Sports Science

In Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, the time has arrived for Max and her winged "Flock" to face their ultimate enemy and discover their original purpose: to defeat the takeover of "Re-evolution", a sinister experiment to re-engineer a select population into a scientifically superior master race...and to terminate the rest. Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, and Angel have always worked together to defeat the forces working against them—but can they save the world when they are torn apart, living in hiding and captivity, halfway across the globe from one another?

Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation of Black players entered the league then, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Spencer Haywood, and the press and public were quick to blame this cohort for the supposed decline of pro basketball, citing drugs, violence, and greed.

Al Gore has been advocating on Earth's behalf for 25 years. In An Inconvenient Sequel, he recounts and contextualizes the critical issues and moments in the climate change movement since the release of An Inconvenient Truth more than 10 years ago and highlights the real solutions we have at hand to change the planet for the better.

The Last Great Mountain tells the story of the first ascent of Kangchenjunga the third highest but reputedly the hardest mountain in the world. It was an astonishing achievement for a British team led by Everest veteran Charles Evans. Drawing on interviews, diaries and unpublished accounts, Mick Conefrey begins his story in 1905 with the disastrous first attempt on the mountain by a team led by Aleister Crowley, explores the three dramatic German expeditions of the the late 1920s and brings it all to a climax 50 years later with the first ascent by Joe Brown and George Band.

Anyone who has ever gazed up at the sky or stared out of the window knows something about birds. In this fun, eye-opening and inspiring book, award-winning nature writer Simon Barnes paints a riveting picture of how birdwatching has framed his life and can help us all to a better understanding of our place on this planet. How to be a Bad Birdwatcher shows why birdwatching is not the preserve of twitchers, but one of the simplest, cheapest and most rewarding pastimes around.

When young Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini realized her boat's engine shut down as she was traveling from Syria to Greece with other refugees, there was no hesitation: She dove into the water. This bold act of bravery saved the lives of a boatload of refugees heading to Turkey from Syria.

Sports media superstar Clay Travis wants to save sports from the social justice warriors seeking to turn them into another political battleground. Having ruined journalism and Hollywood, far-left-wing activists have now turned to sports. Travis argues it’s time for right-thinking fans everywhere to put down their beers and reclaim their teams and their traditions. In Republicans Buy Sneakers, Too, he replays the arguments he’s won and lays out all the battles ahead. His goal is simple: to make sports great again.

A look at how commercialization has transformed youth sports from fun into a heavily commercialized and profitable venture. Examining the youth sports economy from many sides - the major corporations, the small entrepreneurs, the coaches, the parents, and, of course, the kids - Hyman probes the reasons for rapid changes in what gets bought and sold in this lucrative marketplace. He reveals the effects on kids and profiles the individuals and communities bucking this destructive trend of commercialization.

An incredible 923 species from all of North America are included in this marvelous audio companion to the best-selling Stokes Field Guides.

Welcome to the wide world of paranormal pastimes, where striking out might strike you dead. Editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner are your announcers for this all-new story collection of the most peculiar plays ever made.… Sports fans live and die by their teams’ successes and failures - though not literally. But these 14 authors have written spirited - in more ways than one - new tales of killer competitions that would make even the most die-hard players ask to be benched.

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran of the game or have never set foot on a court, How Basketball Can Save the World will empower you to become more resilient, tolerant, and wise in your relationship with yourself, others, and the world around you.

This is legendary 17th century swordsman Miyamoto Musashi’s exposition of sword fighting, strategy, and Zen philosophy. Required listening for any martial artist, business person, or student of strategy, this audiobook includes the one hour Zen inspired soundtrack, The Mysterious Sound of Wind in the Bamboo, performed on authentic Japanese instruments.

The riveting story of four men - Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige - whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond.

Reggie has never felt destined for greatness. He dreams about basketball brilliance all day and night, but the hard truth is that he’s a benchwarmer for the West Bottom Badgers, the worst team in the league. Even their mysterious new coach, Rolabi Wizenard, can’t seem to help them end their losing streak. Reggie is willing to train tirelessly to improve his game, but the gym itself seems to be working against him in magical ways. Before Reggie can become the player he dreams of being, he must survive the extraordinary ordeals of practice.

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.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” And so it began. Henry David Thoreau, at 27, built a tiny, one-room cabin in the woods — on land owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson — and began his two-year experiment in frugality on the shore of Walden Pond. He wasn’t seeking isolation so much as simplicity, to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

When football fanatic and loveable loser Max Best saved an old codger from a mugging, he never expected to be rewarded with the ability to immediately pinpoint a player's specific skills—and use that knowledge to up his own levels. Ever since that fateful night, Max has devoted himself to the game far more than any mere fan, becoming not only a serious footballer in his own right but a leader both on and off the pitch.

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American, were malnourished and barefoot, and had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields.

Every year on January 1, a quirky crowd of adventurers storms out across North America for a spectacularly competitive event called a Big Year: a grand, grueling, expensive, and occasionally vicious, "extreme" 365-day marathon of birdwatching. For three men in particular, 1998 would be a whirlwind, a winner-takes-nothing battle for a new North American birding record.

Big Game is a chronicle of "peak football" - the high point of the sport's economic success and cultural dominance but also the time when the dark side began to show. It is an era of explosive revenue growth but also one of creeping existential fear. Players have long joked that NFL stands for "not for long", but as the true impact of concussions becomes inescapable background noise, it's increasingly difficult to enjoy the simple glory of football without the buzzkill of its obvious consequences.