFK 50-mile race at a then record-breaking time for his age division - 60 and older. But for Ayres, this race was about more than just running, and the book also encompasses his musings and epiphanies along the way about possibilities for human achievement and the creation of a sustainable civilization.

Alone on the Wall recounts the most astonishing achievements of Honnold's extraordinary life and career, brimming with lessons on living fearlessly, taking risks, and maintaining focus even in the face of extreme danger. Now Honnold tells, for the first time and in his own words, the story of his three hours and 56 minutes on the sheer face of El Cap, which Outside called "the moon landing of free soloing.... A generation-defining climb. Bad ass and beyond words.... One of the pinnacle sporting moments of all time."

When boxing was bold, bright, and glamorous and the fights were the hottest sporting events of the year, Joe Frazier was king as the Heavyweight Champion of the World. From 1970 to 1973 he reigned. With a career record of 32-4-1 with twenty-seven knockouts and an Olympic gold medal, Frazier leaves little question that he was one of the greatest fighters of all time.

Before the team headed to Los Angeles in 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers were one of the most colorful and beloved teams in baseball. In Bums, best-selling author Peter Golenbock has compiled a fascinating oral history of the Ebbets Field heroes with recollections from former players, writers, front-office executives, and faithful fans.

The Masters golf tournament weaves a hypnotic spell. It is the toughest ticket in sports, with black-market tickets selling for $10,000 and more. Success at Augusta National breeds legends, while failure can overshadow even the most brilliant of careers. But as Curt Sampson reveals in The Masters, a cold heart beats behind the warm antebellum facade of this famous Augusta course.

Richard Henry Dana, a law student turned sailor for health reasons, sailed in 1834 aboard the brig Pilgrim on a voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. Drawing from his journals, Two Years Before the Mast gives a vivid and detailed account, shrewdly observed and beautifully described, of a common sailor's wretched treatment at sea, and of a way of life virtually unknown at that time.

Best-selling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost 300 interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end - marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV - Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.

During his lifetime, legendary martial artist Bruce Lee formulated a complex personal philosophy - a synthesis of Eastern and Western ideals - that extolled the virtues of knowledge and total mastery of one's self. Most of his philosophical writings could be found only within the personal library of the Bruce Lee estate - until John Little was given permission to publish them for the wider world.

On the evening of July 27, 1985, five hikers made a fateful choice to climb Yosemite's fabled Half Dome, even as the sky darkened and thunder rolled. By night's end, two would be dead from a lightning strike, three gravely wounded, and desperate EMTs would be overseeing a harrowing midnight helicopter rescue.

Ben Hogan was the hero no one knew. No one knew what drove him to practice until his hands bled. No one knew what private demons built the high walls that surrounded him. No one was even sure how he hit a golf ball with such godlike precision. He built a legend and a mystique that captivates golfers still.

The Bronx Is Burning meets Chuck Klosterman in this wild pop-culture history of baseball's most colorful and controversial decade. The Major Leagues witnessed more dramatic stories and changes in the 70s than in any other era. The American popular culture and counterculture collided head-on with the national pastime, rocking the once-conservative sport to its very foundations. For the millions of fans who grew up during this time, Big Hair and Plastic Grass serves up a delicious trip down memory lane.

In the wake of the stock-market crash and the dawn of the Great Depression, a ray of light emerged from the world of sports. In the summer of 1930, Bobby Jones, a 28-year-old amateur golfer, mounted a campaign against the record books. In four months, this natural, self-taught player conquered the British Amateur Championship, the British Open, the United States Open, and finally the United States Amateur Championship.

This collection of A.J. Liebling's classic New Yorker pieces on the "sweet science of bruising" brings vividly to life the boxing world as it once was. It depicts the great events of boxing's American heyday: Sugar Ray Robinson's dramatic comeback, Rocky Marciano's rise to prominence, Joe Louis' unfortunate decline. Liebling never fails to find the human story behind the fight, and he evokes the atmosphere in the arena as distinctly as he does the goings-on in the ring.

A classic of Holocaust literature, Gerda Weissmann Klein's celebrated memoir tells the moving story of a young woman's 3 frightful years as a slave laborer of the Nazis and her miraculous liberation. All But My Life stands as the ultimate lesson in humanity, hope, and friendship.

In 1919, American headlines proclaimed the fix and cover-up of the World Series as "the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America." In this painstaking review, Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the scandal, in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation’s leading gamblers to throw the series to Cincinnati. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial.

Seventy-foot waves batter a torn life raft 250 miles out tosea in one of the world's most dangerous places, the Gulf Stream. Hanging on to the raft are three men, a Canadian, a Brit, and their captain, Jean Pierre de Lutz, a dual citizen of America and France. Their capsized forty-seven-foot sailboat has filled with water and disappeared below the tempestuous sea. The giant waves repeatedly toss the men out of their tiny vessel, and JP, with ninebroken ribs, is hypothermic and on the verge of death.

Upon its release, The Bullpen Gospels was a direct hit to the New York Times best seller list. With comparisons to Jim Boutons’s Ball Four, The Bullpen Gospels is slated to be a classic of the genre.