The History of Sports category has 186 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 543 ratings. The most-rated is The Boys in the Boat.
Denali's Howl
Summary
Denali's Howl is the white-knuckle account of one of themost deadly climbing disasters of all time. In 1967, 12 young men attempted to climb Alaska's MountMcKinley - known to the locals as Denali - one of the most popular and deadly mountaineering destinations in the world. Only five survived. Journalist Andy Hall, son of the park superintendent at the time, investigates the tragedy. He spent years tracking down survivors, lost documents, and recordings of radio communications. In Denali's Howl, Hall reveals the full story of an expedition facing conditions conclusively established here for the first time: at an elevation of nearly 20,000 feet, these young men endured an "arctic superblizzard", with howling winds of up to 300 miles an hour and wind chill that freezes flesh solid in minutes. All this was without the high-tech gear and equipment climbers use today. As well as the story of the men caught inside the storm, Denali'sHowl is the story of those caught outside it trying to save them - Hall's father among them. The book gives listeners a detailed look at the culture of climbing then and now and raises uncomfortable questions about each player in this tragedy. Was enough done to rescue the climbers, or were their fates sealed when they ascended into the path of this unprecedented storm?
©2014 Andy Hall (P)2014 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Boxing Kings
Summary
The Boxing Kings tells the story of the heavyweight title in the days when it was a defining institution in the United States. Author Paul Beston places special emphasis on those champions who held a central place in American culture beyond just in the boxing ring, including John L. Sullivan, who made the title a commercial property; Jack Johnson, who in 1908 became the first black man to claim the title; Joe Louis, whose contributions to racial tolerance and social progress transcended even his greatness in the ring; Rocky Marciano, who became an embodiment of the American dream; Muhammad Ali, who took on the US government and revolutionized professional sports with his showmanship; and Mike Tyson, a hard-punching student of boxing history who exemplified the modern celebrity. The gallery of champions also includes comics, dandies, bookworms, divas, ex-cons, workingmen, and a tough guy turned preacher. The Boxing Kings treats these and other champions as three-dimensional human beings, flawed but sympathetic men placed on great public stages. As the title shifts from one claimant to another, their stories also open a window into the larger history of the United States.
©2017 Paul Beston (P)2017 HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books
Hockey Card Stories
Summary
Hockey Card Stories reveals what was really going on in your favorite old hockey cards through the eyes of the players depicted on them. Some of the cards are definitely worth a few bucks, some a few cents - but every story told here is priceless. Sportsnet's Ken Reid presents the cards you loved and the airbrushed monstrosities that made you howl, the cards that have been packed away in boxes forever, and others you can't believe ever existed. Whether it's a case of mistaken identity or simply a great old photo, a fantastic 1970s haircut and 'stache, a wicked awesome goalie mask, or a future Hall of Famer's off-season fashion sense, a wide variety of players - from superstars like Bobby Orr, Denis Potvin, and Phil Esposito to the likes of Bill Armstrong, who played only one game in the NHL - chime in on one of their most famous cards. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2014 Ken Reid (P)2016 ECW Press
The League
Summary
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 National Football League is a towering, distinctly American colossus spewing out $13 billion in annual revenue. Yet its current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start. In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time, the sport barely registered on the national scene, where college football, baseball, boxing, and horse racing dominated. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League. At once a history of a sport and a remarkable story of business ingenuity, The League is an essential listen for any fan of our true national pastime.
©2018 John Eisenberg (P)2018 Hachette Audio
The First Major
Summary
From the number one New York Times best-selling author of A Good Walk Spoiled, a dramatic chronicle of the bitterly fought 2016 Ryder Cup pitting a US team out for revenge against the Europeans determined to keep the cup out of American hands. Coming into 2016, the Americans had lost an astounding six out of the last seven Ryder Cup matches, and tensions were running high for the showdown that took place in October 2016 in Hazeltine, Minnesota, just days after American legend Arnold Palmer had died. What resulted was one of the most raucous and heated three days in the cup's long history. Award-winning author John Feinstein takes listeners behind the scenes, providing an inside view of the dramatic stories as they unfolded: veteran Phil Mickelson's two-year roller coaster as he upended the American preparation process and helped assemble a superb team; superstar Rory McIlroy becoming the clear-cut emotional leader of the European team and his reasons for wanting to beat the US team so badly this time around; the raucous matches between McIlroy and American Patrick Reed - resulting in both incredible golf and several moments that threatened to come to blows; the return of Tiger Woods not as a player but an assistant captain and his obsession with helping the US win - which was never the case when he was playing. John Feinstein's classic best seller, A Good Walk Spoiled, set the bar for golf books. Now Feinstein provides his unique take on the Ryder Cup, which has clearly become golf's most intense and emotional event...it's 'first Major'.
