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Books > Biography > Sport
As a rookie head coach leading a franchise that, though on a steady
climb upwards, had largely been dismissed by the sports media, NBA
fans had low expectations for Nick Nurse and his Raptors. But what
those naysayers didn't realise was that Nurse had spent the past
thirty years proving himself at every level of the game, from youth
programs and college ball, to the NBA G League and Britain's
struggling pro circuit. While few coaches have taken such a
circuitous path to pro basketball's promise land, the journey--
which began at Keumper Catholic high school in Carroll, Iowa --
forged a coach who proved to be as unshakeable as he is personable.
On the road, he is now known to bring his guitar and keyboard for
late-night jazz and blues sessions. In the locker room, he's
steadfast and even-keeled regardless of the score. On the court, he
pulls out old school, underrated plays with astounding success. A
rookie in name but a veteran in attitude, Nurse is seemingly above
the chaos of the game and, with two seasons on his resume, -has
established himself, incredibly, as one of the NBA's most admired
head coaches. Now, in this revealing new book - which will be equal
parts personal memoir, leadership manifesto, and philosophical
meditation - Nurse tells his own story, while also whisking readers
inside the Raptors' locker room and coach's office for an intimate
study of the team culture he has built and promises to sustain. As
much for readers of Ray Dalio as for fans of John Wooden and Pat
Summit, the result promises to become necessary for anyone looking
to forge their own path to success.
Sir Learie Constantine was an extraordinary figure by any
yardstick. One of the greatest and most popular of all West Indian
cricketers, he left the game to become, among other things, a
barrister, cabinet minister, diplomat, broadcaster, author and
journalist. The first black man to enter the House of Lords, he was
a tireless campaigner for racial equality and West Indian
self-government whose forthright response to racial discrimination
led to a celebrated legal case that laid the foundations for
Britains first Race Relations Act. Above all, however, he was an
immensely popular public figure throughout his life.
The raw, candid, unvarnished memoir of an American icon. In 2008,
Paul Newman tasked his best friend with interviewing the people who
had shaped his life, in order to create an oral history of it.
After hearing and reading what they had to say, Newman dictated his
own version. Now, this long-lost memoir will be published. Full of
wonderful stories and recollections by his family, friends, and
such luminaries as Elia Kazan, Tom Cruise, George Roy Hill and
Martin Ritt, this book will surprise and shock readers as it
reveals Newman's previously unknown sides. In this extraordinary
memoir, Newman details his fascinating story: from troubled
beginnings, marked by fraught relationships with both his mother
and father, to the iconic film roles (both good and bad) that
cemented his status as a Hollywood icon and heartthrob, and the
complicated relationships that were formed along the way.
Leo Durocher (1905-1991) was baseball's all-time leading cocky,
flamboyant, and galvanizing character, casting a shadow across
several eras, from the time of Babe Ruth to the Space Age
Astrodome, from Prohibition through the Vietnam War. For more than
forty years, he was at the forefront of the game, with a Zelig-like
ability to be present as a player or manager for some of the
greatest teams and defining baseball moments of the twentieth
century. A rugged, combative shortstop and a three-time All-Star,
he became a legendary manager, winning three pennants and a World
Series in 1954. Durocher performed on three main stages: New York,
Chicago, and Hollywood. He entered from the wings, strode to where
the lights were brightest, and then took a poke at anyone who tried
to upstage him. On occasion he would share the limelight, but only
with Hollywood friends such as actor Danny Kaye, tough guy and
sometime roommate George Raft, Frank Sinatra, and Durocher's third
wife, movie star Laraine Day. Dickson explores Durocher's life and
times through primary source materials, interviews with those who
knew him, and original newspaper files. A superb addition to
baseball literature, Leo Durocher offers fascinating and fresh
insights into the racial integration of baseball, Durocher's
unprecedented suspension from the game, the two clubhouse revolts
staged against him in Brooklyn and Chicago, and his vibrant life
off the field.
He was featured on the covers of both Sports Illustrated and ESPN
The Magazine. He has the scouts of every pro basketball team
drooling. He has been touted wildly on national TV by basketball
experts from Dick Vitale to Bill Walton. He has a reported $20
million dollar shoe contract pending.
And he's still in high school.
Why the big deal about LeBron James?
The odds were against LeBron from the start. Born in poverty to a
16-year-old, drug-addicted single mom, without a father, raised by
various family and neighbors . . . he could have become just
another scarred product of a rough childhood in the projects.
Instead, he's the darling of the sports world--and he plays the
part well.
Sportswriter David Lee Morgan has covered the LeBron phenomenon for
the Akron Beacon Journal since the kid's freshman year and has been
granted unequaled access to LeBron, his family, and his close
friends. He's seen the exceptional play on the basketball court.
