Showing titles in Sociology of Sports

Pull back the curtain on the most powerful position in all of sports: the Quarterback, the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized and worshiped.

After a lifetime of writing about the professional sport, Michael Bamberger, “the poet laureate of golf” (GOLF magazine), delivers an exhilarating love letter to the amateur game as it’s played—and lived—by the rest of us. Over Michael Bamberger’s celebrated writing career, he has...

From ESPN reporter Marc Raimondi comes a compelling, gripping narrative history of professional wrestling’s legendary faction, The NWO (New World Order), from their inception in 1996 to their influence on American pop culture today. In 1996, professional wrestling was one of the most watched...

Alejandro Valverde - the 'Green Bullet' - was a symbol of Spanish sport. Supremely talented, hard-working beyond belief, he was ranked no.1 in the world four times before retiring in 2022. He is a champion of undeniable charisma and immense achievement - and yet also a convicted doping cheat. Appearing in a list of encoded names, Valverde was one of many at the heart of a doping ring for elite sportsmen. Discovered by Spanish police in the infamous Operacion Puerto, the revelations contained in the operation threatened to rip cycling apart.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Secret Footballer: What Goes on Tour by The Secret Footballer. Since his first book was published in 2012, The Secret Footballer has been able to take the listener behind the scenes of footballers' lives like no other player has been or will ever be able to do. Anonymity has been a potent weapon in revealing the real world of football stars, and five years on, he has now penned the work that all his fellow professionals have been urging him to do from the start: The Secret Footballer: What Goes on Tour.

When James Montague first began covering football in the Middle East two decades ago, people asked him what future there could possibly be for the beautiful game in one of the most volatile regions in the world. In the years that followed, it would become one of the biggest stories in global sport, from the from revolutionary ultras of the Arab Spring and the takeover of some of the world's biggest clubs by the Emirati super rich, to Qatar's controversial journey towards hosting the 2022 World Cup finals.

Football is the people's game. A sport accessible to everyone and enjoyed by millions around the world. But football is broken. Beneath the glamorous sheen of the Premier League, it's a game that's rusting and rotten. The growing influence and wealth of the biggest teams is harming the game, leaving fans out of pocket and other clubs clinging to survival. This isn't what football is about. Gary Neville has had a front-row seat in football for over 30 years, witnessing the sport at every level. Most of all, he's a fan. The People's Game is Gary's vision for a brighter future.

The Premier League is the most watched sports league in the world, broadcast into 188 countries and watched by 3.2 billion people worldwide. It revolutionised football, transforming the beautiful game into a multi-billion-pound business and making its biggest stars millionaires. Fever Pitch tells the inside story of the formation of the league, from the early discussions with Rupert Murdoch about how Sky could be at the heart of this new league, to the bitter rivalries and radical new managers who changed the face of football forever.

Richard Moore, Lionel Birnie and Daniel Friebe share their diaries from three incident-filled Grand Tours, the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España. These take listeners behind the scenes and explore the culture and landscape as well as the racing while the ‘Lionel of Flanders’, complete with beer recommendations, does the same for the Classics in Belgium.

'GREAT' Independent 'TERRIFIC' Guardian 'WONDERFUL' Time Out 'QUALITY' Mail on Sunday 'DEFINITIVE' FourFourTwo Winner of the William Hill Sports Book Award Featured in FourFourTwo's list of 'The 10 Best Football Books Ever' Featured in Esquire's 'Best Sports Books Ever Written' Throughout the...

You are cordially invited to join Michael Bamberger on a year-long golfing adventure—playing alongside the pros of the PGA Tour, the LPGA Tour, LIV Golf, and more—as he seeks to unlock golf’s most stubborn secrets in various and surprising ways, all in the name of…improvement! Nearly...

Professional wrestling is both a cultural phenomenon and a multibillion-dollar industry that has launched some of the biggest names in entertainment. But what does it take for a wrestler to break through? In Rough House, journalist Alison Lyn Miller introduces Hunter James, an aspiring star born into a family of wrestlers in Georgia. Hunter lifts, runs, and pounds protein, sculpting himself into a human action figure with the goal of being signed by a major promotion and finishing what his father started.

""Water Mirror Echo is a remarkable story of a man, the traditions and communities that created him, and the new worlds he made possible. Like Bruce Lee himself, Jeff Chang is blessed with the vision to see things we do not yet see, thinking and writing with a restless, chasm-crossing, almost...

Putting the games in the context of Rome's rise and dramatic fall, Mannix captures all the history, planning, and savage pageantry that went into creating the first spectator sports. But as Rome begin to fall in the fifth century, so did the games, devolving into nothing more than pointless massacres. In the end, millions of humans and animals were sacrificed in barbaric displays. What were once ceremonies given in honor of gods met an inglorious fate, yet they still captivate the imagination of people today.

Michael Crawley immerses himself in various endurance cultures and asks what makes enduring together meaningful to people. He learns how Nepalese runners face different challenges depending on their location up a mountain, from those in the lowlands and ‘middle hills’ to Sherpas from the Solu Khumbu, and observes Tarahumara ultrarunners’ ability to cover extreme distances on highly technical terrain. But he also delves into the history of Dance Marathons, six-day pedestrianism races in Madison Square Gardens and the unique Enhanced Games.

Jürgen Said to Me is a human-interest story centred around Liverpool FC's most successful and charismatic leader of recent times. It charts Jürgen Klopp's impact on Liverpool through the voice of the author and those at the heart of his revival. In October 2015, Klopp took the helm at Liverpool at a time when the famous club were entering a third decade of league-title drought. The German coach had prospered with his brand of 'heavy-metal football', but little was known about his personality beyond an obvious energy and charisma.

Asks what has happened to English football and how we can launch a revolution amongst English fandom in order not just to take back control of the game, but invent new ways our society and economy can work in the interest of the people again. Football has always been the People's Game and even after three decades of clubs being loaded with debt, ticket prices hiked, and fans blasted with gambling ads, football persists as a source of solidarity, civic engagement and national and international pride.

The Competitive Buddha is about mastery, leadership, and spirituality. Learn what you need to keep, what you need to discard, and what you need to add to your mental, emotional, and spiritual skill set as an athlete, coach, leader, parent, CEO, or any other performer in life. Understand how Buddhism can help you to be better prepared for sports and life, and how sports and life can teach you about Buddhism. Lynch sheds light on the positive aspects of competition, adding Eastern thought and spirituality to sport, while elevating competitors and the game.

So rapid has this national transformation been that it has taken place within the lifetimes of these remarkable young sportsmen. Colombia Es Pasión! How a New Generation of Cyclists Changed a Nation explores the lives and dreams of each of Colombia's leading cyclists. Theirs are inspiring stories of overcoming poverty and violence, sickness and corruption - of the emergence of the indigenous to global sporting glory.

Whether you’re a longtime fan or new to Formula 1 racing and obsessed with Netflix’s Drive to Survive, the Red Flags team—the #1 American F1 podcast—invites readers into an irreverent, hilarious illustrated romp through the wild world of Formula 1. From epic on-track battles to...