Outdoors Memoirs

The Oakland A's of the early 1970s were the most transformative team in baseball history. Never before had an entire organization so collectively traumatized baseball's establishment with its outlandish behavior and business decisions - or with its indisputable winning record: five straight division titles and three straight championships. The high drama that played out on the field was exceeded only by the drama in the clubhouse and front office.

Mountain search-and-rescue volunteer Bree Loewen's to-do list isn't quite the same as most people's. A former Mount Rainier climbing ranger and trained leader in mountain search-and-rescue, Bree shares the drama and the camaraderie of this work, as well as the challenges of trying to fit her other roles as wife and mother into what is still largely a masculine environment. In a fearless voice - disarming yet laced with dark humor - Bree guides us through intense recoveries, vivid wilderness landscapes, and the warmth she discovers in motherhood, community, and purpose.

On April 25, 2015, Jim Davidson was climbing Mount Everest when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake released avalanches all around him and his team, destroying their only escape route and trapping them at nearly 20,000 feet. It was the largest earthquake in Nepal in 81 years and killed about 8,900 people. That day also became the deadliest in the history of Everest, with 18 people losing their lives on the mountain.

Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have been friends for 30 years, but when life intervened, what was once a joyous and spontaneous friendship dwindled to the odd phone call or occasional catch up. Then, Glory Be! They were both diagnosed with heart disease and realised that time is short. They'd better spend it fishing...So they dusted off their kits, chucked on their waders and ventured into the achingly beautiful British countryside to fish, rediscover the joys of their friendship and ruminate on some of life's most profound questions....

Laird Hamilton has been hailed as the world's greatest big-wave surfer. His first book, Force of Nature, allows listeners a rare glimpse inside the unique philosophy that has created his circumstances, and not the other way around. After all, this is a man whose biological father abandoned him shortly after he was born; whose first job was working on a pig farm; who dropped out of school in 11th grade. And then the career decision: surfer.

The cruising tale is full of the sights and sounds, the fragrances and native customs of foreign lands, especially Central American and the Caribbean. It is a story of a leisurely sail through the Gulf of Cortez and on through Panama Canal to the Azores and England. Cruising in Seraffyn is also a carefully thought out guide to living aboard a small boat, with fun and economy as the guiding principles. Four appendices provide data that is vital for anyone comtemplating long-distance cruising.

In Killing the Legends, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard explore the lives, legacies, and tragic deaths of three of the most famous people of the 20th century. Each experienced immense success, then failures that forced them to change; each faced the challenge of growing old in fields that privilege youth; and finally, each became isolated, cocooned by wealth but vulnerable to the demands of those in their innermost circles.

In 2018, amateur cyclist Jenny Graham left family and friends behind in Scotland to become the fastest woman to cycle around the world. Alone and unsupported, she crossed the finish line at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin four months later, smashing the female record by nearly three weeks. With infectious wit and honesty, Jenny brings listeners into her remarkable Round the World adventure, as she takes on four continents, 16 countries – and countless cups of coffee.

Aaron Judge, the hulking superman who carried an easy aw-shucks demeanor from small-town California to stardom in the Big Apple, had long established his place as one of baseball’s most intimidating power hitters. Baseballs frequently rocketed off his bat like cannon fire, dispatching heat-seeking missiles toward the “Judge’s Chambers” seating area in right field, sending delirious fans scattering for souvenirs. But even in a high-tech universe where computers measure each swing to the nth degree, Roger Maris’s American League mark of sixty-one home runs seemed largely out of reach.

Updated and expanded for its 20th anniversary, Camp is former Disney CEO Michael Eisner's coming-of-age story about his time in camp and how the indispensable lessons he learned there continue to influence him in business and in life. Over the years, as a camper and a counselor, Michael Eisner absorbed the life lessons that come from sitting in the stern of a canoe or gathering around a campfire at night. In this deeply personal memoir, he recounts his experiences at one remarkable summer camp and examines how they helped turn him into the man he is today.

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.

By age twenty, at the height of the Jazz Age, Trudy Ederle was the most accomplished swimmer in the world. She’d won Olympic gold and set a host of world records. But the greatest challenge remained: the English Channel. Only a few swimmers, none of them women, had ever made the treacherous twenty-one mile crossing. Trudy’s failed first attempt seemed to confirm what many naysayers believed: No woman could possibly accomplish such a thing. In 1926, Ederle proved them wrong.

Ernie Johnson, Jr., has been in the game a long time. With one of the most recognized voices in sports broadcasting, he is a tireless perfectionist when it comes to preparing and delivering his commentary. Yet he knows that some of sports' greatest triumphs - and life's greatest rewards - come from those unscripted moments you never anticipated.

The National Football League's current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start. In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time, the sport barely registered on the national scene. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League.

From the backyard hockey rink to the nail-biting suspense of draft days, Karl Subban shares tales of his family's unique hockey journey. Mixing personal stories with lessons he learned as a coach and principal - lessons about goal setting, perseverance, and accomplishment - How We Did It will allow other parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors to apply the same principles as they help the young people in their lives to identify, develop, and live their dreams.

More than any other sport, boxing has a history of being easy to rig. There are only two athletes and one or both may be induced to accept a bribe; if not the fighters, then the judges or referee might be swayed. In such inviting circumstances, the mob moved into boxing in the 1930s and profited by corrupting a sport ripe for exploitation. In Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science, Jeffrey Sussman tells the story of the coercive and criminal underside of boxing, covering nearly the entire 20th century.

He was the most vicious, bloodthirsty, reviled villain in the history of the ring. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, he drew record crowds everywhere he went and left a trail of burned and bloody opponents in his wake. But what those legions of fans screaming for his head never knew was that The Sheik was really Eddie Farhat. The son of Arab immigrants, Farhat served his country proudly in World War II and was fulfilling the American dream. When he wasn't screaming unintelligibly and attacking his enemies, he was busy being the owner and operator of World Wide Sports.

A Course Called Ireland is the story of a walking-averse golfer who treks his way around an entire country, spending 16 weeks playing every seaside hole in Ireland. Along the way, he searches out his family's roots, discovers that a once-poor country has been transformed by an economic boom, and finds that the only thing tougher to escape than Irish sand traps are Irish pubs.

Combining modern reportage with historical revelations, a multifaceted portrait of Caitlin Clark’s game-changing superstardom and the cultural foundation it was built upon.

Tania Aebi was an unambitious 18-year-old, a bicycle messenger in New York City by day, a Lower East Side barfly at night. In short, she was going nowhere - until her father offered her a challenge: Tania could choose either a college education or a 26-foot sloop. The only catch was that if she chose the sailboat, she'd have to sail around the world - alone. She chose the boat, and for the next two and a half years and 27,000 miles, it was her home.