But he's also seen how surprisingly well LeBron has handled the
pressure, the scrutiny, the criticism that arrived with the early
onset of stardom. (Just imagine how most of us would have handled
that as a teenager )
An unusual inside look at the rise of sport's hottest young
prospect, now poised at the brink of superstardom.
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.
He is the goal-scoring legend of the Treble Triumph, a local hero
in Manchester and back home in Norway. But when Ole Gunnar
Solskjaer was announced in December 2018 as interim Manchester
United manager, his only Premier League experience was overseeing
Cardiff City's relegation. After a dismal time following Sir Alex
Ferguson's departure, could he really be the one to see the club
challenge again for major honours? It all started so well - a
record-breaking run of victories, Solskjaer seemingly the antidote
to the confusion of Moyes, the stagnation of Van Gaal, the trauma
of Mourinho, and the permanent job was secured. His first full
season in charge was a bumpy ride, but Solskjaer steered the club
to three semi-finals and a creditable third-place finish. He has
reinvigorated players like Luke Shaw, Paul Pogba and Marcus
Rashford, given opportunities to newcomers such as Mason Greenwood,
and brought in fresh talent in the shape of Bruno Fernandes,
Edinson Cavani and Harry Maguire. In this updated edition, Jackson
reveals how Solskjaer inspired United back into title contention
once again during 2020-21, also taking them to a European final. In
The Red Apprentice, Jamie Jackson takes the reader back to
Solskjaer's early days in Norway to discover the making of the man.
He relives his extraordinary playing career and that goal in the
Champions League final of 1999, exploring his move into coaching
and seeks an answer to the vital question: can he do it? Can Ole
Gunnar Solskjaer draw on his experience and knowledge of the United
way and bring the club its 21st league title?
You could argue that Dennis Amiss' seven-decade cricket career
started the day he was born, when his parents named him after not
one but two celebrated cricketers. Or maybe it started when he was
7, sneaking into the Birmingham Cooperative Society to play a few
matches with his friends - as long as they avoided the
groundskeeper! Or perhaps it was on 7 April 1958; not only his
fifteenth birthday, but also his first day as a professional
cricketer. Whatever day you start on, there's no denying that Amiss
has had an extraordinary career. He is one of England's cricketing
greats, with 100 first-class hundreds to his name and a place as
one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year. Hugely well-respected on
and off the pitch, he didn't shy away from controversy, taking part
in the 1982 'Rebel Tour' of Apartheid South Africa, and somehow
ending up in the midst of the battle between World Series Cricket
and the England Cricket Board. Not Out at Close of Play is the
story of how passion, commitment and practice - and no small amount
of stubbornness! - took a boy from the backstreets of Birmingham to
worldwide cricket stardom.
A Financial Times Sports Books of the Year 2018
Cristiano and Leo is the fascinating account of the lives and rivalry
between two of the best footballers to ever play the game, Ronaldo and
Messi by Jimmy Burns, the bestselling author of Maradona: The Hand of
God.
The rivalry between Ronaldo and Messi has defined football to a
generation of fans – everyone has an opinion on who is the greatest.
Do you prefer Ronaldo whose work ethic and physique have been honed for
one purpose – scoring goals. Or Messi, whose superhuman natural talent
means he can do the seemingly impossible with a football.
Between them they have scored over 1300 goals, won the Ballon d’Or ten
times, and taken the beautiful game to even greater heights. But
statistics alone cannot do justice to their skill, athleticism and
dedication to stay at the top for so long of one of the most
competitive sports in the world.
Cristiano and Leo tells their definitive story, from children kicking a
ball halfway around the world from each other to facing each other in
the epic clash El Clásico, between Real Madrid and Barcelona. This is
the essential book to understand one the most compelling rivalries in
sporting history.
Eddie Hapgood, Footballer is the extraordinary story of a young
unknown from Bristol who became Arsenal and England captain and a
national hero, in the dark days of the 1930s. His impact is so
enduring that when the millennium dawned, the public voted him one
of the greatest sportsmen of the century. That glorious legacy was
painfully achieved. Hapgood considered football an art and played
it joyously as part of a team, but he struggled when politics,
class and money threatened to undermine him and corrupt football.
By the late 1930s, the ugly shadows of fascism, Nazism and looming
war were bearing down on the beautiful game. Hapgood found himself
in a public fight for justice and respect, while behind the scenes
he protected his family with dedication, love and humour. In this
gripping memoir, his daughter Lynne Hapgood pulls together the
various threads - success, celebrity, tragedy and vindication - to
reveal the real Eddie Hapgood. She examines the nature of sporting
greatness and its impact on fans and family.
Wherever he has gone, there seem to have been fallings out.
