There’s a story about Rich Paul that everyone knows: A twenty-one-year-old kid from Cleveland who sells sports jerseys out of his car meets a high school basketball phenom named LeBron James at an airport—the two become friends and forge a decades-long partnership that reinvents the business of sports. That random meeting might seem like the lucky break that changed Paul’s life. But a moment of good fortune means nothing without the struggle that gets you there. And the truth is, Paul had always been lucky.

Stephen A. Smith has never been handed anything, nor was he an overnight success. Growing up poor in Queens, the son of Caribbean immigrants and the youngest of six children, he was a sports-obsessed kid who faced struggles, from undiagnosed dyslexia to getting enough cereal to fill his bowl. As a basketball player at Winston-Salem State University, he got a glimmer of his true calling when he wrote a newspaper column arguing for the retirement of his own Hall of Fame coach, Clarence Gaines.

Kenny Smith was a star at the University of North Carolina before his storied NBA run, in which he won two championships with the Houston Rockets. His popularity skyrocketed when he joined TNT’s new show, Inside the NBA, which has thrived for twenty-four years and won multiple Emmys, receiving enormous acclaim for the insight, humor, social commentary, and unrivaled basketball coverage from Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Ernie Johnson, Jr. Kenny is known to fans for his laser-sharp analysis and eloquent observations of the basketball scene and culture.

LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century, and he’s in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined—the truth is vastly more interesting than that. LeBron tells the full, riveting saga of how a child adrift found the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict paints a vivid picture of LeBron’s epic origin story, showing the gradual rise of a star.

He's one of the most interesting American athletes in the past fifty years. Passionate, candid, iconoclastic, and gifted both on and off the court, Charles Barkley has made a lasting impact on not only the world of basketball but pop culture at large. Yet few people know the real Charles. Informed by over 370 original interviews and painstaking research, Timothy Bella's Barkley is the most comprehensive biography to date of one of the most talked about icons in the world of sports.

To Jeezy’s legion of fans, his name is synonymous with hustle, grit, and the integrity to go out there and achieve your dreams. In his first book, Adversity for Sale: Ya Gotta Believe, Jeezy shares never heard stories of what it took for him to beat the odds and get out of the streets, his mindset he carefully honed to get an edge, and the lessons that changed his life and business.

If you ask a New York Knicks fan about Charles Oakley, you better prepare to hear the love and a favorite story or two. But his individual stats weren’t remarkable, and while he helped power the Knicks to 10 consecutive playoffs, he never won a championship. So why does he hold such a special place in the minds, hearts, and memories of NBA players and fans?

He is perhaps most well-known for being exiled from the league for praying—instead of standing and saluting the flag–during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games throughout the 1995-96 season. Abdul-Rauf’s protest sent shockwaves through the NBA that can still be felt today. With wit and candor, Abdul-Rauf tells the story of how he rose to the top of his game—only to have his career taken away in the blink of an eye when he stood up for his principles.

Known for decades as one of the NFL’s most iconic and spectacular playmakers, Deion Sanders remains college football's most intriguing newsmaker. In just three years, he has become the most talked about coach by recruiting elite players to moribund programs and reviving the spirit and pride of forgotten fanbases by winning. Along the way, he’s changing how we think about college sports while rejuvenating whole communities with the national attention that follows him and the fresh commerce a winning culture ignites.

The hustle still continues for hip-hop OG Juicy J as he shares his invaluable story as an unwavering force in the music industry. Jordan Houston’s rise to stardom was never easy. He began his journey on the streets of Memphis in the ’80s, always inspired by music and with big dreams of becoming a superstar rapper. Jordan stuck to his plan with determination. From a young, poor, ambitious kid to an Academy Award-winning and Grammy-nominated recording artist and entrepreneur, the Juice Man offers his wisdom as one of the most influential tastemakers in the game.

From NBA legend Bill Russell, Go Up for Glory is a basketball memoir that transcends time. First published in 1965, this narrative traces Russell's childhood in segregated America and details the challenges he faced as a Black man, even when he was a celebrated NBA star. And while some progress has been made, this book serves as an urgent reminder of how far we still have to go in the fight for human rights and equality.

Grant Hill always had game. His choice of college was a subject of national interest, and his arrival at Duke University cemented the program’s arrival at the top. In his freshman year, he led the team to its first NCAA championship, and three championship appearances in four years. His Duke career produced some of the most iconic moments in college basketball history, and Coach K proved to be a lifelong mentor.

Over the course of his thirteen-year NFL career, the now retired defensive back’s triumphs extend beyond that on the football field. As a successful entrepreneur, he has seen the blossoming of his business ventures with an eponymous company, Malcolm Inc., and a media conglomerate called Listen Up Media. As a philanthropist, he strives to make a positive difference in the lives of young people in underserved communities through The Malcolm Jenkins Foundation.

