Outdoors Memoirs

Scotty Bowman is recognized as the best coach in hockey history, and one of the greatest coaches in all of sports. He won more games and more Stanley Cups than anyone else. Despite all the changes in hockey, he coached at the very top for more than four decades, his first Cup win and his last an astonishing thirty-nine years apart. Yet perhaps most uniquely, different from anyone else who has ever lived or ever will again, he has continuously experienced the best of hockey since he was fourteen years old.

From Andre Agassi, one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court, a beautiful, haunting autobiography. Agassi brings a near-photographic memory to every pivotal match and every relationship. Never before has the inner game of tennis and the outer game of fame been so precisely limned. In clear, taut prose, Agassi evokes his loyal brother, his wise coach, his gentle trainer, all the people who help him regain his balance and find love at last with Stefanie Graf.

From legendary Brazilian jujitsu and MMA master Rickson Gracie comes a riveting, insightful memoir that weaves together the story of Gracie’s stunning career with the larger history of the Gracie family dynasty and the founding of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, showing how the connection between mind and body can be harnessed for success both inside and outside the ring.

Cameron Hanes discovered his true passion for bowhunting when he was twenty. Inspired by the physical challenges of stalking elk in the Oregon wilderness—traversing mountainous terrain, braving erratic weather, and evading his quarry’s even more dangerous predators—he began an ever-evolving journey of self-improvement. To become the best bowhunter of wild elk, to the caliber he believed he could be, Cam realized he would need more than archery skills.

One of the inspirations for the major motion picture Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley. This is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.

Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets. In the process, he takes his readers from science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit.

As one of the NHL's most polarizing players, Sean Avery turned the rules of professional hockey on their head. For 13 seasons, he played for some of the most storied franchises in the league, including the Detroit Red Wings, the Los Angeles Kings, and the New York Rangers, making his mark in each city as a player who was sometimes loved, sometimes despised, and always controversial. In Offside, Avery displays his trademark candor about the world of pro hockey and does for it what Jim Bouton's game-changing Ball Four did for baseball.

Mark Messier is one of the most accomplished athletes and dynamic leaders in the history of professional sports. He won the Stanley Cup five times with the Edmonton Oilers during their dynasty years and once more with the New York Rangers, ending the team’s 54-year championship drought. He is second on the all-time career lists for playoff points and third for regular season games played and for regular season points. Notably, he is the only player to have captained two different NHL franchises to championships.

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters, demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature.

Le plus grand atout du Québécois Georges St-Pierre n’est ni sa force ni ses qualités athlétiques, mais plutôt sa profonde détermination. Il a découvert le karaté alors qu’il n’était qu’un petit garçon victime d’intimidation et, par la suite, il n’a jamais abandonné son ambition de devenir le plus grand athlète en arts martiaux mixtes de tous les temps. GSP a gravi un à un les échelons.

Bruce Lee is a cultural icon, renowned the world over for his martial arts and film legacy. But Lee was also a deeply philosophical thinker, learning at an early age that martial arts are more than just an exercise in physical discipline - they are an apt metaphor for living a fully realized life. Now, in Be Water, My Friend, Lee’s daughter, Shannon, shares the concepts at the core of his philosophies, showing how they can serve as tools of personal growth and self-actualization.

For the first time in depth and in public, Olympic soccer gold-medalist Christine Sinclair, the top international goal scorer of all time and one of Canada's greatest athletes, reflects on both her exhilarating successes and her heartbreaking failures. Playing the Long Game is a book of earned wisdom on the value of determination and team spirit, and on leadership that changed the landscape of women's sport.

The world's foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain's greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir. How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian's unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he's been involved.

Chuck Noll won four Super Bowls and presided over one of the greatest football dynasties in history, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 70s. Later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his achievements as a competitor and a coach are the stuff of legend. But Noll always remained an intensely private and introspective man, never revealing much of himself as a person or as a coach, not even to the players and fans who revered him.

During his storied career as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports. This is the story of a preacher's kid from North Dakota who grew up to be one of the most innovative leaders of our time. Eleven times, Jackson led his teams to the ultimate goal: the NBA championship - six times with the Chicago Bulls and five times with the Los Angeles Lakers. This book is full of revelations.

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the 45 original passengers and crew, only 16 made it off the mountain alive. For 10 excruciating weeks, they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, these men and women not only had to keep their faith; they had to make an impossible decision: Should they eat the flesh of their dead friends?

Filled with delightful and insightful stories about golf and the golfers Rotella works with, Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect will improve the game of even the most casual weekend player.

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.

Ever since his astonishing victory in the 1991 PGA Championship, John Daly has enthralled fans with his big drives, bigger personality, and "Grip It and Rip It" approach to golf - and to life. Usually seen with a Marlboro Light dangling from his lip, John is the unchained, unpredictable, unapologetic bad boy of professional golf. My Life in and out of the Rough is a thrillingly - and sometimes shockingly - candid memoir of a larger-than-life athlete battling assorted addictions (alcohol, gambling, chocolate, sex), his weight, and, perhaps worst of all, divorce lawyers.

In Surviving to Drive, Haas team principal Guenther Steiner brings listeners inside his Formula 1 team for the entirety of the 2022 season, giving an unobstructed view of what really takes place behind the scenes. Through this unique lens, Steiner guides listeners on the thrilling rollercoaster of life at the heart of high-stakes motor racing.