©2017 John Feinstein (P)2017 Random House Audio
The Fair Chase
Summary
An award-winning historian tells the story of hunting in America, showing how this sport has shaped our national identity. From Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, hunting is one of America's most sacred - but also most fraught - traditions. It was promoted in the 19th century as a way to reconnect "soft" urban Americans with nature and to the legacy of the country's pathfinding heroes. Fair chase, a hunting code of ethics emphasizing fairness, rugged independence, and restraint towards wildlife, emerged as a worldview and gave birth to the conservation movement. But the sport's popularity also caused class, ethnic, and racial divisions, and stirred debate about the treatment of Native Americans and the role of hunting in preparing young men for war. This sweeping and balanced book offers a definitive account of hunting in America. It is essential listening for anyone interested in the evolution of our nation's foundational myths. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2018 Philip Dray (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Parcells: A Football Life
Summary
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 New York Jets, brought the Dallas Cowboys back to life, and was most recently enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Taking readers behind the scenes with one of the most influential and fascinating coaches the NFL has ever known, Parcells will take a look back at this coach’s long, storied and influential career, offer a nuanced portrayal of the complex man behind the coach, and examine the inner workings of the NFL.
©2014 Bill Parcells and Nunyo Demasio (P)2014 Random House Audio
The Sweet Science
Summary
This collection of A.J. Liebling's classic New Yorker pieces on the "sweet science of bruising" brings vividly to life the boxing world as it once was. It depicts the great events of boxing's American heyday: Sugar Ray Robinson's dramatic comeback, Rocky Marciano's rise to prominence, Joe Louis' unfortunate decline. Liebling never fails to find the human story behind the fight, and he evokes the atmosphere in the arena as distinctly as he does the goings-on in the ring; a combination that prompted Sports Illustrated to name The Sweet Science the best American sports book of all time.
©1951 the Estate of A.J. Liebling (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.
The Match
Summary
Renowned novelist and screenwriter Mark Frost turns his eye for golf to an event so famous that it’s grown to the stuff of legend. In 1956, a casual bet between two millionaires eventually pitted two of the greatest golfers of the era—Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan—against top amateurs: Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi. Frost recounts this dramatic tale from start to finish, detailing the match that vaulted golf out of the shadows and into the national spotlight.
©2007 Good Comma Ink, Inc. (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
Baseball
Summary
The companion to Ken Burns’s magnificent PBS television series—updated and expanded to coincide with the broadcast of a new, two-part "Tenth Inning" directed with Lynn Novick. The authors of the acclaimed and best-selling The Civil War, Jazz, and The War turn to another uniquely American phenomenon: baseball. Geoffrey C. Ward's and Ken Burns’s moving and fascinating history of the game goes beyond stolen bases, double plays, and home runs to demonstrate how baseball has been influenced by, and has in turn influenced, American life. The audiobook covers every milestone of the game, from the rules drawn up in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright to the American League’s introduction of the designated hitter in 1973; from the 1924 Negro World Series to Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s major-league debut; from the first curve ball in 1867 to Nolan Ryan’s seventh and last no-hitter in 1991. This new edition brings the authors’ monumental work into the 21st century: steroids, home-run records, the rise of Latino players, the long-awaited Red Sox World Series victory, and so much more. Baseball is an audiobook that speaks to all Americans.
©2010 Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns (P)2010 Random House Audio
The Greatest Game Ever Played
Summary
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 their sport had ever known. A young Massachusetts native, Francis was only three years removed from his youthful career as a lowly caddie. Harry was twice his age, the greatest British champion in history, and innovator of the modern grip and swing. Through exacting hard work, perseverance, and determination, Harry Vardon had escaped a hopeless life of poverty; the unknown Ouimet dared to dream of following in his hero's footsteps. When the two men finally came together in their legendary battle at the 1913 US Open, its heart-stopping climax gave rise to the sport of golf as we know it today. Weaving the stories of Ouimet and Vardon as his narrative, Mark Frost creates a uniquely involving, intimate epic that is equal parts sports biography, sweeping social history, and emotional human drama. The Greatest Game Ever Played is a must-listen for millions of sports and history fans - and all who have ever dared to reach for their dreams.