Pietersen left South Africa to take his chance in England, he moved
counties twice, and soon after becoming England captain was caught
up in a dispute that led to both him and the England coach losing
their jobs. In the summer of 2012, there was a row over texts sent
to the opposition, and he was left out of the side, only to be
're-integrated' into the team a few months later. Finally, when
England's Ashes campaign fell apart, KP was the man to take the
blame when he was axed from the squad. Yet Pietersen is also
England's all-time leading runscorer in international cricket, a
man feared by opposition bowlers. He is a dedicated professional
who trains hard, doesn't get caught up in off-the-field scrapes and
works with his team-mates to help them improve their batting. Who
wouldn't want him in their side? In this revealing insight into the
man, award-winning writer Simon Wilde gets to the heart of the
dilemma about Pietersen, a cricketer who divides opinion like no
other. He seeks to understand what motivates him, why he gets
caught up in controversy and helps explain why it is that England
cricket fans will no longer have the opportunity to watch him do
what he does best: destroy the opposition.
For over a decade Luke Fletcher has been a firm fan favourite at
Trent Bridge. This 6'6" gentle giant never gives less than 100 per
cent for Nottinghamshire, but a laugh and a joke are never far from
his lips. Within the space of a week in 2017 he went from the highs
of winning a Lord's cup final to suffering a serious injury. As
with most events in his life, the incidents provided scope for his
infectious humour, much of it self-deprecating. An uncanny ability
to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and his on-off
relationship with the strength and conditioning gurus has often
landed him in hot water, providing ammunition for witty comebacks.
But although a clever quip is never far away, the broad-beamed
paceman has earned the respect of everyone in the game. He has
played against - and got the better of - virtually every opponent
he has faced and has a career record to be proud of. In Tales from
the Front Line, 'Fletch' serves up laughs aplenty as he takes us on
an anecdotal journey through our summer game.
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Brave Enough
(Hardcover)
Jessie Diggins, Todd Smith
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R697
R590
Discovery Miles 5 900
Save R107 (15%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Travel with Olympic gold medalist Jessie Diggins on her compelling
journey from America's heartland to international sports history,
navigating challenges and triumphs with rugged grit and a splash of
glitter Pyeongchang, February 21, 2018. In the nerve-racking final
seconds of the women's team sprint freestyle race, Jessie Diggins
dug deep. Blowing past two of the best sprinters in the world, she
stretched her ski boot across the finish line and lunged straight
into Olympic immortality: the first ever cross-country skiing gold
medal for the United States at the Winter Games. The 26-year-old
Diggins, a four-time World Championship medalist, was literally a
world away from the small town of Afton, Minnesota, where she first
strapped on skis. Yet, for all her history-making achievements, she
had never strayed far from the scrappy 12-year-old who had insisted
on portaging her own canoe through the wilderness, yelling happily
under the unwieldy weight on her shoulders: "Look! I'm doing it!"
In Brave Enough, Jessie Diggins reveals the true story of her
journey from the American Midwest into sports history. With candid
charm and characteristic grit, she connects the dots from her
free-spirited upbringing in the woods of Minnesota to racing in the
bright spotlights of the Olympics. Going far beyond stories of
races and ribbons, she describes the challenges and frustrations of
becoming a serious athlete; learning how to push through and beyond
physical and psychological limits; and the intense pressure of
competing at the highest levels. She openly shares her harrowing
struggle with bulimia, recounting both the adversity and how she
healed from it in order to bring hope and understanding to others
experiencing eating disorders. Between thrilling accounts of
moments of triumph, Diggins shows the determination it takes to get
there-the struggles and disappointments, the fun and the hard work,
and the importance of listening to that small, fierce voice: I can
do it. I am brave enough.
On 6th May 1954, in what is regarded as one of the key moments in
the history of modern sport, Roger Bannister became the first
person to run a mile in under four minutes. Fifty years on,
Bannister's status, not just as a champion athlete but also as a
true British hero, a gentleman and an amateur from a "golden era"
in sport, retains its unblemished appeal.
Until now there has been little critical and even less close
historical study of Bannister and his achievement. This book
redresses the balance, and in doing so provides fresh insights into
the making of this British champion.
"Roger Bannister and the Four-Minute Mile" does more than detail
the history of a sports star. It is a testimonial to the legend of
Roger Bannister but it also invites the reader to reconsider the
very words often used to describe him - notably "hero" and
"gentleman amateur." Informed by contemporary sports science, the
text also questions the significance of the four-minute mile per
se.
Thoroughly researched, this book gives fascinating insights into
the history of track racing as well as early athletic training
methods and the beginnings of sports science.
The first rigorous historical study of Bannister's sporting life
and the man behind the legend reveals an ambivalent athlete -
highly achievement-orientated and scientific in his approach but
also in love with the freedom of running sensuously in nature, in
contrast to the constraints of modern sport.
