Come and Gone


Joe Parkin - 2010
    He joins the elite Coors Lite road team as a key member, but the adjustment to domestic racing, with small crowds, inexperienced teammates, and poorly promoted events, proves difficult. Disillusioned, Joe is ready to hang up his cleats when he is offered a contract with a pro mountain bike team. The freshness of mountain biking proves to be an elixir: Joe's career blossoms and he rediscovers his love of the sport. Come and Gone will instantly appeal to all readers of A Dog in a Hat, while winning a new audience held spellbound by this rare, frank, and intimate sports memoir.

Miles from Nowhere


Barbara Savage - 1983
    Miles From Nowhere is an adventure not to be missed!Along the way, these near-neophyte cyclists encountered warm-hearted strangers eager to share food and shelter, bicycle-hating drivers who shoved them off the road, various wild animals (including a roof ape and an attack camel), sacred cows, rock-throwing Egyptians, overprotective Thai policeman, motherly New Zealanders, meteorological disasters, bodily indignities, and great personal joys. The stress of traveling together constantly for two years tested and ultimately strengthened the young couple's relationship.Author Barbara Savage died from head injuries suffered in a cycling accident while she was training for a triathlon competition. This book stands as a tribute to her physical courage, spiritual strength, and loving, good-humored encounter with the world.

Edmund Hillary - A Biography: The extraordinary life of the beekeeper who climbed Everest


Michael Gill - 2017
    A man who against expedition orders drove his tractor to the South Pole; a man honoured around the world for his pioneering climbs yet who collapsed on more than one occasion on a mountain, and a man who gave so much to Nepal yet lost his family to its mountains.The author, Michael Gill, was a close friend of Hillary’s for nearly 50 years, accompanying him on many expeditions and becoming heavily involved in Hillary’s aid work building schools and hospitals in the Himalaya. During the writing of this book, Gill was granted access to a large archive of private papers and photos that were deposited in the Auckland museum after Hillary’s death in 2008. Building on this unpublished material, as well as his extensive personal experience, Michael Gill profiles a man whose life was shaped by both triumph and tragedy.Gill describes the uncertainties of the first 33 years of Hillary’s life, during which time he served in the New Zealand air force during the Second World War, as well as the background to the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, when Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit – a feat that brought the pair instant worldwide fame. He reveals the loving relationship Hillary had with his wife Louise, in part through their touching letters to each other. Her importance to him during their 22 years of marriage only underlines the horror of her death, along with that of their youngest daughter, Belinda, in a plane crash in 1975. Hillary eventually pulled out of his subsequent depression to continue his life’s work in the Himalaya.Affectionate, but scrupulously fair, in Edmund Hillary – A Biography Michael Gill has gone further than anyone before to reveal the humanity of this remarkable man.

Believe It: My Journey of Success, Failure, and Overcoming the Odds


Nick Foles - 2018
    Learn from the way Nick handled the trials and tribulations that made him into the man he is today--and discover a path to your own success.

Cross Country: A 3,700-Mile Run to Explore Unseen America


Rickey Gates - 2020
    In the book Cross Country, Gates documents this epic experience from South Carolina to San Francisco, sharing first-person essays, interviews, and over 200 photographs of the ordinary and extraordinary people and places he saw along the way.While Gates delivers unparalleled insight into the extreme athletic and mental challenge of this transcontinental run, running is not the core focus of Cross Country—it is a story of the remarkable people across the United States who we would otherwise never meet.• A photographic travelogue that follows along Rickey Gates's run across the country, and the individuals who live in it• Filled with portraits, landscapes, and collages of towns and communities that most people have never seen• From South Carolina to San Francisco, the five-month-long run covers 3,700 miles of hiking trails, rivers, and roads. Gates slept in the rain, carried meager possessions on his back, ran through the night, endured mental and physical challenges, and survived on a staple of gas station hot dogs and Pop Tarts. Delivering a patchwork portrait of America, Gates's captivating story captures the spirit of our country—that grit, determination, and compassion are qualities that can unite us all.• Perfect gift for runners, hikers, and lovers of the outdoors, as well as fans of travelogues, photography, and photo-journalism• A great pick for those who loved Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck, and A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson.• A unique perspective of the United States

Behind The White Ball


Jimmy White - 1998
    Aged 16, White was the youngest player to win the English Amateur Championship. At 18, he won the World Amateur title. By 1984, he's a professional success, married but not at all settled. He's the kind of man who goes out for a packet of cigarettes and comes home two weeks later. Gambling, women, marathon binges with showbiz friends like Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, have threatened the stability of his marriage. But somehow White has survived, to tell in candid detail, a most unusual, often outrageous story of a very sporting life.

