Outdoors Memoirs

In Above the Noise, DeRozan opens up about both his proudest triumphs and the times he felt so weighed down he couldn’t get out of bed. He reflects on what it took to make a name for himself in a new country after getting drafted by the Toronto Raptors. He recounts the pressure of playing with veteran athletes as a twenty-year-old rookie, and the pain of losing role models. And he reveals what it felt like to be traded away from the team that he wanted to play with for the rest of his career.

In Campfire Stories: Narrow Escapes & More Close Calls, storytellers take us from Florida to the Northern Rockies to the Arctic Ocean with wild and true stories, a reminder that the natural world is rugged and unpredictable. Including stories from Steven Rinella and Clay Newcomb, and spearfishing champion Kimi Werner, this immersive audio collection also features tales from listeners who survived falling through the ice, gunshot and arrowhead wounds, hand-to-hoof combat with a deer, and a spearfisherman who made the best shot of his life to save a friend from certain death.

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.

Over the past sixty-five years, millions of golfers have studied Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons, making it the bestselling golf book of all time. Now, Hogan’s masterpiece has received the definitive edition it deserves. Widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers in the history of the sport, Hogan is especially known for his mastery of the golf swing. At the start of his career, he played with a hook that threatened to ruin his game, until he dedicated himself to correcting it—and in doing so, he gained a rare and hard-fought understanding of the fundamentals.

In this sports memoir, Wayne Gretzky weaves memories of his legendary career with an inside look at professional hockey and the heroes and stories that inspired him. From minor-hockey phenomenon to Hall of Fame sensation, Wayne Gretzky rewrote the record books, his accomplishments becoming the stuff of legend. Dubbed “The Great One”, he is considered by many to be the greatest hockey player who ever lived. No one has seen more of the game than he has - but he has never discussed in depth just what it was he saw.

In Tales from the New Jersey Devils Locker Room, former New Jersey goalie Chico Resch and coauthor Mike Kerwick bring listeners along for a wild ride from the lean early seasons to the three Stanley Cup championships of this beloved team.

In his best-selling first book, Jeremy Wade, the star of the hit TV series River Monsters, memorably recounted his adventures on six continents in pursuit of fish of staggering proportions and terrifying demeanor. Now "the greatest angling explorer of his generation" (Independent on Sunday) returns to delight listeners with a book of an entirely different sort, the book he was always destined to write - the distillation of a life spent fishing. Thoughtful and funny, brimming with wisdom and above all, adventure, these are pitch-perfect reflections....

Philosopher, Broadway headliner, fighter, felon - Mike Tyson has defied stereotypes, expectations, and a lot of conventional wisdom during his three decades in the public eye. Bullied as a boy in the toughest, poorest neighborhood in Brooklyn, Tyson grew up to become one of the most thrilling and ferocious boxers of all time - and the youngest heavyweight champion ever. But his brilliance in the ring was often compromised by reckless behavior.

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.

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.

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.

No one who knows the game is unfamiliar with the story of the NHL’s first Muslim Stanley Cup winner, Nazem Kadri, nor does anyone doubt his warmth and openness in front of a microphone, or his eagerness to challenge the next generation of Muslim athletes. He is a league All-Star, a highlight-reel player, and someone who has been called upon to be the face of his community from the moment he put on skates.

From the day he first stepped into the Yankee clubhouse, Jim Bouton (1939-2019) was the sports world's deceptive revolutionary. Underneath the crew cut and behind the all-American boy-next-door good looks lurked a maverick with a signature style. Whether it was his frank talk about player salaries and mistreatment by management, his passionate advocacy of progressive politics, or his efforts to convince the United States to boycott the 1968 Olympics, Bouton confronted the conservative sports world and compelled it to catch up with a rapidly changing American society.

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.

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.

World-famous competitive skydiver and coach Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld presents proven tools and techniques for success and explains how they can be used in everyday life. Dan survived a plane crash from which 16 of the 22 people on board were killed. He was left critically injured and woke up from a six-week-long coma with a broken neck, broken skull, severe head trauma, a collapsed lung, and other serious internal injuries. Against all odds, Dan recovered and went on to become one of the greatest competitive skydiver in the world.

It takes a certain kind of person to do whatever is necessary to make a living as a mixed martial arts fighter. And it takes another kind of person to stand out from all the rest as both a wild man and a rock star. Chris Leben, otherwise known as "The Crippler", is that kind of person. Leben's reputation started when he appeared on the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter, a reality show and competition where hopeful fighters live together and vie for a UFC contract and a path to greatness.

In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and storm troopers looming, an African-American son of sharecroppers set three world records and won an unprecedented four gold medals, single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics Games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man.

Raised in Dublin, Ireland, in a devoutly Catholic family, Rebecca Quin constantly invented new ways to make her mother worry—roughhousing with the neighborhood kids, hosting secret parties while her parents were away, enrolling in a warehouse wrestling school, nearly breaking her neck and almost kneecapping a WWE star before her own wrestling career even began—and she was always in search of a thrilling escape from the ordinary.

Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis' exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada - a coming of age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from telling of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed.