When the Detroit Red Wings were rebooting their franchise after more than two decades of relative futility, they knew the best place to find world-class players who could help turn things around more quickly were conscripted servants behind the Iron Curtain. All they had to do then was make history by drafting them, then figure out how to get them out. That's when the Wings turned to Keith Gave, the newsman whose clandestine mission to Helsinki, Finland, was the first phase of a of a years-long series of secret meetings from posh hotel rooms to remote forests around Europe to orchestrate their unlawful departures from the Soviet Union. One defection created an international incident and made global headlines. Another player faked cancer, thanks to the Wings' extravagant bribes to Russian doctors, including a big American car. Another player who wasn't quite ready to leave yet felt like he was being kidnapped by an unscrupulous agent. Two others were outcast when they stood up publicly against the Soviet regime, winning their freedom to play in the NHL only after years of struggle. They are the Russian Five: Sergei Fedorov, Viacheslav Fetisov, Vladimir Konstantinov, Vyacheslav Kozlov and Igor Larionov. Their individual stories read like pulse-pounding spy novels. The story that unfolded after they were brought together in Detroit by the masterful coach Scotty Bowman is unforgettable. This story includes details never before revealed, and by the man who was there every step of the way -- from the day Detroit drafted its first two Soviets in 1989 until they raised the Stanley Cup in 1997, then took it to Moscow for a victory lap around Red Square and the Kremlin. The Russian Five did more to bridge Russian and American relations than decades of diplomacy and detente between the White House and the Kremlin. This is their story.

While much has been written about the legendary players and managers of the Deadball Era (1901-1919), far less attention has been paid to baseball club owners like Charles Ebbets who put together the teams and built the era's legendary ball parks. In 1898, after a 15 year apprenticeship, Ebbets became president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, taking over a chronic second division team in poor financial condition. Over the next 25 years, he built four pennant winning clubs while making the franchise one of the most profitable in baseball. Even more impressively, Charles Ebbets gave Brooklyn two state of the art ball parks, something Hall of Famers, Branch Rickey and Walter O'Malley couldn't to do even once. Ebbets was also an effective steward of the national pastime, working tirelessly for innovations that would help all teams, not just his own. In spite of all his success, however, Ebbets' weaknesses also sowed the seeds for the destruction of what he had so painstakingly built. This first full length biography of Charles Ebbets provides an in depth look his life and baseball career while filling a gap in the history of the Deadball Era and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Essays by: Farokh Engineer, Abbas Ali Baig, Bishan Bedi, Mike Brearley, David Woolley, Naseeruddin Shah, Sunil Gavaskar, Ian Chappell, N. Ram, Tony Lewis, Vijay Merchant, M.J. Akbar, Suresh Menon, Ray Robinson, Mudar Patherya, Rajdeep Sardesai, John Woodcock, Rahul Dravid, Robin Marlar, Ted Dexter, Mike Coward, Saba Ali Khan, Soha Ali Khan March 1962: The Indian team to West Indies had just lost its captain, Nari Contractor, to a sickening head injury. A strapping young man, playing only his fourth Test, walked out for the toss with Frank Worrell at Bridgetown. At twenty-one, he was not only the youngest member of the team, but also the youngest to captain a Test side. He had returned to playing cricket only months after an accident that left him with vision in only one eye. For the next decade, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, or 'Tiger', was the undisputed 'Nawab' of Indian cricket, captaining in all but six of the forty-six Tests he played, forging a national identity in a team often divided along regional lines, proving a game-changer by raising the standard of fielding and by unleashing a famed quartet of spinners, the likes of which the world had not seen. In Pataudi: Nawab of Cricket, players, writers, editors, actors, friends and opponents reminisce about their association with Tiger. This extraordinary anthology brilliantly put together by Suresh Menon, arguably India's best sports writer and journalist offers a fascinating portrait of a cricketer and a gentleman whose contribution to Indian cricket went beyond the number of Tests he played and the runs he scored.

