Outdoors Memoirs

LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century, and he’s in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined—the truth is vastly more interesting than that. LeBron tells the full, riveting saga of how a child adrift found the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict paints a vivid picture of LeBron’s epic origin story, showing the gradual rise of a star.

Not a technical guide on snowboarding but, rather, a very personal approach to how to think about mountains, snow, and adventure, The Art of Shralpinism reflects the remarkable journey of snowboarding superstar Jeremy Jones. Drawing on the hundreds of journals he has kept over the years, Jones offers intriguing snapshots of time and place that include his own on-the-slope stories and white-out moments, as well as those of other prominent adventurers such as Jimmy Chin, Zahan Billimoria, and Christina Lusti.

Mark Twight is a BANFF award-winner, an extreme climber, an extreme writer, and an extreme personality. No matter what he's doing, Mark Twight takes a definite, and often controversial , stand. Anyone who knows climbing knows Twight's name, and anyone who knows Twight's name will want to listen to this audiobook. Each story is told in Twight's taut, in-your-face style. Brand-new epilogues bring each piece full circle, providing updated information and fresh, hindsight perspectives.

Murphy’s life didn’t begin on a track that would lead to homelessness. He was smart, dedicated to hockey, and was a key player for the Oilers, Red Wings, and Blackhawks, among other teams. But one vicious body check changed his life forever. Despite being shaken by the hit, Murphy was cleared to return to the game. Soon after, his entire life seemed to change. Murphy became a journeyman, moving from team to team. Along the way, other NHLers said they noticed something different about him, too.

Aron Ralston, an experienced twenty-seven-year-old outdoorsman, was on a days solitary hike through a remote and narrow Utah canyon when he dislodged an eight-hundred- pound boulder that crushed his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall. Emerging from the searing pain, Aron found himself completely stuck. No one knew where he was; no one was coming to rescue him. With scant water and food, and a cheap pocketknife his only tool, he eliminated his options one by one.

When Chick Ferguson made plans to go to the Yukon, he wasn’t planning on taking his newlywed Mary. He definitely was not planning on spending much of the next 18 years in the wilderness. For he was just a photographer with a little studio in a little town in Montana. His business was failing and having heard of the riches of the fur trade he was hoping to spend a year or two trapping, making a stake and returning to his routine life. But he didn’t figure on love....

With heart-pounding descriptions of avalanches and treacherous ascents, Barry Blanchard chronicles his transformation from a poor Native American/white kid from the wrong side of the tracks to one of the most respected alpinists in the world. At 13 he learned to rappel when he joined the 1292 Lord Strathcone's Horse Army Cadets. Soon kicked out for insubordination, he was already hooked on climbing and saw alpinism as a way to make his single mother proud and end his family's cycle of poverty.

Paret lay on the ground, quivering gently, a small froth on his mouth. The house doctor jumped into the ring. He knelt. He pried Paret's eyelid open. He looked at the eyeball staring out. He let the lid snap shut. He reached into his satchel, took out a needle, jabbed Paret with a stimulant. Paret's back rose in a high arch. He writhed in real agony. They were calling him back from death. One wanted to cry out, "Leave the man alone. Let him die."

Dottir is two-time consecutive CrossFit Games Champion Katrin Davidsdottir's inspiring and poignant memoir. As one of only two women in history to have won the title of “Fittest Woman on Earth” twice, Davidsdottir knows all about the importance of mental and physical strength. She won the title in 2015, backing it up with a second win in 2016, after starting CrossFit in just 2011.

The road from a high school track to an Olympic starting line is long and sometimes shadowy. Obstacles like chronic injuries, under-fueled nutrition, and coercive coaching can threaten to derail careers before they’ve even begun. Frustrated by seeing young talent burn out before reaching their potential, professional distance runner Molly Huddle and college coach Sara Slattery have teamed up with trailblazing running legends and sports medicine professionals to create an essential guide to reach your running potential.

In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of engineers at the Glen Canyon Dam with an unprecedented emergency that may have resulted in the most catastrophic dam failure in history. In the midst of this crisis, the decision to launch a small wooden dory named “The Emerald Mile” at the head of the Grand Canyon, just fifteen miles downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, seemed not just odd, but downright suicidal.

