"Sportscaster and sports historian Jim Gray gives the reader a coveted all-access pass as he reviews the best interviews, the best athletes, and the best games in modern sports history. It's like a personal introduction to the characters and careers of these heroes and villains we've known since childhood. He examines how money, celebrity, the media, and power interact, and how sports ... has led to ... transformations in American society"--

Bryson examines closely the events and personalities of the summer of 1927 when America's story was one of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy.

"A rollicking guided tour of one extraordinary summer, when some of the most pivotal and freakishly coincidental stories all collided and changed the way we think about modern sports"-- Summer, 1984. The nation watched Michael Jordan grow from college basketball player to professional athlete and star. ESPN rose to media dominance as the country's premier sports network. The first modern, commercialized, profitable Olympics took place in Los Angeles....

Lionel Messi has taken the soccer world by storm. He scored the most goals in a season. He's racked up championships. There was even a statue built in his honor. Despite the accolades, he's still hungry for more goals, more championships, more opportunities to shine on the soccer pitch. Messi's drive to succeed has motivated him ever since he first stepped on his local, worn down field as a kid. Yet his success didn't come without bumps in the road....

In this deeply personal memoir in the vein of Andre Agassi's Open and Megan Rapinoe's One Life , the winningest snowboardcross rider of all time chronicles her career, a story of self-growth that reveals the secret of her resilience and how she overcame crushing early failure to win Olympic gold. On February 16, 2006, twenty-year old American snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis was poised to win the first gold medal in women's snowboardcross, a sport making...

"A captivating chronicle of the pivotal decade in American sports, when the games invaded prime time, and sports moved from the margins to the mainstream of American culture. Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in THE BIG TIME, no decade in American sports history featured such convulsive cultural shifts as the 1970s. So many things happened during the decade--the move of sports into prime-time television, the beginning...

The unknown story of the Black pioneers who collectively changed the face of the NFL in 1946. The Forgotten First chronicles the lives of four incredible men, the racism they experienced as Black players entering a segregated sport, the burden of expectation they carried, and their many achievements, which would go on to affect football for generations to come. More than a year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball,...

Based on the unbelievable but true events, I, Tonya is a dark comedic tale of American figure skater, Tonya Harding, and one of the most sensational scandals in sports history. Though Harding was the first American woman to complete a triple axel in competition, her legacy was forever defined by her association with an infamous and poorly executed attack on fellow Olympic competitor Nancy Kerrigan. I, Tonya is an absurd, irreverent, and piercing portrayal...

"Three-time Olympic medalist shares behind-the-scenes insight into the beloved Canadian National Women's Hockey Team. 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 ten 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...