Six-time world surfing champion, actor, and US heart-throb Kelly Slater tells of the struggles and triumphs he's experienced throughout his life and how they have helped him to become one of the world's most loved sports figures. From beach blanket bingo to Baywatch, surfing has fascinated people for years, and Kelly Slater is the sport's newest star. He's one of the world's most popular surfers; his radical moves have revolutionised the sport. Born in Cocoa Beach, Florida, in 1972, he found surfing to be a great way to escape problems at home. When he was 11, his parents divorced. Slater and his brother, Sean, were raised by their suddenly single mother, who struggled to support two young sons. After Slater's surfing career took off, he made the transition into acting and modelling. He spent a season starring on the popular television show Baywatch, where he won the hearts of women young and old, including Pamela Anderson, whom he dated for about a year. He has also been featured in Versace ads. In Pipe Dreams, he shares the stories that have influenced his life and have inspired him to overcome both personal and professional hurdles and achieve his dreams.

"It's not every day that I'm blown away by a book about a sports figure. But MICHAEL JORDAN: THE LIFE, by Roland Lazenby, ranks up there with the very best: "The Boys of Summer" by Roger Kahn, "Friday Night Lights" by Buzz Bissinger, and "Joe DiMaggio" by Richard Ben Cramer. The depth of reporting, his frequent ascent into poetry, and his intelligent analysis of the life of this complicated, fascinating American icon deserve Pulitzer Prize consideration. For the first time I understand what makes Michael Jordan tick. I was captivated, fascinated and beguiled from beginning to end." -- Peter Golenbock, "New York Times"-bestselling author of "George" and "In the Country of Brooklyn"
The definitive biography of a legendary athlete
The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game.Michael Jordan is responsible for sublime moments so ingrained in sports history that they have their own names. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his body totally in sync with the ball -- hitting nothing but net.
But for all his greatness, this scion of a complex family from North Carolina's Coastal Plain has a darker side: he's a ruthless competitor and a lover of high stakes. There's never been a biography that encompassed the dual nature of his character and looked so deeply at Jordan on and off the court -- until now.
Basketball journalist Roland Lazenby spent almost thirty years covering Michael Jordan's career in college and the pros. He witnessed Jordan's growth from a skinny rookie to the instantly recognizable global ambassador for basketball whose business savvy and success have millions of kids still wanting to be just like Mike. Yet Lazenby also witnessed the Michael Jordan whose drive and appetite are more fearsome and more insatiable than any of his fans could begin to know. "Michael Jordan: The Life" explores both sides of his personality to reveal the fullest, most compelling story of the man who is Michael Jordan.
Lazenby draws on his personal relationships with Jordan's coaches; countless interviews with Jordan's friends, teammates, and family members; and interviews with Jordan himself to provide the first truly definitive study of Michael Jordan: the player, the icon, and the man.

This first biography of W. Glenn Killinger highlights his tenure as a nine-time varsity letterman at Penn State, where he emerged as one of the best football, basketball and baseball players in the U.S. Situating Killinger in his time and place, the author explores the ways in which home-front culture during World War I-focused on heroism, masculinity and sporting culture-created the demand for sports and sports icons and drove the ascent college athletics in the first quarter of the 20th century.

A Financial Times Sports book of the Year 2018 pick Who's better: Ronaldo or Messi? Ask any football fan and they'll have an opinion. For the best part of the last decade football has seen a personal rivalry unlike any seen before. Cristiano and Leo. This is their definitive story, from children kicking a ball halfway around the world from each other to their era-defining battle to be number one. One the preening adonis, a precision physical machine who blows teams away with his pace and power. The other a shuffling genius, able to do things with a football that seem other-worldly. Their differences seem to tap into something fundamental about football and indeed life. Between them they have scored over a thousand goals, won the Ballon d'Or nine times and redefined modern football. For the past eight seasons they have shared the accolade of best footballer in the world and arguments rage over which one deserves the title of greatest player of all time. Cristiano and Leo by Spanish and South American football expert and journalist Jimmy Burns is the essential book to understand the defining players of a generation. 'Burns is incapable of writing a boring sentence.' - Irish Times

