Professional Sports

Never have the best sportspeople seemed so far removed from the rest of us. So how are these extraordinary athletes made, and what do their achievements tell us about success? The Best reveals how the most incredible sportspeople in the world got that way. It is a unique look at the path to sporting greatness. This is a story of origins, training, luck, and serendipity, as well as of sports science and cutting-edge technology.

When a group of private equity bigwigs purchased the Philadelphia 76ers in 2011, the team was both bad and boring. Attendance was down. So were ratings. The Sixers had an aging coach, an antiquated front office, and a group of players that could best be described as mediocre. Enter Sam Hinkie - a man with a plan straight out of the PE playbook, one that violated professional sports' Golden Rule: You play to win the game.

Lightweight, compact, distinctively styled, and now, electric: The Brompton isn't the only folding bicycle—or even the first. But everyone who has been on one will enthusiastically testify to its marvelous design (virtually unchanged over decades) and the particular joy of riding it. Will Butler-Adams, CEO of Brompton Bicycles, has been at the company for twenty years. Initially, he worked as an engineer for Andrew Ritchie, the bike's brilliant inventor and the business's founder, before taking the helm in 2008.

An ex-Wall Street trader improved on Moneyball’s famed sabermetrics to place bets that would beat the Vegas odds on Major League Baseball games - with a 41 percent return in his first year. Trading Bases explains how he did it. After the fall of Lehman Brothers, Joe Peta was out of a job. He found a new one but lost that, too, when an ambulance mowed him down. In search of a way to cheer himself up while he recuperated, Peta started watching baseball again. That’s when inspiration hit: Why not apply his outstanding risk-analysis skills to improve on sabermetrics, the method made famous by Moneyball?

In Open Net, George Plimpton takes to the ice as goalie for his beloved Boston Bruins. After signing a release holding the Bruins blameless if he should meet with injury or death, he survives a harrowing, seemingly eternal five minutes in an exhibition game against the always-tough Philadelphia Flyers.

Drawing on the author’s personal experiences with both tame and wild moose, this handbook contains a wealth of information about this unique animal from all corners of the world. An overview of moose biology is featured, including their specialized diet and the relationship between sex and antlers, where size really does matter. Covering the history of moose on earth and the marked fluctuations in populations that have occurred over time, this guide also contains accessible chapters exploring moose diseases, moose and traffic, moose as a resource, and the uses of live moose in several ways, ranging from transport and clothing to dairy animals and pets.

Jeanne Marie Laskas first met the young forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu in 2009, while reporting a story for GQ that would go on to inspire the movie Concussion. Omalu told her about a day in September 2002, when, in a dingy morgue in downtown Pittsburgh, he picked up a scalpel and made a discovery that would rattle America in ways he’d never intended. Omalu was new to America, chasing the dream, a deeply spiritual man escaping the wounds of civil war in Nigeria.

To be a part of Red Sox Nation is to be a hopeful romantic who neither betrays loyalty nor surrenders hope in the direst of circumstances. From Bangor to Back Bay, New Englanders endure in baseball matters. And life. The team's history has intersected with the history of Boston and well beyond it, through the Curse of the Bambino, the military service of Ted Williams during World War II, and the Boston Marathon bombing. The Fenway Effect chronicles these stories and others that have built the incredible saga of the Boston Red Sox.

Against the odds, John Urschel found a way to manage his double life as a scholar and an athlete. While he was an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, he simultaneously pursued his PhD in mathematics at MIT. This is his story.

Discover the winning secrets of top professional tennis players...and finally do some winning yourself! Have you just started learning how to play tennis? Worried about looking like a fool on the court, barely able to win a single point? If you’re serious about improving your game and being able to play toe-to-toe against seasoned players, here’s the perfect solution for you. This audiobook for new tennis players will provide you with all the knowledge you need to not just play the game...but excel in it.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Return of the King comes the story of LeBron James' incredible transformation from basketball star to sports and business mogul.

Larry H. Miller played by his own rules. Owner of an NBA franchise and founder of one of the country's largest automotive retail groups, Larry was a college dropout who went on to buy or build nearly 100 businesses. While his life as a successful businessman played out in public, his health challenges, as well as his quiet acts of service, were known to very few. Behind the Drive contains 99 uplifting and untold stories from every aspect and era of Larry's life.

As the coach during professional football’s most storied era, Tom Landry transformed the gridiron from a no-holds-barred battlefield to the highly-technical chess match it is today. With his trademark fedora and stoic facade, he was a man of faith and few words, for twenty-nine years guiding “America’s Team” from laughingstock to well-oiled machine, with an unprecedented twenty consecutive winning seasons and two Super Bowl titles.

The Boxing Kings tells the story of the heavyweight title in the days when it was a defining institution in the United States. Author Paul Beston places special emphasis on those champions who held a central place in American culture beyond just in the boxing ring, including John L. Sullivan, who made the title a commercial property; Jack Johnson, who in 1908 became the first black man to claim the title; Joe Louis, whose contributions to racial tolerance and social progress transcended even his greatness in the ring; and many more.

How does an underdog become a champion? One of the most innovative, gutsy, and dynamic head coaches in the NFL reveals the strategies behind building the Eagles team that shocked the world by winning the Super Bowl. In Fearless, Doug Pederson reveals the principles that guided him through the ups and downs and tough times of his career and what it took to become a champion.

According to investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, for decades the National Football League has had a strong and unspoken understanding with a dangerous institution: Organized crime. In his classic expos, Interference, Moldea bares the dark, sordid underbelly of America's favorite professional team sport, revealing a nest of corruption that the league has largely ignored since its inception.

Pour la majorité des Canadiens, le nom de la famille Molson fait partie de l’essence même du Canada. Depuis 1786, année où John Molson fonda sa première brasserie à Montréal, il rime avec bière, hockey et philanthropie. Rares sont cependant ceux qui savent à quel point la famille est passée proche, ces dernières années, de perdre le contrôle de cette entreprise.

Lionel Messi is a legend - Barcelona's star player and the world's best footballer. But when he was young, he was so small that his friends called him 'Little Leo' and coaches worried he wasn't big enough. Yet through bravery, talent and hard work, he proved them wrong. Messi tells the magical story of how the tiniest boy in South America grew up to become the greatest player on earth.

Bringing to life golf's founding father and son, Tommy's Honor is a stirring tribute to two legendary players and a vivid evocation of their colorful, rip-roaring times. Tommy's Honor is both fascinating history and a moving personal saga. But this audiobook isn't only for golfers. It's for every son who has fought to escape a father's shadow and for every father who has guided a son toward manhood, then found it hard to let him go.

In The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey, the award-winning poet - and Paris Review sports columnist - Rowan Ricardo Phillips chronicles 2017 as seen through the unique prism of its pivotal, revelatory, and historic tennis season. The annual tennis schedule is a rarity in professional sports in that it encapsulates the calendar year. And like the year, it's divided into four seasons, each marked by a final tournament: the Grand Slams.