One Man and His Bike


Mike Carter - 2011
    Fed up with a Britain rife with crime and sliding into economic downturn, one day he decided to cycle straight past the office to find out for himself what was going on. He would follow the Thames to the sea and then ride around the entire coastline, a journey of 5,000 miles, the equivalent of London to Calcutta. If he completed it, he would end up exactly where he started. Physically, at least.Camping or relying on the hospitality of strangers, Mike met an array of brilliant characters and experienced innumerable random acts of kindness. He encountered drunken priests and drag queens, gnome sanctuaries and hippy communities, fellow travellers and people building for a different type of future. He also found a spirit of unbelievable kindness, generosity and hope that convinced him that Britain was anything but broken. During the five month journey, cycling the byways of the nation, he became...happy.

Bobby Moore: By the Person Who Knew Him Best


Tina Moore - 2014
    As the only English football captain ever to raise the World Cup, he was not just a football icon but a national one.Yet Bobby was an intensely reserved, almost mysterious personality. Only one person was his true friend and confidante – his boyhood sweetheart, Tina, whom he met at 17 and married soon after.Tina Moore’s story of her life with Bobby, the triumphs and crises of his football career, the break-up of their marriage and what happened afterwards, is a moving tribute to a national icon by the person who knew him better than anyone.

The Crossing: Conquering The Atlantic In The World's Toughest Rowing Race


James Cracknell - 2006
    But their epic journey would become at times a living hell that tested the strength of every fibre of their being.

Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town


Paul Theroux - 2002
    In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances.Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful mediation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people.In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.

Mud, Sweat and Tears


Bear Grylls - 2011
    After leaving school, he spent months hiking in the Himalayas as he considered joining the Indian Army. Upon his return to England after a change of heart, he passed SAS selection and served with 21 SAS for three years. During this time, he broke his back in several places in a free-fall parachuting accident and it was questionable whether he would ever walk again. However, after months of rehabilitation, focusing always on his childhood dream of climbing Everest, he slowly became strong enough to attempt the ultimate ascent of the world's highest peak. At 7.22 a.m. on 26 May 1998, Bear entered the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest Briton to have successfully climbed Everest and returned alive. He was only twenty-three years old and this was only the beginning of his extreme adventures...Known and admired by millions - whether from his prime-time TV adventures, as a bestselling author or as a world-class motivational speaker - Bear has been there and done it all. Now, for the first time and in his own words, this is the story of his action-packed life