This insightful study offers a fresh perspective on the life and career of champion boxer Joe Louis. The remarkable success and global popularity of the "Brown Bomber" made him a lightning rod for debate over the role and rights of African Americans in the United States. Historian Marcy S. Sacks traces both Louis's career and the criticism and commentary his fame elicited to reveal the power of sports and popular culture in shaping American social attitudes. Supported by key contemporary documents, Joe Louis: Sports and Race in Twentieth-Century America is both a succinct introduction to a larger-than-life figure and an essential case study of the intersection of popular culture and race in the mid-century United States.

5 September, 1972. 4.30 a.m. The Munich Olympic Village. Black September, a group of Palestinian terrorists, break into the Israeli team's apartments. It is the beginning of the most tragic event in Olympic history and, after twenty hours, the day will end in a massacre, with the deaths of eleven Israelis, five Palestinians and a German policeman. This is the story of the race-walker Shaul Ladany: a survivor. But more than just a member of the Israeli team from those terrible events in Munich, Ladany was a survivor of the darkest period in twentieth century history, having been interred as a child at the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Anne Frank died. For the second time in his life, Ladany has survived history. Ladany, the world record holder in the fifty-mile walk and a professor of industrial engineering, is one of Israel's most successful athletes, having won dozens of national championships and competed at both the 1968 and 1972 Olympics; he was a student at Columbia University in New York, a soldier in the Six Days War and the Yom Kippur War. From Eichmann to Sharon, from Bikila to All Blacks, from Nixon to Thatcher: they are all a part of Ladany's walk through the twentieth century. Award-winning author and journalist Andrea Schiavon tells Ladany's extraordinary life and, walking with him, chronicles a whole century of events in this astonishing, touching and epic biography.

As soon as heavyweight boxer Joe Louis became a public figure in the 1930s, journalists and other social commentators began speculating about the significance of an African American man garnering popularity in a racially segregated society. Both during his lifetime and afterward, Louis noteriety extended beyond the world of sports to American popular culture. Many falsely heralded the boxer 's popularity as a sign that American racism was in sharp decline, Louis heroic status, however, did not fully reflect the complicated racial dynamics either within the sports world or in America, in general.

In Joe Louis: Sports and Race in the Twentieth Century, Marcy Sacks gives an account of the life of a man famous both for his sports career and for his race. With excerpts from newspaper clippings, radio broadcasts, poetry, and interviews, Sacks contextualizes Louis life and the legacy he left behind.

Shortlisted for The Telegraph Sports Book Awards Biography of the Year 'A splendid new biography. How good was young Tom Morris? Stephen Proctor makes his case cogently. Young Tom Morris was one of the greatest of them all' - Allan Massie Young Tom Morris, the son of the legendary pioneer of golf, Tom Morris, was golf's first superstar. Born at a pivotal moment in history, just as the new and inexpensive 'gutty' ball was making golf affordable and drawing thousands of new players to the game, his genius and his swashbuckling personality would set a game that had been frozen in amber for four centuries on the pathway to becoming worldwide spectator sport we know today. Exhaustively researched and beautifully illustrated, Monarch of the Green is a stirring and evocative history of Tommy's life (which also includes, for the first time, a compilation of his competitive record in stroke-play tournaments, singles matches, and foursomes) and demonstrates how, in one dazzling decade, this young superstar dominated the sport like few others have ever done.

