Sports Essays

Jimmy Lee Hickam grew up along Red Dog Road, a dead-end strip of gravel and mud buried deep in the bowels of Appalachian Ohio. It is the poorest road, in the poorest county, in the poorest region of the state. To make things worse, the name Hickam is synonymous with trouble. Jimmy Lee hails from a heathen mix of thieves, moonshiners, drunkards, and general anti-socials that for decades have clung to both the hardscrabble hills and the iron bars of every jail cell in the region. This life, Jimmy Lee believes, is his destiny, someday working with his drunkard father at the sawmill, or sitting next to his arsonist brother in the penitentiary.

From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.

For years, popular sports radio personality Stugotz has been telling fans that he keeps a “personal record book,” a kind of alternate sports universe in which Babe Ruth is not a great Yankee, Sean McVay has no rings, and Joe Namath is not in the Hall of Fame, to name just a few of his sacred proclamations.

Celebrated author and artist A. Kendra Greene’s No Less Strange or Wonderful is a brilliant and generous meditation—on the complex wonder of being alive, on how to pay attention to even the tiniest (sometimes strangest) details that glitter with insight, whimsy, and deep humanity, if only we’d really look. In twenty-six sparkling essays, Greene is trying to make sense—of anything, really—but especially the things that matter most in life: love, connection, death, grief, the universe, meaning, nothingness, and everythingness.

Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism.

These essays recount his adventures alone and with friends, taking listeners through the seasons. In Paulsen’s north country, every expedition is a major one, and often hilarious. Once again Gary Paulsen demonstrates why he is one of America’s most beloved writers, for he shows us fishing and hunting as pleasure, as art, as companionship, and as source of life’s deepest lessons.

The goals of the budo - the martial arts and ways of Japan - lie in refining the body and spirit. These goals are not always the obvious ones - and are learned only through the guidance and direction of great teachers. The techniques, methods, and rituals of the sensei can serve as guides to a well-lived life - and provide invaluable lessons for today's martial artists.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s deeply personal essay explores racial conflict through the prism of his childhood and the influence of his father, a police officer who walked the beat between two worlds.

Do you know what's the greatest threat to women's sports is? It's transwomen competing and obliterating the competition. In this audiobook, you'll find out how inclusivity is devastating and destroying female sporting events as biological males are allowed to not only compete but completely dominate female sporting events and how no matter how the progressive liberals try to defend it, transwomen athletes will always come in first place compared to their cisgender counterparts. Transwomen are destroying the competition...literally.

In Circling the Bases, leading sports economist Andrew Zimbalist continues his discussion and analysis of the major issues and challenges confronting the sports industry in the second decade of the 21st century. Presenting a general overview of the sports business at the college and professional levels, this volume places concerns such as the antitrust status of sports leagues, the stalled progress of gender equity in college sports, and the control of performance enhancing drugs in historical context.

John Dietsch - fly fishing coordinator and stuntman for Brad Pitt on the timeless film A River Runs Through It - explores our connection to the outdoors through the prism of fly fishing and investigates its transformative and healing power in the face of loss.

With spirited humor, thought-provoking anecdotes, and witty connections to real life, Jason Patterson weaves the story of his love for the hunt together, from its humble beginnings near his grandfather's home to early morning ventures, longing for more than just a fin or feather, but a deeper purpose for life.

In her 20s Rachel Kushner went to Mexico in pursuit of her first love - motorbikes - to compete in the notorious and deadly race, Cabo 1000. As fellow racers died on the roadside, bikes were stolen and friends abandoned one another in the heat of the chase, she crashed at 130mph and miraculously survived; soon after, she decided to leave her controlling boyfriend and manoeuvred her way into a freer new life.

棒高跳でオリンピック金メダル獲得、世界陸上６連覇、世界記録を35度更新した“鳥人”ブブカ。その後は世界陸連上席副会長、ICO理事などを務めるほかに、多数のビジネスで成功し続けている。