Bird Dream: Adventures at the Extremes of Human Flight


Matt Higgins - 2014
    In a truly intoxicating read that was hard to put down, Matt Higgins has managed to make real a world about as far removed from daily life as it gets.” --Daily Beast "Matt Higgins cracks open this astonishingly dangerous sport and captures the spectacular adrenaline surges it delivers." -- The Wall Street Journal "[R]iveting... a must-read. A highflying, electrifying story of a treacherous sport in which every triumph is an eye blink away from becoming a disaster." --Kirkus (STARRED) A heart-stopping narrative of risk and courage, Bird Dream tells the story of the remarkable men and women who pioneered the latest advances in aerial exploration—from skydiving to BASE jumping to wingsuit flying—and made history with their daring. By the end of the twentieth century BASE jumping was the most dangerous of all the extreme sports, with thrill-seeking jumpers parachuting from bridges, mountains, radio towers, and even skyscrapers. Despite numerous fatalities and legal skirmishes, BASE jumpers like Jeb Corliss of California thought they had discovered the ultimate rush. But all this changed for Corliss in 1999, when, high in the mountains of northern Italy, he and other jumpers watched in wonder as a stranger—wearing a cunning new jumpsuit featuring “wings” between the arms and legs—leaped from a ledge and then actually flew from the vertiginous cliffs. Drawing on intimate access to Corliss and other top pilots from around the globe, Bird Dream tracks the evolution of the wingsuit movement through the larger than life characters who, in an age of viral video, forced the sport onto the world stage. Their exploits—which entranced millions of fans along the way—defied imagination. They were flying; not like the Wright brothers, but the way we do in our dreams. Some dared to dream of going further yet, to a day when a wingsuit pilot might fly, and land, all without a parachute. A growing number of wingsuit pilots began plotting ways in which a human being might leap from the sky and land. A half dozen groups around the world were dedicated to this quest for a “wingsuit landing,” conjuring the pursuit of nations that once inspired the race to first summit Everest. Given his fame as a stuntman, the brash, publicity-hungry Corliss remained the popular favorite to claim the first landing. Yet Bird Dream also tracks the path of another man, Gary Connery—a forty-two-year-old Englishman—who was quietly plotting to beat Corliss at his own game. Accompanied by an international cast of wingsuit devotees—including a Finnish magician, a parachute tester from Brazil, an Australian computer programmer, a gruff hang-gliding champion-turned-aeronautical engineer, a French skydiving champion, and a South African costume designer—Corliss and Connery raced to leap into the unknown, a contest that would lead to triumph for one and nearly cost the other his life. Based on five years of firsthand reporting and original interviews, Bird Dream is the work of journalist Matt Higgins, who traveled the world alongside these extraordinary men and women as they jumped and flew in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Offering a behind-the-scenes take on some of the most spectacular and disastrous events of the wingsuit movement, Higgins’s Bird Dream is a riveting, adrenaline-fueled adventure at the very edge of human experience.

The Race to Truth: Blowing the whistle on Lance Armstrong and cycling's doping culture


Emma O'Reilly - 2014
    Yet when Lance Armstrong, starting his comeback from cancer, signed for US Postal, it was Emma, the only woman on the team, who became his personal soigneur. This is the definitive inside story of that time, and of the enormous repercussions that resonate to this day for Emma, Lance and the whole sport.Emma had the strength to break cycling's omerta by speaking out against the culture of doping. She thought she would be one of many whistleblowers, doing what she believed was right. Isolated and shunned by the sport she loved, however, her reputation was systematically destroyed. And yet she had the courage to bounce back, and remarkably, to forgive those who made her existence a living hell. This is the ultimate memoir of truth and its many consequences.

Waterlog


Roger Deakin - 1999
    Engaging, thoughtful and candid' Telegraph Waterlog celebrates the magic of water and the beauty and eccentricity of Britain.In 1996 Roger Deakin, the late, great nature writer, set out to swim through the British Isles. From the sea, from rock pools, from rivers and streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools and spas, from fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries, even canals, Deakin gains a fascinating perspective on modern Britain.Detained by water bailiffs in Winchester, intercepted in the Fowey estuary by coastguards, mistaken for a suicide on Camber sands, confronting the Corryvreckan whirlpool in the Hebrides, he discovers just how much of an outsider the native swimmer is to his landlocked, fully-dressed fellow citizens.This is a personal journey, a bold assertion of the native swimmer's right to roam, and an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water.

The Judge: More Than Just a Game


Robin Smith - 2019
    The Judge, as he was known to all, took on some of the most dangerous fast bowlers of all time with a skill and fearlessness that ensured hero status. His savage square cut drew roars of approval from fans all around the world, especially those of his beloved England and Hampshire. But when he was prematurely dumped from the England set-up at the age of 32, he had to face his toughest opponent of all – himself. Smith suffered a debilitating loss of identity, especially when he retired from professional cricket in 2003, and struggled to deal with the contradictions in his personality. Was he the Judge, the fearless warrior, or Robin Smith, the frantic worrier?Without a support structure to transition from cricket to the outside world, Smith suffered from mental health, alcohol, marital and financial problems until he hit rock bottom and planned to take his own life. In The Judge, he revisits his experience of extreme darkness and challenges received wisdom about masculinity and mental health. He also shares the many highs and lows of his eventful international and county career, including his exhilarating battles with the West Indies and his struggles against mystery spin. And he reflects fondly on a time when cricketers worked hard and partied even harder; a time almost unrecognisable to the modern day.