I don't think you could find, in the history of baseball, any other player who suffered as many setbacks as Roy Sievers did, and still prevail to become one of the most feared and respected hitters in 1950's baseball. After having an award winning rookie season in 1949, Roy, from 1950 to 1953, suffered through a year and a half of a slump, a devastating, near career ending injury and a major position change, only to come back in 1954 and become the Washington Senators' franchise home run leader and the biggest gate attraction since Walter Johnson. Aside from a few short on-line biographies citing dry statistics, there has never been an in-depth look into Roy Sievers, the person. In my interviews with Roy and his teammates, I came to realize there was more to him than just numbers. Here was a baseball player who fought tremendous adversity to go on to lead a decrepit baseball franchise into some semblance of propriety, all the while remaining kind, humble, and considerate. It was the character, the essence of the man that prompted the writing of this book.

In all of baseball, one record shines as perhaps the most coveted: four home runs by one player in a single game. If the pinnacle of pitching is the perfect game, then the highpoint of hitting is four home runs, and only eighteen players in the history of the sport can boast this accomplishment. In The Four Home Runs Club: Sluggers Who Achieved Baseball's Rarest Feat, Steven K. Wagner profiles the select group of men who have accomplished the near impossible. Drawing on interviews with dozens of current and former major-league ballplayers, Wagner chronicles the lives of these few who, in the space of a few hours, left an indelible mark on the game. In doing so, the author draws attention to the unique features that distinguished some of these events: one player homered in three consecutive innings; another did it twice in the same inning; a third hit two inside-the-park home runs; one added a double and a single in the same game; and a fifth player drove in a record-tying twelve runs. Among the men in this elite club are legends Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, and Mike Schmidt, as well as recent "inductees" Shawn Green, Scooter Gennett, and J. D. Martinez. From the sandlots of Coushatta, Louisiana, to the suburbs of New York City, this book examines the special batsmen who parlayed four mighty swings into baseball immortality. A fascinating look into this extraordinary exploit, The Four Home Runs Club will appeal to baseball fans everywhere.

As told to Leif Eriksson and Martin Svensson. Alexander Gustafsson grew up in Arboga, a small town in Sweden. A country boy, he started boxing when he was 10 - winning the national youth medal at the age of 16. After a handful of run-ins with the law he began practicing mixed martial arts and working his way up the ranks of the UFC. Nicknamed The Mauler by his training partners, due to his power, killer instinct and somewhat recklessness whilst fighting; this is the story of Gustafssons struggle to succeed in one of the world's most challenging sports. Family, friends, and the Christian faith all play decisive rolls. But above all, it's Alexander's unique talent for martial arts which, in just a few short years, sees him become one of the UFC's main poster boys. The Mauler is a frank and at times painful account of a young man rapidly heading off the rails, and of his fight to reach the top of his game in an effort to change his life forever.

