Sports Politics

Though it burst into public consciousness only with the 1999 World Cup, women’s soccer has been around almost as long as its male counterpart, flourishing in England during and after World War I. Beyond Bend It Like Beckham presents the first in-depth global analysis of the women’s game - both where it has come from and where it is headed. Though women in the United States and Canada still fight for equal treatment and funding, their situations differs markedly from the hostility, abuse, and even outright bans that some women still encounter.

Thursday Night Lights tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of African American high school football in Texas. Drawing on interviews, newspaper stories, and memorabilia, Michael Hurd introduces the players, coaches, schools, and towns where African Americans built powerhouse football programs under the PVIL leadership. He covers 50 years (1920-1970) of high school football history.

Never Ran, Never Will tells the story of the working-class, mostly black neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn; its proud youth football team, the Mo Better Jaguars; and the young boys who are often at the center of both. Oomz, Gio, Hart, and their charismatic, vulnerable friends come together on a dusty football field. All around them, their community is threatened by violence, poverty, and the specter of losing their homes to gentrification. Their passionate, unpaid coaches teach hard lessons about surviving American life with little help from the outside world.

As star players for the 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers, and prior to that as the first black players to be candidates to break professional baseball's color barrier, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella would seem to be natural allies. But the two men were divided by a rivalry going far beyond the personality differences and petty jealousies of competitive teammates. Behind the bitterness were deep and differing beliefs about the fight for civil rights.

In the tradition of Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation by way of Christopher McDougall's Born to Run, this is the inspirational true story of the Ugandan boy soldier who became a world-renowned runner, then found his calling as director of a world-renowned African children's charity.

At the 1968 Olympics, Tommie Smith came in first in the 200-meter dash. As they received their medals, he and bronze winner John Carlos each raised a black-gloved fist, creating an indelible image of courage and protest that still resonates 40 years later. In this, his autobiography, Smith fills out the story of that moment - how it came to be and where it led him, and paints a vivid picture of the long, painful backlash that came with his fame, and his fate, all of which was rapped up in his "silent gesture".

In the wartime fall of 1943, at the little-known North Carolina College for Negroes, Coach John McLendon was on the verge of changing the game forever. Within six months his Eagles would become the highest-scoring college basketball team in America, a fast-breaking, hard-pressing juggernaut that would shatter its opponents by as many as 60 points per game. The last student of James Naismith, basketball's inventor, McLendon had opened the door to its future.

By 1970 racial tension was at a breaking point in the Southern town of Gallatin, Tennessee. Desegregation had emotions running high. The town was a powder keg ready to erupt. But it was also on the verge of something incredible. Eddie Sherlin and Bill Ligon were boys growing up on opposite sides of the tracks who shared a passion for basketball. They knew the barriers that divided them - some physical landmarks and some hidden in the heart - but those barriers melted away when the boys were on the court.

What does it mean to be a female in endurance sport? Hundreds of women open up about their realities as athletes, wives, girlfriends, and mothers. From the intimacy of the bedroom to the community of competition, some of these stories will encourage and uplift. Others will surprise and infuriate. Welcome to the beautiful and complicated world of strong women.

Fed up of friends claiming to care about the provenance of their food, Louise Gray decides to follow the argument to its logical extreme. Starting small, Louise shucks oysters and catches fish. Gradually she gets to know countrymen and women who teach her how to shoot pigeons and rabbits. As she begins to reconnect with nature and her own upbringing in the countryside, Louise starts to question modern attitudes to the meat we eat.

Three people living in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem embark on distinct journeys that converge at "the file"; their efforts to admit Palestine to the Olympics in the early 20th century. Their pivotal roles in history have been purposely omitted from official record, kept secret, or forgotten. Why? Because of the "Nazi Olympics" in 1936 in Berlin. And because of the death in 1972 of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes in the Munich Massacre. This book narrates the previously untold history of a Palestine Olympic Committee recognized before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

In 1990, while covering a story about homelessness for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Ted Jackson encountered a drug addict sleeping under a bridge. After snapping a photo, Jackson woke the man. Pointing to the daily newspaper by his feet, the homeless stranger looked the photojournalist in the eye and said, “You ought to do a story about me.” When Ted asked why, he was stunned by the answer. “Because, I’ve played in three Super Bowls.”

Bill Littlefield (NPR's Only a Game) presents the second installment in the Library of America series devoted to classic American sportswriters, a definitive collector's edition of the pathbreaking writer who invented the long-form sports story.

Think you know everything about football? Which football match triggered a war? How did "the beautiful game" push back against the tyranny of dictatorship, and usher another into power? Kicking Off Around the World includes 55 incredible stories in which football clubs have been a mirror to—and a maker of—world history and politics.

By the Fall of 1966, Syracuse had become a city at the crossroads–literally and figuratively. Situated at the geographic heart of New York and the intersection of two all-new interstate highways, the city found itself on a collision course with not only time, but circumstance.

The nineteenth century saw the American circus move from a reviled and rejected form of entertainment to the “Greatest Show on Earth.” Circus Life by Micah D. Childress looks at this transition from the perspective of the people who owned and worked in circuses and how they responded to the new incentives that rapid industrialization made possible.

Perhaps the best golfer ever, Tiger Woods rocketed to the top of a once whites-only sport. Endorsements made him a global brand and the world’s richest athlete. The child of a multiracial marriage, Woods and his blond, blue-eyed wife, Elin Nordegren, seemed to represent a new postracial America. Then, in late 2009, Woods became embroiled in a sex scandal that made headlines worldwide.

Robbie Rogers knows better than most that keeping secrets can crush you. But for much of his life Robbie lived in paralyzing fear that sharing his big secret would cost him the love of his family and his career as a professional soccer player. So he never told anyone what was destroying his soul, both on and off the field.

In Mavericks, Money and Men, football historian Charles Ross chronicles the AFL's key events, including Buck Buchanan becoming the first overall draft pick in 1963, and the 1965 boycott led by black players who refused to play in the AFL All Star game after experiencing blatant racism. He also recounts how the success of the AFL forced a merger with the NFL in 1969, which arguably facilitated the evolution of modern professional football.

Five generations of Marnie O. Mamminga's family have been rejuvenated by times together in Wisconsin's Northwoods. In a series of evocative remembrances, Mamminga takes us to Wake Robin, the cabin her grandparents built in 1929 on Big Spider Lake near Hayward, on land adjacent to Moody's Camp. Along the way, she preserves the spirit and cultural heritage of a vanishing era, conveying the heart of a place and the community that once gathered there.