Aaron Rodgers is among the two or three most talented players to ever hold the most important job in American team sports–quarterback. He also stands as the most mysterious and polarizing figure in the modern-day national pastime that is professional football. From his controversial Covid stance to his methods of spiritual awakening to his estrangement from his family to his high-profile romances to his devastating Achilles injury a mere four plays into his New York Jets career, Rodgers has long dominated the NFL’s news cycle.

A journalist who many iconic athletes have trusted to tell their stories (of both triumph and disgrace), Jim has had unprecedented access to the people, places, and extraordinary events in the world of sports. Asking tough but fair questions, he has broken numerous stories, and landed squarely in the middle of others, from the Ben Johnson and Barry Bonds steroid scandals, to Michael Jordan’s surprise retirement, to the off-the-court Kobe/Shaq feud which led to their on-the-court break up, to being part of the live broadcast for 22 Super Bowls.

The Chair and The Valley is a raw, gut-wrenching, and amazing story about healing from trauma and starting over. It is a testament to the importance of chosen family, the restorative power of nature, and the strength it takes to build a new life in the face of fear and doubt. Banning takes listeners through his fraught relationship with his family, the mistreatment he suffered at the hospital, the lawsuit against the owners of the facility, and his desire to make sense of what happened to him. We witness Banning navigate the difficult landscape of trauma and his battle to live a normal life.

Peter Sagan, at just 28 years of age, is already one of cycling's greatest riders of all time. With four Tour de France points jersey victories, three road-race world championships, the 2018 Paris-Roubaix, and multiple spring classics among Sagan's palmares, the world of cycling agrees that this intense, yet fun-loving rider is among the most dominant and fun-to-watch riders of his generation. In My World, for the very first time, bike racing fans will have the opportunity to glimpse behind the scenes of Sagan's cycling life.

After hitting his 60th home run in September 1927, Ruth embarked on the mother of all barnstorming tours, a three-week victory lap across America, accompanied by Yankee teammate Lou Gehrig. In The Big Fella, acclaimed biographer Jane Leavy recreates that 21-day circus and in so doing captures the romp and the pathos that defined Ruth’s life and times. Drawing from more than 250 interviews, a trove of previously untapped documents, and Ruth family records, Leavy breaks through the mythology that has obscured the legend and delivers the man.

When “Renaissance runner” (New York Times) Alexi Pappas - Olympic athlete, actress, filmmaker, and writer - was four years old, her mother died by suicide, drastically altering the course of Pappas’s life and setting her on a search for female role models. When her father signed his bereaved daughter up for sports teams as a way to keep her busy, female athletes became the first women Pappas looked up to, and her Olympic dream was born. At the same time, Pappas had big creative dreams, too: She wanted to make movies, write, and act.

The Big Miss is Hank Haney's candid and surprisingly insightful account of his tumultuous six-year journey with Tiger Woods, during which the supremely gifted golfer collected six major championships and rewrote golf history. Hank was one of the very few people allowed behind the curtain. He was with Tiger 110 days a year, spoke to him over 200 days a year, and stayed at his home up to 30 days a year, observing him in nearly every circumstance....

Tim Richmond was, fellow NASCAR driver Kyle Petty said, "a stranger in time." In one regard, the flashy, flamboyant driver from Ashland, Ohio, was years ahead of the trends in a sport that would soon enjoy explosive growth in popularity. Women who were NASCAR fans loved him - and so did their husbands and boyfriends.

Ride alongside Jon Moxley as he retraces some of the highways traveled on his remarkable journey. Revel in the never-before-told stories about his early life in Cincinnati, Ohio; the gritty independent wrestling scene where he cut his teeth; the complicated corporate landscape of the WWE where he bucked against authority; and the rebellious upstart AEW, where he won the championship in 2020 and was finally free to achieve the vision of the wrestler he'd always wanted to be. With plenty of pitstops and revelatory insights, MOX is the riveting account of the life of a brawler.