Long-time fans of the National Pastime have known Moyer's name for more than 25 years. That's because he's been pitching in the bigs for all those years. With his trademark three pitches - slow, slower, and slowest - the left-handed Moyer is a pinpoint specialist whose won-lost record actually got better as he got older - from his 20s to his 30s and into 40s. He's only a few wins shy of 300 for his amazing career. But this is where the book takes an unusual turn. Moyer was just about finished as a big leaguer in his mid-20s until he fatefully encountered a gravel-voiced, highly confrontational sports psychologist named Harvey Dorfman. Listening to the 'in-your-face' insights of Dorfman, Moyer began to re-invent himself and reconstruct his approach to his game. Moyer went on to become an All-Star and also a World Series champion. Yogi Berra once observed that 'Half of this game is 90% mental.' And Moyer's memoir proves it.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 WINNER OF THE TELEGRAPH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR 2019 THE FULL STORY BEHIND THE RISE, FALL AND RISE AGAIN OF TIGER WOODS 'A rattling read... Superbly written' Daily Mail 'Arguably the most serious attempt ever made to get behind golf's great enigma' Guardian 'Exhilarating, depressing, tawdry and moving... perfectly pitched biography' New York Times Based on three years of extensive research and reporting, two of today's most acclaimed investigative journalists, Jeff Benedict of Sports Illustrated and eleven-time Emmy Award winner Armen Keteyian, deliver the first major biography of Tiger Woods - sweeping in scope and packed with groundbreaking, behind-the-scenes details of the Shakespearean rise and epic fall of a global icon. In 2009, Tiger Woods was the most famous athlete on the planet, a transcendent star of almost unfathomable fame and fortune living what appeared to be the perfect life - married to a Swedish beauty and the father of two young children. Winner of fourteen major golf championships and seventy-nine PGA Tour events, Woods was the first billion-dollar athlete, earning more than $100 million a year in endorsements from the likes of Nike, Gillette, AT&T and Gatorade. But it was all a carefully crafted illusion. As it turned out, Woods had been living a double life for years - one that exploded in the aftermath of a late-night crash that exposed his serial infidelity and sent his personal and professional life off a cliff. In Tiger Woods, Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian dig deep behind the headlines to produce a richly reported answer to the question that has mystified millions of sports fans for nearly a decade: who is Tiger Woods? Drawing on more than four hundred interviews with people from every corner of Woods's life - friends, family members, teachers, romantic partners, swing coaches, business associates, Tour pros and members of Woods's inner circle - Benedict and Keteyian construct a captivating psychological profile of an African-American child programmed by an attention-grabbing father and the original Tiger Mom to be the 'chosen one', to change not just the game of golf, but the world as well. But at what cost? Benedict and Keteyian provide the startling answers in a biography, updated for this edition, destined to make headlines and linger in the minds of readers for years to come.

Sprint Car Hall of Famer Kramer Williamson began his 45-year professional career as a grassroots racer from Pennsylvania and became one of the most successful and beloved professional drivers of all time. Drawing on interviews with those who knew him best, this first ever biography of Williamson covers his life and career, from his humble beginnings racing the legendary #73 Pink Panther car in 1968 to his fatal crash during qualifying rounds at Lincoln Speedway in 2013.

Redemption: From Iron Bars to Ironman is the fascinating, frightening and inspirational autobiography of former career criminal, now world-record holder and endurance athlete John McAvoy. Born into a notorious London crime family, his uncle Micky was one of the key players in the legendary Brinks-Mat gold bullion caper. John bought his first gun at 16 and carved out a lucrative career in armed robbery. At one point he was one of Britain's most-wanted men. It took two spells in prison and the death of a friend on a botched heist to change his path. During his second stint in jail he discovered a miraculous natural talent while serving life in the Belmarsh high security unit - where fellow inmates included Abu Hamza, the hook-handed extremist cleric, and the 7/7 bombers. John broke three world rowing records while still an inmate and since his release has become one of the UK's leading Ironman competitors. Redemption is the ultimate story of sporting salvation.

Hal Trosky played first base for the Cleveland Indians during the Great Depression, a time when the American League included perhaps the greatest trio of first basemen ever: Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg. Because of the phenomenal feats of those players, Trosky's story was consigned to the figurative back page of history. He led the American League in Runs Batted In in 1936, was elected to the Indians' All-Time team in 1969, and at his peak played at a level comparable to anyone in the game. His career was tragically cut short due to an onset of severe migraine headaches, and he was out of baseball by the age of 34, but his playing days spanned the time from Babe Ruth through the end of World War II. Until now, his story has never been entirely told. This book combines access to Trosky family archives with exhaustive research in order to craft a narrative of Trosky's life. From his early years in Iowa, through his entire major league career and throughout his life after baseball, this book looks at the man on and off the diamond, and on the legacy that remains.

From Diego Maradona to Lionel Messi, Johan Cruyff to Zinedine Zidane, Soccer Legends Alphabet takes to the field with an unbeatable A to Z lineup of unforgettable legends. Educational, inspiring and boldly illustrated, this book is sure to kick a goal with any fan of 'The Beautiful Game.'