Outdoors Memoirs

In early 2018, Larry Nassar, the former doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, was sentenced to serve out the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty to a variety of sex crimes. New York Times best-selling author Mary Pilon and Carla Correa chronicle the scandal from its inception, tracking the institutions that Nassar hid behind, the athletic culture that he benefited from, and the women who eventually brought him to justice.

He's been called the best in the world at the mental game of tennis. Brad Gilbert's strokes may not be pretty, but looks aren't everything. He has beaten the tour's biggest names - all by playing his "ugly" game. Now, in Winning Ugly, Gilbert teaches recreational players how to win more often without necessarily even changing their strokes. The key to success, he says, is to become a better thinking player - to recognize, analyze, and capitalize. That means out-thinking opponents before, during, and after a match - forcing him or her to play your game.

From the best-selling author of Kafka on the Shore comes this rich and revelatory memoir about writing and running and the integral impact both have made on his life. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers Murakami's four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon. Settings range from Tokyo, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston, among young women who outpace him.

In The Horse God Built, best-selling equestrian writer Lawrence Scanlan has written a tribute to an exceptional man that is also a backroads journey to a corner of the racing world rarely visited. As a young black man growing up in South Carolina, Eddie Sweat struggled at several occupations before settling on the job he was born for - groom to North America's finest racehorses. As Secretariat's groom, loyal friend, and protector, Eddie understood the horse far better than anyone else.

Larry Csonka ran the football with audacity and authority. He lived his off-the-field life with equal abandon. As part of the NFL's 100th Anniversary, he and his undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins teammates were named the best team in NFL history. In Head On, Csonka shares how they achieved their legendary Perfect Season. From quitting football at a young age, to his often-combative relationship with Coach Don Shula, to brazen exploits with his NFL pals, Csonka narrates a life that is colorful, unbridled, and thrilling.

Pro wrestler and political commentator Tyrus goes deep into his wild but triumphant life story, from his painfully dysfunctional upbringing to bodyguarding for Snoop Dogg, to becoming a wrestling icon and one of the most provocative on-air voices today.

Peter Sagan, at just 28 years of age, is already one of cycling's greatest riders of all time. With four Tour de France points jersey victories, three road-race world championships, the 2018 Paris-Roubaix, and multiple spring classics among Sagan's palmares, the world of cycling agrees that this intense, yet fun-loving rider is among the most dominant and fun-to-watch riders of his generation. In My World, for the very first time, bike racing fans will have the opportunity to glimpse behind the scenes of Sagan's cycling life.

In Wild Men, Wild Alaska professional hunting and fishing guide and outfitter Rocky McElveen tells the stories of his own adventures as well as those of some of his well-known clients. The book takes listeners directly into the Alaskan bush, and shares the intense challenges of a majestic wilderness that pushes a man to his limits.

Monty Roberts' father, a traditional horse trainer, had taught his son to dominate a horse in order to "break" it. But when he was 13, Monty made a discovery that changed his life. As he watched a mare tame a rebellious colt, Monty saw that she was speaking to it through eye and body movements. Astonished, Monty realized that he could train horses by using their language, speaking to them in ways that would form trust and understanding. Developing techniques based on what he learned from the horses around him, Monty embarked on a remarkable career - one that would bring him international fame as the real Horse Whisperer.

Few people know the answers better than Emma Hayes. As the coach of Chelsea FC Women, she has led the club to 14 major trophies. She is a widely celebrated figure in sports media as a woman starting to get equal recognition in this space, and has been named TV pundit of the year by both Broadcast Magazine and the Sports Journalists Association. In this book, Emma shares her experience of managing a high-performance football team to draw out life lessons and techniques that listeners can apply to their own professional and personal circumstances.

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. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

Written by the late, beloved Dr. George Sheehan, Running and Being tells of the author's midlife return to the world of exercise, play, and competition, in which he found "a world beyond sweat" that proved to be a source of great revelation and personal growth. But Running and Being focuses more on life than it does, specifically, on running. It provides an outline for a lifetime program of fitness and joy, showing how the body helps determine our mental and spiritual energies.

They were America's Team - the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties.

Alone on the Wall recounts the most astonishing achievements of Honnold's extraordinary life and career, brimming with lessons on living fearlessly, taking risks, and maintaining focus even in the face of extreme danger. Now Honnold tells, for the first time and in his own words, the story of his three hours and 56 minutes on the sheer face of El Cap, which Outside called "the moon landing of free soloing.... A generation-defining climb. Bad ass and beyond words.... One of the pinnacle sporting moments of all time."

In July 1973, Bob Tininenko, his wife Linda, and his brother in-law Jim Fisher set sail from Tacoma, Washington, on a 31-foot trimaran, down the West Coast to Costa Rica. The journey was expected to take a matter of weeks, but 10 days into the cruise, the party encountered a freak storm off the coast of Northern California. When gale-force winds and 50-foot waves capsized their boat, the voyage became a nightmare. For 72 days, the trio was lost at sea. Challenged by nature and compromised by a bitter rivalry, their courage and will to live was put to the ultimate test.

Joe Ehrmann's coaching philosophy was described by Jeffrey Marx in the best seller Season of Life, and since the publication of that book, thousands of coaches have looked to Joe for advice about putting his philosophy into practice. InSideOut Coaching provides the critical information and tools they've been waiting for - the information to help coaches everywhere create more meaningful experiences for themselves and to maximize their impact on the lives of the athletes they coach.

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.

In the middle of Oliver Horovitz's high school graduation ceremony, his cell phone rang: It was Harvard. He'd been accepted, but he couldn't start for another year. A caddie since he was 12 and a golfer sporting a 1.8 handicap, Ollie decided to spend his gap year in St. Andrews, Scotland - a town with the UK's highest number of pubs per capita, and home to the Old Course, golf's most famous 18 holes - where he enrolls in the St. Andrews Links Trust caddie trainee program.

Matt Fitzgerald has already made a name for himself in the endurance-sport community with books like 80/20 Running, How Bad Do You Want It?, and Iron War. He is an accomplished amateur runner, but if he follows the training, nutrition, and lifestyle of an elite runner, just how fast could he go? He is approaching his mid-40s, so the time to do this is now. He at last has the financial means to do nothing but train.

From a New York Times best-selling author, the definitive biography of the NFL’s most enigmatic, controversial, and yet successful coach, Bill Belichick. Veteran sports writer and award-winning author Ian O’Connor delves into the mind of the man who has earned a place among coaching legends like Lombardi, Halas, and Paul Brown, presenting sides of Belichick that have previously been unexplored. O’Connor discovers how this legendary coach shaped the people he met and worked with in ways perhaps even Belichick himself doesn’t know.