Although it has only been thirty years since the first female
jockey rode onto the then male only turf of thoroughbred horse
racing, they have since made their mark on the racetrack and in the
winner's circle. Great Women in the Sport of Kings, the first book
to consider the phenomenon of female jockeys, takes an indepth look
at their lives. Through the oral histories of ten top female
jockeys, the authors offer intimate portraits of how they overcame
personal and professional obstacles to rise to the top of
thoroughbred horse racing. In her Introduction, women's sports
historian Mary Jo Festle explores the larger issues of women in
sport, sexism in horse racing, the struggles female jockeys face,
and the significance of their success. The jockey's include: Diane
Nelson, Julie Krone, Paula Keim-Bruno, Jill Jellison, Gwen Jackson,
Darci Rice, Rosemary Homiester, Jr., Donna Barton, Kristi Chapman,
and Dodi Duys.
In this thrilling and candid memoir, world record-holding and
controversial Big Wave surfer Garrett McNamara chronicles his
emotional quest to ride the most formidable waves on earth. Garrett
McNamara-affectionately known as GMac-set the world record for the
sport, surfing a seventy-eight-foot wave in Nazare, Portugal in
2011, a record he smashed two years later at the same break.
Propelled by the challenge and promise of bigger, more difficult
waves, this adrenaline-fueled loner and polarizing figure travels
the globe to ride the most dangerous swells the oceans have to
offer, from calving glaciers to hurricane swells. But what
motivates McNamara to go to such extremes-to risk everything for
one thrilling ride? Is riding giant waves the ultimate exercise in
control or surrender? Personal and emotional, readers will know
GMac as never before, seeing for the first time the personal
alongside the professional in an exciting, intimate look at what
drives this inventive, iconoclastic man. Surfing awesome giants
isn't just thrill seeking, he explains-it's about vanquishing fears
and defeating obstacles past and present. Surfers and non-surfers
alike will embrace McNamara's story-as they have William Finnegan's
Barbarian Days-an its intimate look at the enigmatic pursuit of
riding waves, big and small. Hound of the Sea is a record of
perseverance, passion, and healing. Thoughtful, suspenseful, and
spiritually profound, McNamara reveals the beautiful soul of
surfing through the eyes of one of its most daring and devoted
disciples.
Sixty Years a Red... and Counting! is a unique, affectionate, fun
and frank account of Liverpool FC over 60 years from the
perspective of a dedicated fan and informed observer of Anfield
life. From attending his first game at Anfield in 1961, to watching
the Kop sing and sway as the Reds plotted a triumphant course
through the 1960s and early 70s under Bill Shankly, to league title
glory with Bob Paisley and lifting the European Cup three times,
Brian Barwick saw it all. In his role as the FA's chief executive,
he was in Istanbul for that unforgettable Champions League final.
And like thousands of others he punched the air in his front room
when the Reds finally lifted the Premier League trophy in 2020. As
a journalist and broadcaster, he gained special insight into
Liverpool's triumphs while building a rapport with some of the
club's top personalities. This book takes you behind the scenes at
Anfield to tell the story of Liverpool's rise from Second Division
mediocrity to becoming one of the most recognisable names in world
sport.
The rollercoaster career of Tony Lock, extending over twenty-five
years, is the saga of a resilient cricketer who triumphed over
adversity. He was an inspirational figure in Surrey's seven
consecutive championship wins in the 1950s when he forged a feared
spin partnership with Jim Laker for both club and country.
Controversy stalked Lock as a bowler during his destructive rule
with Surrey and England but the return to the orthodox style of his
youth brought renewed acclaim. He rejoiced in another role as
captain in reviving the fortunes of Leicestershire and Western
Australia, where he led the state to victory in the Sheffield
Shield. Tony Lock was, for a legion of admirers, an incorrigible
showman, with boundless enthusiasm for the game. It was said of
him, for instance, that when he appealed at the Oval, someone else
was given out at Lord's. Tony Lock: Aggressive Master of Spin is an
engrossing study that reveals the paradox of a volatile and
vulnerable man, but an astonishingly durable cricketer; his memory
will endure.
The Joshua Files traces the story of Britain's latest heavyweight
hero from the building site to the top of the boxing world and
beyond. Anthony Joshua's fight with Wladimir Klitschko, in front of
90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, transformed the fighter not only
into a national hero but also a global star. Having worked as a
boxing journalist for almost 30 years for Boxing News, Boxing
Monthly and Sky Sports, Matt Bozeat was perfectly placed to follow
Joshua from a ringside seat from the very start of his professional
career. Joshua turned pro soon after winning gold at the London
Olympics in 2012, and has since surpassed all expectations, going
on to dominate the division with a 100 per cent KO record. The
Joshua Files tells exactly how he fought his way to the top,
through revealing and insightful interviews with the fighter
himself, as well as with the boxing experts, trainers, sparring
partners and opponents who have the closest insider knowledge of
Anthony's incredible rise.
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