Showing titles in Sports History

From Darkness to Dynasty tells the unlikely history of the New England Patriots as it has never been told before. From their humble beginnings as a team bought with rainy-day money by a man who had no idea what he was doing, to the fateful season that saw them win their first Super Bowl, Jerry Thornton shares the wild, humiliating, unbelievable, and wonderful stories that comprised the first 40 years of what would ultimately become the most dominant franchise in NFL history.

The Olympic Games have become the single greatest festival of a universal and cosmopolitan humanity. Seventeen days of sporting competition watched and followed on every continent and in every country on the planet. Simply the greatest show on earth. Yet when the modern games were inaugurated in Athens in 1896, the founders thought them a 'display of manly virtue', an athletic celebration of the kind of amateur gentleman who would rule the world. How was such a ritual invented?

Long before their first Super Bowl victory in 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did something no NFL team had ever done before and that none will ever likely do again: They lost 26 games in a row. It started in 1976, in their first season as an expansion team, and it lasted until the penultimate game of the 1977 season, when they defeated Archie Manning and the New Orleans Saints on the road. It was the beginning of a new streak for a team that had come to be called "The Yucks".

As a kid growing up in New York in the late '50s, Bill Apter fell in love with professional wrestling, and it wasn't long before he was rubbing shoulders with the greats as a young reporter and photographer. He's since become the world's best-known wrestling magazine personality, and he's had professional and personal relationships with a who's who of the business, like Triple H, Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Sting, and Ric Flair.

In Drama in the Bahamas, Dave Hannigan tells the occasionally poignant, often troubling, yet always entertaining story behind Ali's last bout. Through interviews with many of those involved, he discovers exactly how and why, a few weeks short of his 40th birthday, a seriously diminished Ali stepped through the ropes one more time to get beaten up by Trevor Berbick.

It was the team finals of women's gymnastics in the 2012 Olympics, and McKayla Maroney was on top of her game. The 16-year-old US gymnast was performing arguably the best vault of all time, launching herself unimaginably high into the air and sticking a flawless landing. When her score came, many were baffled: 16.233. Three-tenths of a point stood between her and a perfect score. If that vault wasn't perfection, what was?

In the Chinese calendar, 1964 was the Year of the Green Dragon. It would be a challenging and eventful year for Bruce Lee. He would broadcast his dissenting view before the first great international martial arts gathering and then defend it by facing down Chinatown's young ace kung fu practitioner in a legendary behind-closed-doors, high-noon-style showdown. The Year of the Green Dragon saw the dawn of martial arts in America and the rise of an icon.

From her first strokes as a novice, Ginny Gilder found herself in a new world, training with Olympic rowers and participating in the famous Title IX naked protest, which helped define the movement for equality in college sports. Short, asthmatic, and stubborn, Gilder made the team against all odds and for the next 10 years devoted herself to answering a seemingly simple question: how badly do you want to go fast?

William Barclay "Bat" Masterson spent the first half of his adult life in the West, planting the seeds for his later legend as he moved from Texas to Kansas and then Colorado. In Denver, his gambling habit and combative nature drew him to the still-developing sport of prizefighting. Masterson attended almost every important match in the United States from the 1880s to 1921, first as a professional gambler betting on the bouts, and later as a promoter and referee. Ultimately, Bat stumbled into writing about the sport.

Pulitzer Prize nominee and William Hill award-winning author Thomas Hauser's tribute to Ali, the greatest sporting icon the world has ever seen. Few global personalities have commanded an all-encompassing sporting and cultural audience like Muhammad Ali. Many have tried to interpret in words his impact and legacy. Now, Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest allows us to more fully appreciate the truth and understand both the man and the ways in which he helped recalibrate how the world perceives its transcendent figures.

England invented football, codified it, became champions of the world in 1966 but humiliatingly then forgot how to play the greatest game of all. England took their eye off a ball they arrogantly thought they owned, allowing other nations to run off with it. It has been 50 years of hurt since Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup trophy at Wembley, and in this groundbreaking book Henry Winter addresses the state England are in on the golden anniversary of their greatest moment.

Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are perhaps the two greatest quarterbacks of all time. They are living legends who have come to embody the quarterback position and shape an entire generation of the NFL. They have also been fierce rivals every step of the way, and their many epic duels have not only ranked among the best and most exciting games ever played; they have fundamentally shaped the lives and careers of both men.

Many people will remember Eric Liddell as the Olympic gold medalist from the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Famously, Liddell would not run on Sunday because of his strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, and so he did not compete in his signature event, the 100 meters, at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He was the greatest sprinter in the world at the time, and his choice not to run was ridiculed by the British Olympic committee, his fellow athletes, and most of the world press.

For fans of Michael Lewis, the astounding untold story of how professional sports transformed, in the span of a single generation, from a cottage industry into a massive global business. In the cash-soaked world of contemporary sports, where every season brings news of higher salaries, endorsement deals, and television contracts, it is mind-boggling to remember that as recently as the 1970s elite athletes earned so little money that many were forced to work second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet.

History was made at the 2015 Belmont Stakes when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown, the first since Affirmed in 1978. As magnificent as the champion is, the team behind him has been all too human while on the road to immortality. Written by an award-winning New York Times sportswriter, American Pharoah is the definitive account not only of how the ethereal colt won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes, but how he changed lives. Through extensive interviews, Drape explores the making of an exceptional racehorse, chronicling key events en route to history.

In Mad Ducks and Bears, George Plimpton's engaging companion to Paper Lion, Plimpton focuses on two of the most entertaining and roguish linemen and former teammates: Alex Karras ("Mad Ducks") and John Gordy ("Bears"), both of whom went on to achieve brilliant post-football success. A more reflective, less madcap audiobook than Plimpton's other work, Mad Ducks and Bears is no less truthful and searching.

This wide-ranging history synthesizes scholarship and media sources to give the listener an inside view of the television contracts, labor issues, and other off-the-field forces that shaped the National Football League. Historian Richard Crepeau shows how Commissioner Pete Rozelle's steady leadership guided the league's explosive growth during the era of Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl's transformation into a mid-winter spectacle.

A quarter of a million people braved miserable conditions at Epsom Downs on June 2, 1954, to see the 175th running of the prestigious Derby Stakes. Queen Elizabeth II and Sir Winston Churchill were in attendance, along with thousands of Britons who were all convinced of the unfailing superiority of English bloodstock and eager to see a British colt take the victory. They were shocked when a Kentucky-born chestnut named Never Say Die galloped to a two-length triumph at odds of 33-1.

Welsh brawn, all black mystique, South African power, Australian courage, Celtic grit, English resolve: all have given us occasions to remember. Moments of courage and resistance, moments of passion and pride. Moments when a flash of brilliance or collective determination helped turn the game one way or another. Moments when the best proved they are the best, and times when the unsung had their moment in the spotlight. These are rugby's greatest moments.

From Tour de France legends Eddy Merckx and Miguel Indurain to British cycling heroes Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins, relive the careers of the finest riders ever to have competed in the world's greatest bike race. Also featuring Britain's top 10 Tour moments, this publication is an homage to pedal power and the men who push themselves to the limit to achieve the ultimate in sporting glory.