©2002 Good Comma Ink, Inc. (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Boys Will Be Boys
Summary
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. In similar fashion to his New York Times best seller The Bad Guys Won!, award-winning writer Jeff Pearlman chronicles the outrageous antics and dazzling talent of a team fueled by ego, sex, drugs -and unrivaled greatness. Rising from the ashes of a 1 - 15 season in 1989 to capture three Super Bowl trophies in four years, the Dallas Cowboys were guided by a swashbuckling, skirt-chasing, power-hungry owner, Jerry Jones, and his two eccentric, hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Together the three built a juggernaut that America loved and loathed. But for a team that was so dominant on Sundays, the Cowboys were often a dysfunctional circus the rest of the week. Irvin, nicknamed "The Playmaker," battled dual addictions to drugs and women. Charles Haley, the defensive colossus, presided over the team's infamous "White House," where the parties lasted late into the night and a steady stream of long-legged groupies came and went. And then there were Smith and Sanders, whose Texas-sized egos were eclipsed only by their record-breaking on-field performances. With an unforgettable cast of characters and a narrative as hard-hitting and fast-paced as the team itself, Boys Will Be Boys immortalizes the most beloved - and despised - dynasty in NFL history.
©2008 Jeff Pearlman (P)2008 Tantor
One to Remember
Summary
From the national best-selling author of One Night Only come 39 new stories about what a big-league goal can mean to an NHLer. Including interviews with Billy Smith, Chris Mason, Damian Rhodes, Christian Thomas, and Slap Shot’s Dave Hanson. This follow-up to Reid’s national best seller One Night Only: Conversations with the NHL’s One-Game Wonders unearths the blood, sweat, tears, and laughs of the journey to and from a single big-league goal. If you’ve ever picked up a hockey stick, chances are you’ve dreamed of scoring in the National Hockey League. Ken Reid interviews and profiles 39 men who did just that: they bulged the twine in the best hockey league in the world...but only once. From minor-league call-ups to season-long mainstays and even a Hall of Famer, One to Remember answers all the questions.... What did that one tally mean? Was it enough to satisfy a lifelong ambition, or was it just the smallest taste of success? Is the achievement still cherished years later? Or is it bittersweet, a distant reminder of what could have been?
©2020 Ken Reid (P)2020 ECW Press
War Room
Summary
Bill Belichick is one of the titans of today's game of football. Now, sports commentator and best-selling author Michael Holley follows three NFL teams - the New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons - from training camp 2010 through the Super Bowl and into the April draft, opening a new window into Belichick's influence on the game. This one-of-a-kind exploration takes football fans behind the scenes of the most popular sport in America, with unprecedented insider access to the head coaches, scouts, trainers, and players who make the game what it is - including new insights from Bill Parcells, Todd and Dick Haley, and Belichick himself. For true fans of the game, and for fans of Badasses, Patriot Reign, and Boys Will Be Boys, Holley's War Room is not to be missed.
©2011 Michael Holley (P)2017 Tantor
Striking Distance
Summary
In the spring of 1959, 18-year-old Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth, and quickly inserted himself into the West Coast's fledgling martial arts culture. Even though Asian fighting styles were widely unknown to mainstream America, Bruce encountered a robust fight culture in a San Francisco Bay Area that was populated with talented and trailblazing practitioners such as Lau Bun, Chinatown's aging kung fu patriarch; Wally Jay, the innovative Hawaiian jujitsu master; and James Lee, the no-nonsense Oakland street fighter. Regarded by some as a brash loudmouth and by others as a dynamic visionary, Bruce spent his first few years back in America advocating a more modern approach to the martial arts and showing little regard for the damaged egos left in his wake. In the Chinese calendar, 1964 was the Year of the Green Dragon. It would be a challenging and eventful year for Bruce. He would broadcast his dissenting view before the first great international martial arts gathering and then defend it by facing down Chinatown's young ace kung fu practitioner in a legendary behind-closed-doors, high-noon-style showdown. The Year of the Green Dragon saw the dawn of martial arts in America and the rise of an icon. Drawing on more than 100 original interviews and an eclectic array of sources, Striking Distance is an engrossing narrative chronicling San Francisco Bay's pioneering martial arts scene as it thrived in the early 1960s and offers an in-depth look at a widely unknown chapter of Bruce Lee's iconic life.
