Showing titles in Sports History

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.

Set against the backdrop of the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, this compelling audiobook provides the first comprehensive history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for the abduction of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists and the hostages' tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission by the German police. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources from the time, eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications.

Bill Parcells may be the most iconic football coach of our time. During his decades-long tenure as an NFL coach, he turned failing franchises into contenders. He led the ailing New York Giants to two Super Bowl victories, turned the New England Patriots into an NFL powerhouse, reinvigorated the...

Former NBA star and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explores his 50-year friendship with Coach John Wooden, one of the most enduring and meaningful relationships in sports history. When future NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still an eighteen-year-old high school...

He was The Kid. The Splendid Splinter. Teddy Ballgame. One of the greatest figures of his generation, and arguably the greatest baseball hitter of all time. But what made Ted Williams a legend – and a lightning rod for controversy in life and in death? What motivated him to interrupt his Hall...

Few sports have had a more eventful last 50 years than rugby union. Even fewer involve such a range of different cultures, contrasting characters or diverse geographical settings. With the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France and the 200th anniversary of the game’s ‘birth’ on the horizon, Around the World in 80 Minutes sets out to find the game’s most inspiring people and places. Observant, amusing and thought-provoking, the book takes listeners on a global journey to meet key figures from rugby’s ‘golden age’ between 1973 and 2023.

The definitive biography of Steve Kerr, the championship-winning basketball player and head coach of the record-breaking Golden State Warriors Few individuals have had a career as storied, and improbable, as Steve Kerr. He has won eight NBA titles—five as a player and three as a coach—for...

This unique audiobook history of the Olympics, first issued in 2008, has been updated to include the Beijing Olympics and released to coincide with the London event. Written by the prize-winning sports journalist John Goodbody, and with a fascinating personal documentary featuring one of Britain's leading Olympians, Sebastian Coe, who is now heading the 2012 Games, this is an ideal opener!

From an acclaimed archaeological writer, a worldwide history of hunting Hunting is one of humanity's most ancient and universal activities. It has been embedded in every facet of our lives, shaping social bonds, power hierarchies, and interactions with the spirit world. This book tells the story...

The inside story of the most colorful decade in NFL history - pro football's raging, hormonal, hairy, druggy, immortal adolescence. Between the Immaculate Reception in 1972 and The Catch in 1982, pro football grew up. In 1972, Steelers star Franco Harris hitchhiked to practice. NFL teams roomed in skanky motels. They played on guts, painkillers, legal steroids, fury, and camaraderie. A decade later, Joe Montana's gleamingly efficient 49ers ushered in a new era: the corporate, scripted, multibillion-dollar NFL we watch today.

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.

The Circuit des Champs de Bataille (the Tour of the Battlefields) was held in 1919, less than six months after the end of the First World War. It covered 2,000 kilometres and was raced in appalling conditions across the battlefields of the Western Front, otherwise known as the Zone Rouge. The race was so tough that only 21 riders finished, and it was never staged again. With one of the most demanding routes ever to feature in a bicycle race, and plagued by appalling weather conditions, the Circuit des Champs de Bataille was beyond gruelling, but today its story is largely forgotten. 

When England beat Pakistan to become T20 World Champions in November 2022, they crowned an extraordinary rise to the top from the depths of 2015, and became the first male side to hold the 20-over and 50-over titles at the same time. This is the story of how they got there. From early failure, to the building of a golden generation, and a look to the future, this is the must-listen story from the key protagonists about building one of England’s most successful sporting teams from rubble.

Brought to you by Penguin. A cheeky flutter. All part of the game. Get closer to the action. A friendly, familiar voice, inviting you to join the real fans and get involved. What harm could it do… It has never been easier to stake a bet. Wall to wall adverts have hijacked every sporting event...

Full of adventure, mishaps and audacious attempts at cheating, the first Tour de France in 1903 was a colourful affair. Its riders included characters like Maurice "The White Bulldog" Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents were said to have swapped him for a round of cheese in order to smuggle him into France as a 14-year-old; and Hippolyte Aucouturier, who, with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache, looked like the villain from a Buster Keaton movie.

It is likely not terribly surprising that surfers like to party. The 1960-'70s image, bolstered by Tom Wolfe and Big Wednesday, was one of mild outlaws. Tanned boys who refused to grow up, spending their days drinking beer and smoking joints on the beach in between mindless hours in the water. As the surf brands accidentally morphed into a multimillion- then multibillion-dollar industry beginning in the 1980s, however, the derelict portrait began to harm business.

In the 1970s the US military believed they could create a ‘super soldier’ - one who could use psychic powers to walk through walls, disarm the enemy through telepathy or kill a goat by staring at it. The brain behind these techniques was Michael Murphy, one of the founders of New Age spiritualism in the hippy enclaves of San Francisco. But Murphy’s primary goal was to use these powers in sport to create a supreme athlete capable of extraordinary feats.

An incredibly entertaining and perceptive look at the most controversial moment in Premier League history. 25th January 1995 A cold winter’s evening. Manchester United away against Crystal Palace at a packed-out Selhurst Park. Eric Cantona, United's mercurial talisman, has been man-marked...

Wing Chun is the most popular form of Chinese kung fu in the world today, with more than four million practitioners. This guide will fascinate and educate anyone interested in the martial arts, from beginner to master. The art as it is presently understood has been handed down from teacher to student for more than 300 years. Until now, no one has ever stepped back and taken a critical look at why this art's techniques are presented and performed the way they are. 

Want to know what really happened? Stan Isaacs knows. He was there! "The Shot Heard Round the World," in 1951. "The Fight of the Century," in 1971. The horror of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Secretariat's legendary win at the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Stan Isaacs saw them all live. Isaacs covered thousands of sports stories in his more than fifty years as a journalist. But ten moments stand out in his memory. Ten Moments That Shook the Sports World offers Isaacs' eyewitness accounts of the events that changed sports history.