Professional Sports

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death. In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones and electronic positioning systems.

Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy, brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London.

In the last two decades, innovation, data analysis, and technology have driven a tectonic shift in the sports business. Game of Edges is the story of how sports franchises evolved, on and off the field, from raggedly run small businesses into some of the most systematically productive companies around.

Despite the howling protests from his peers, no one's ever been more willing to spill the beans on what it's really like inside the pro cycling peloton than the sarcastic scribe Phil Gaimon. Building on the outrageous success of his hilarious 2014 debut, Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro, Gaimon gathers the absolute gems from his monthly Q & A feature column in VeloNews magazine into his new book, Ask a Pro.

The definitive biography of Vince McMahon, former WWE chairman and CEO, charts his rise from rural poverty to the throne of one of the world’s most influential media empires—and features exclusive interviews with more than 150 people who witnessed, aided, and suffered from his ascent.

Phil Gordon plays poker with the best players in the world. He has won, and lost, in tournaments and cash games around the globe, all the while studying the game and learning from every hand dealt. It's a tough game. But anyone can become a winning player with the right amount of courage, patience, aggression, observation, and, perhaps most important, dedication to becoming a better player.

Men's hockey in Canada may hog the limelight, but interest in women's hockey has never been higher. The Role I Played is a memoir of Sami Jo Small's 10 years with Canada's National Women's Hockey Team. Beginning with her experience as a rookie at the first-ever women's Olympic hockey tournament in Nagano in 1998 and culminating with Canada's third straight Olympic gold medal in Vancouver in 2010, the veteran goaltender gives the listener behind-the-scenes insight into one of the most successful teams in sports history.

John Arezzi was a lifelong Mets fan who dreamed of a job in baseball. In 1981, he took a job with the Mets Class A team in North Carolina. But Arezzi had another love: professional wrestling. Mat Memories is Arezzi's chance to hold the mic, and he holds nothing back - he names names and tells the untold behind-the-scenes stories: from the ring, the stage, and the diamond.

He's ridden for World Tour teams for 10 years. He's achieved top 10 finishes in Grand Tours. He likes coffee. These are just a few details about the professional rider who wants you to know what the view looks like from the centre of the peloton. What do the riders really make of Team Sky? How does the pay structure work? Why should you never trust a kit endorsement from a professional? Is doping still an issue? The Secret Cyclist tackles the big questions head-on, revealing a side to cycling that fans have never seen before.

Gary Player's Black Book contains 50 questions and detailed responses from 18-time major winner Gary Player. The book, divided into three parts, focuses on specific scenarios and problems that arise in golf, life, and business.

Two-time championship-winning and record-breaking racing driver Jason Plato is a living, breathing example of what you shouldn't do if you want to become a professional racing driver. Since joining the Williams Touring Car team in 1997 it's no coincidence that he has had more race wins than Lewis Hamilton and Stirling Moss, competed in more races than Jenson Button and set the largest number of fastest laps ever. But it's also no coincidence that he once spent several days in prison in Monaco for stealing a JCB.

This easy-to-understand learning tool follows the critically acclaimed Sailing Made Easy, which Sailing Magazine called “best in class” upon its release in 2010. Sailing Made Easy is the #1 resource in basic sailing education, and Coastal Cruising Made Easy is poised to become the industry standard in intermediate sailing education.

Here is an explosive book that takes us, for the first time, deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to succeed that they would do anything—and take any risk, physical, mental, or moral—to gain the edge they needed to win. The Secret Race is a riveting, courageous act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France.

Ryan never envisioned just how far his football career would take him. But bubbling under the surface of his entire NFL career was a collision course between his secret sexuality and his hidden drug use. As injuries mounted and his daily intake of opioids reached a near-lethal level, he wrote his suicide note to his parents and plotted his death. Yet, someone had been watching. A member of the Chiefs organization stepped in, recognizing the signs of drug addiction. Ryan reluctantly sought psychological help, and it was there that he revealed his lifelong secret for the very first time.

When we first meet the young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story, he is one of 13 children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school. And he has no serious experience playing organized football.

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.

No one knew it when their experiment began, but without any particular genius or acumen, the motley cast of billionaires and hucksters behind the modern Premier League struck gold. Pretty soon, everyone wanted to try their luck, from Russian oligarchs to Emirati sheikhs, American tycoons, and Asian Tiger titans. Some succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Some lost everything. Today, players are sold for tens of millions, clubs are valued in the billions, and games are beamed out to nearly 200 countries, all while the league struggles to preserve its English soul.

A breakthroughexamination of professional wrestling - its history, its fans, and its widercultural impact - that does for the sport what Chuck Klosterman did for heavymetal

The Squared Circle grows out of David Shoemaker'swriting for both Deadspin, where hestarted the column "Dead Wrestler of the Week" - a feature on the many wrestlingsuperstars who died too young because of the abuse they subjected their bodiesto - and Grantland,where he covers the pro-wrestling world and its place in the pop culturemainstream. Shoemaker's sports writing has since struck a nerve withgenerations of wrestling fans who, like him, grew up worshiping a sport oftenderided as "fake" in the wider culture. To them, these professional wrestlingsuperstars are not just heroes but an emotional outlet and the lens throughwhich they learned to see the world.

Starting in the early 1900s and exploring the path of prowrestling in America through the present day, The Squared Circle is thefirst book to acknowledge both the sport's broader significance and wrestlingfans' keen intellect and sense of irony. Divided into eras, each section offersa snapshot of the wrestling world, profiles some of the period's preeminentwrestlers, and examines the sport's influence on our broader culture. Throughthe brawling, bombast, and bloodletting, Shoemaker argues that pro wrestlingcan teach us about the nature of performance, audience, and, yes, art.

Full of unknown history, humor, and self-deprecatingreminiscence - but also offering a compelling look at the sport's rightful placein pop culture - The Squared Circle is the book that legions of wrestlingfans have been waiting for. In it, Shoemaker teaches us to look past thespandex and body slams to see an art form that can explain the world.

American Sniper meets Jaws in this gripping true account of the deadliest animal of all time, the Champawat Tiger - responsible for killing more than 400 humans in Northern India and Nepal in the first decade of the 20th century - and the legendary hunter who finally brought it down.

Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 dealt with the fundamentals of play. Volume 2 builds on this base and examines the highly complex issue of how to handle the different stages of a tournament. At times the best strategy is to play loose, create problems for your opponent and thus keep accumulating chips. At other times an ultra-tight strategy will be the most profitable. Understanding when to "change gears" is a highly developed skill that requires a great deal of study and experience.