©2016 Charles Russo (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Road to Sparta
Summary
The Road to Sparta is the story of the 153-mile run from Athens to Sparta that inspired the marathon and saved democracy, as told - and experienced - by ultramarathoner and New York Times best-selling author Dean Karnazes. In 490 BCE Pheidippides ran for 36 hours straight from Athens to Sparta to seek help in defending Athens from a Persian invasion in the Battle of Marathon. In doing so he saved the development of Western civilization and inspired the birth of the marathon as we know it. Even now, some 2,500 years later, that run stands enduringly as one of greatest physical accomplishments in the history of mankind. Karnazes personally honors Pheidippides and his own Greek heritage by recreating this ancient journey in modern times. Karnazes even abstains from contemporary endurance nutrition like sports drinks and energy gels and eats only what was available in 490 BCE, such as figs, olives, and cured meats. Through vivid details and internal dialogs, The Road to Sparta offers a rare glimpse into the mind-set and motivation of an extreme athlete during his most difficult and personal challenge to date.
©2016 Dean Karnazes (P)2016 Tantor
The Billionaire and the Mechanic
Summary
The America’s Cup, first awarded in 1851, is the oldest trophy in international sports, and one of the most hotly contested. In 2000, Larry Ellison, co-founder and billionaire CEO of Oracle Corporation, decided to run for the coveted prize and found an unlikely partner in Norbert Bajurin, a car radiator mechanic who had recently been named Commodore of the blue collar Golden Gate Yacht Club.
Julian Guthrie’s The Billionaire and the Mechanic tells the incredible story of the partnership between Larry and Norbert, their unsuccessful runs for the Cup in 2003 and 2007, and their victory in 2010. With unparalleled access to Ellison and his team, Guthrie takes readers inside the design and building process of these astonishing boats, and the management of the passionate athletes who race them. She traces the bitter rivalries between Oracle and their competitors, including Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli’s Team Alinghi, and throws listeners into exhilarating races from Australia and New Zealand to Valencia, Spain.
With new television coverage and huge media, the America’s Cup is poised to be bigger than ever, and The Billionaire and the Mechanic is a must-listen for anyone interested in the race or this remarkable story.
©2013 Julian Guthrie (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Loose Balls
Summary
What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association. The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still -- decades later -- just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball. Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports -- told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.
©1990 Terry Pluto (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Making of the Masters
Summary
The Masters. For any golf fan, the words evoke the immortal greats of the game and their quest for the most prized trophy of all - the green jacket of Augusta National Golf Club. But behind the legendary links and timeless traditions is one of the most overlooked and misunderstood figures in the history of the Masters and Augusta National: Clifford Roberts, the club's chairman from its founding in 1931 until shortly before his death in 1977. Roberts's meticulous attention to detail, his firm authoritarian hand, and his refusal to settle - even for perfection - helped build the Masters into the tournament it is today, and Augusta National into every golfer's idea of heaven on earth.
©2003 David Owen (P)2019 Tantor
Monsters
Summary
The gripping account of a once-in-a-lifetime football team and their lone championship season. For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the 1985 Chicago Bears were more than a football team: they were the greatest football team ever - a gang of colorful nuts, dancing and pounding their way to victory. They won a Super Bowl and saved a city. It was not just that the Monsters of the Midway won but how they did it. On offense, there was high-stepping running back Walter Payton and Punky QB Jim McMahon, who had a knack for pissing off Coach Mike Ditka as he made his way to the end zone. On defense, there was the 46: a revolutionary,quarterback-concussing scheme cooked up by Buddy Ryan and ruthlessly implemented by Hall of Famers such as Dan "Danimal" Hampton and "Samurai" Mike Singletary. On the sidelines, in the locker rooms, and in bars, there was the never-ending soap opera: the coach and the quarterback bickering on television, Ditka and Ryan nearly coming to blows in the Orange Bowl, the players recording the "Super Bowl Shuffle" video the morning after the season's only loss. Cohen tracked down the coaches and players from this iconic team and asked them everything he has always wanted to know: What's it like to win? What's it like to lose? Do you really hate the guys on the other side? Were you ever scared? What do you think as you lie broken on the field? How do you go on after you have lived your dream but life has not ended? The result is Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, a portrait not merely of a team but of a city and a game: its history, its future, its fallen men, its immortal heroes. But mostly it's about being a fan - about loving too much. This is a book about America at its most nonsensical, delirious, and joyful.
©2013 Rich Cohen (P)2014 Blackstone Audio