Sports History

From one of Outside magazine’s “Literary All-Stars” comes the thrilling true tale of the fastest boat ride ever through the Grand Canyon, atop the legendary Colorado River flood of 1983.

The number one New York Times best-selling story about American Olympic triumph in Nazi Germany, the inspiration for the PBS documentary The Boys of '36, broadcast to coincide with the 2016 Summer Olympics and the 80th anniversary of the boys' gold medal race....

The inside story of the crisis within the country’s most classic sport—horseracing—and why money is killing thoroughbreds at the top of their game.

In 1973, Secretariat, the greatest champion in horse-racing history, won the Triple Crown....

Correspondent Christopher Clarey sits down with Federer and those closest to him to tell the story of the greatest player in men's tennis....

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini....

Harvey Penick's life in golf began when he was eight years old, caddying at the Austin, Texas, Country Club. Eight decades later...

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200....

At The Athletic, home to the best newsroom in sports, this question would become a labor of love for dozens of the best football writers on the planet, including Mike Sando and Dan Pompei....

A groundbreaking, richly informative exploration of the central yet underappreciated role of muscle in human life and health, Stronger sounds an urgent call for each of us to recognize muscle as “the vital, inextricable and effective partner of the soul.”

In 1965, 18-year old Lew Alcindor played basketball for Coach John Wooden at UCLA. It was the beginning of what was to become a 50-year long relationship....

New York Times bestselling author Rich Cohen tells the gritty, no-holds-barred account of the 1987 NBA season, a thrilling year of fierce battles and off-the-court drama between Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, and Michael Jordan.

How did WrestleMania III legitimize wrestling as entertainment and reshape the industry? Greenberg lays it bare and offers insights into WWE's evolution and WrestleMania's lasting impact

A little over 100 years ago, East Africa was terra incognita to most whites....

Henry Ford, Lee Iaococca and Carroll Shelby concoted a scheme to reinvent the Ford company. They would enter the high-stakes world of European car racing....

Boys Will Be Boys immortalizes the most beloved - and despised - dynasty in NFL history....

At five feet ten inches tall, running back Walter Payton was not the largest player in the NFL, but he developed a larger-than-life reputation for his strength, speed, and grit....

Best-selling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost 300 interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era....

Francis Ouimet and Harry Vardon came from different worlds and different generations, but their passion for golf set them on parallel paths that would collide in the greatest match....

Experience 50 years of wrestling history through the iconic voice of Jim Ross.

A Season on the Brink chronicles the basketball season that John Feinstein spent following the Indiana Hoosiers and their fiery coach, Bob Knight....

After his bestselling home run books Why We Love Baseball and The Baseball 100, Joe Posnanski turns from the national pastime to the number one sport in America.

The epic tale of the five owners who shepherded the NFL through its tumultuous early decades and built the most popular sport in America....

The incredible story of the first African-American military pilot, who went on to become a Paris nightclub impresario, a spy in the French Resistance and an American civil rights pioneer....

Babe Ruth was more than baseball's original superstar....

On an overcast day in 1987, the pro wrestling landscape was altered forever when a reported 93,173 fans converged on the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit to see Hulk Hogan defend his championship against André the Giant. For several years, Vincent Kennedy McMahon had been transforming old-time rasslin' into mainstream "sports entertainment," incorporating A-list celebrities into storylines and forcing even cynics to follow the proceedings.

From Jim Lampley, HBO’s ringside face and voice of boxing, comes a first-person, blow-by-blow account of the evolution of sports television chock full of famous names, history-making events, and never-before-told stories from the world of sports.

Every year, hundreds of horses die on the racetrack. Why? Death of a Racehorse delves deep into the horse racing world, offering intimate access to dozens of top trainers, owners, breeders, veterinarians, lab specialists, and more. The mainstream perception has been that rampant drug use is forcing these horses to run past their natural ability, resulting in heart attacks and broken legs. But this doesn’t paint the full picture.

From minor league baseball exploitation to spectator hooliganism, Sailofsky shows the connections between the business of sports and violence, but also, more importantly, he imagines new forms of sport that are not places of harm.

From spring training to the World Series, 1978 gave baseball fans one of the sport's greatest seasons, full of legendary moments like the battle between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox for the American League East pennant, Gaylord Perry's three thousandth strikeout, Tom Seaver's only career no-hitter, Willie McCovey's five hundredth home run, and Pete Rose's marathon forty-four-game hitting streak.

The Story of the Masters is the first comprehensive year-by-year history of the world’s most famous golf tournament. Veteran golf journalist David Barrett draws upon contemporaneous reporting and other source material to offer dramatic accounts of each year the tournament has been played, starting in 1934.

This book is about the batters who see what mortals don’t. Javed Miandad purposefully makes errors to manipulate the field, Sachin Tendulkar dug up a pitch to take on Warne, Shivnarine Chanderpaul practised non-stop on a beach with tennis balls until he mastered technique and Joe Root’s great play against spin is known to be a confluence of three random events. Others, such as Smith, Pietersen and Richards, carried on the work of a man 100 years before their time, and Ranji changed cricket with a bucket.

Combining extensive historical research with dozens of oral history interviews, Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford bring life and depth to stories of the many generations of female athletes who have fought for liberation on and off the court.

Test cricket is on the cusp of its 150th anniversary. For the first time, Test Cricket: A History tells the full, gripping story of the players and stories that have shaped the game's evolution since 1877. Award-winning author Tim Wigmore brings to life both Test cricket on the pitch and the game's social significance around the world. This captivating tour is illuminated by dozens of exclusive interviews with the game's greatest players, including Sachin Tendulkar, Pat Cummins, Michael Holding, Muthiah Muralidaran, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Chappell, Dale Steyn and Rahul Dr

The IPL has expanded, but Australia's Big Bash is contracting; the 2023 men's Ashes were concertinaed into a tiny window but The Hundred continues to dominate. Is there still hope for Test cricket in this tumultuous sporting landscape? Turbervill recalls the poignancy of the final Test of the English summer at The Oval in 2022, and describes how the match could be seen as a metaphor for the demise of the longer game.