Fat Joe is a hip-hop legend, but this is not a tale of celebrity; it is the story of Joseph Cartagena, a kid who came of age in the South Bronx during its darkest years of drugs, violence, and abandonment, and how he navigated that traumatizing landscape until he found—through art, friendship, luck, and will—a rocky path to a different life. This memoir, written in Joe’s own intensely compelling voice, moves with the momentum of pulp fiction, but underneath the tragicomedy and riveting tales of the streets and the industry is a thought-provoking story about a generation of survivors.

In Playing for Keeps, David Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan's epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the audiobook chronicles the forces in Jordan's life that have shaped him into history's greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says former New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, Black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built. Provocative and controversial, Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of Black athletes in the United States.

Here Edgeofsports.com sportswriter Dave Zirin shows how sports express the worst, as well as the most creative and exciting, features of American society. Zirin explores how Janet Jackson's Super Bowl flash-time show exposed more than a breast, why the labor movement has everything to learn from sports unions, and why a new generation of athletes is no longer content to "play one game at a time" and is starting to get political.

No one can touch Bart Starr's record setting 5 NFL Championships including 3 straight. America's Quarterback tells the story of the man who helped create the legend of Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers. This biography traces Starr’s life from childhood in Alabama to stardom in Green Bay and beyond. Not a simple sports story, Dunnavant traces the story of one man reaching for the American dream while professional football emerged from the shadows to capture the nation’s imagination.

He's one of the most interesting American athletes in the past fifty years. Passionate, candid, iconoclastic, and gifted both on and off the court, Charles Barkley has made a lasting impact on not only the world of basketball but pop culture at large. Yet few people know the real Charles. Informed by over 370 original interviews and painstaking research, Timothy Bella's Barkley is the most comprehensive biography to date of one of the most talked about icons in the world of sports.

In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the US national anthem. By "taking a knee", Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick's simple act spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent symbol of resistance to America's persistent racial inequality.

Today, sports arenas have been transformed into staging grounds for American patriotism and the hero worship of law enforcement. Teams wear camouflage jerseys to honor those who serve; police officers throw out first pitches; soldiers surprise their families with homecomings at halftime. Sports and politics are decidedly entwined. But as journalist Howard Bryant reveals, this has always been more complicated for black athletes, who from the start were committing a political act simply by being on the field.

Kenny Smith was a star at the University of North Carolina before his storied NBA run, in which he won two championships with the Houston Rockets. His popularity skyrocketed when he joined TNT’s new show, Inside the NBA, which has thrived for twenty-four years and won multiple Emmys, receiving enormous acclaim for the insight, humor, social commentary, and unrivaled basketball coverage from Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Ernie Johnson, Jr. Kenny is known to fans for his laser-sharp analysis and eloquent observations of the basketball scene and culture.

Based on dozens of shocking interviews with some of the most influential names in sports, this is the urgent and revelatory examination of racial inequality in professional athletics America has been waiting for. With an encyclopedic knowledge of professional sports, and shrewd cultural criticism, John Feinstein uncovers not just why, but how, pro sports continue to perpetuate racial inequality.

A sweeping and revelatory history of basketball, drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews with the greatest players, coaches, executives, and journalists in the history of the game. In an effort to tell the complete story of basketball in all its fascinating dimensions, acclaimed authors Jackie MacMullan, Rafe Bartholomew, and Dan Klores have compiled nearly a thousand hours' worth of interviews with a staggering number of basketball greats. The audiobook that grew out of those interviews is an extraordinary project and quite possibly the most ambitious basketball work ever made.

A New York Times best seller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions. The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed.

FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organizations on the planet. At last count, it had approximately 214 million social media followers, more than any other sports club except Real Madrid CF—and by one earlier measure, more than all 32 NFL teams combined. It has more in common with multinational megacompanies like Netflix or small nation-states than it does with most soccer teams. Journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world.

In this age of billion dollar athletic marketing campaigns, “feel good” philosophy with no connection to reality, and a Sports Media echo chamber that’s all too eager swallow whatever idiotic notion happens to be in vogue at the moment, it’s tough to find people who aren’t afraid to say what they’re really thinking.

There have been other biographies of Roger Federer, but never one with this kind of access to the man himself, his support team, and the most prominent figures in the game, including such rivals as Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Roddick. In The Master, New York Times correspondent Christopher Clarey sits down with Federer and those closest to him to tell the story of the greatest player in men's tennis.

Jalen Rose has never been quiet. Not as a kid growing up in Detroit in the '70s and '80s. Not as the brash, trash-talking leader of the legendary "Fab Five" at the University of Michigan. Not as the player under the stewardship of Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, and others throughout his 13-year NBA career. And certainly not as a commentator and analyst on ABC/ESPN and Grantland.

The task facing Steve Stricker at the 2021 Ryder Cup was enormous. It was his job, as the American captain, to stare down almost 40 years of Ryder Cup history, break a pattern of home losses that had persisted almost as long, and reverse the tide of European dominance in one of golf's most tense and emotional events. This was the epitome of a must-win, but it was also something more—in the entire 93-year history of the event, no American side had ever faced this kind of pressure.