Book picks similar to
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Inside: The autobiography
Chris Judd - 2015
He's one of the game's out-and-out champions, having captained two of the greatest clubs in the league - the West Coast Eagles and Carlton - and taken the Eagles to premiership victory in 2006. He's won the Brownlow Medal twice, been a dual Leigh Matthews Trophy winner - awarded to the AFL's Most Valuable Player as voted by the players - and selected as an All Australian six times.His autobiography is a unique journey into the game, describing with extraordinary candour what it's like to climb to the highest levels, to achieve the ultimate goal of your sport, and to experience the full measure of heartache and failure that inevitably accompanies more than a decade of playing at the elite level. Few sportsmen have shared such intimacy and insight into their world, and the result is a book that's worthy of Chris Judd the player - intelligent, surprising, and head and shoulders above the competition.
Jonestown: The Power And The Myth Of Alan Jones
Chris Masters - 2006
ROAR
Samantha Lane - 2018
They had a sound unlike anything anyone had ever heard: an almighty, heartfelt roar.’The inaugural season of the AFL Women’s league was a game changer for Australian sport and for Australia culturally. When women joined the nation’s biggest and most popular sporting code as players, it gave them licence to become legitimate football heroes. It was personal, political, proud and powerful.With unique insights from award-winning journalist Samantha Lane, including previously untold details behind AFLW’s birth, ROAR tells the remarkable tales of a group of trailblazers. These are intimate stories from a band of pioneers who now have a league of their own.From Daisy Pearce, AFLW’s original poster-player, to Craig Starcevich, the Collingwood premiership footballer who found football happiness where he least expected it, and superstars including Tayla Harris and history-making coach Bec Goddard, ROAR is a groundbreaking book to inspire, illuminate and celebrate the leading lights of AFLW.
Eleven Bats: A Story of Cricket and the SAS
Anthony 'Harry' Moffitt - 2020
An improvised game of cricket was often the circuit-breaker Harry and his team needed after the tension of operations. He began a tradition of organising matches wherever he was sent, whether it was in the mountains of East Timor with a fugitive rebel leader, or on the dusty streets of Baghdad, or in exposed Forward Operating Bases in the hills of Afghanistan. Soldiers, locals and even visiting politicians played in these spontaneous yet often bridge-building games.As part of the tradition, Harry also started to take a cricket bat with him on operational tours, eleven of them in total. They'd often go outside the wire with him and end up signed by those he met or fought alongside. These eleven bats form the basis for Harry's extraordinary memoir. It's a book about combat, and what it takes to serve in one of the world's most elite formations. It's a book about the toll that war takes on soldiers and their loved ones. And it's a book about the healing power of cricket, and how a game can break down borders in even the most desperate of circumstances.
A Clear Blue Sky
Jonny Bairstow - 2017
His father David ‘Bluey’ Bairstow, the combative and very popular wicketkeeper and captain of Yorkshire, took his own life at the age of forty-six.David left behind Jonny, Jonny’s sister Becky and half-brother Andy, and his wife Janet, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer at the time of his death. From these incredibly tough circumstances, Jonny and his family strived to find an even keel and come to terms with the loss of their father and husband.Jonny found his way through his dedication to sport. He was a gifted and natural athlete, with potential careers ahead of him in rugby and football, but he eventually chose cricket and came to build a career that followed in his father’s footsteps, eventually reaching the pinnacle of the sport and breaking the record for most Test runs in a year by a wicketkeeper.Written with multiple-award-winning writer Duncan Hamilton, this is an incredible story of triumph over adversity and a memoir with far-reaching lessons about determination and the will to overcome.
Snake: The Legendary Life of Ken Stabler
Mike Freeman - 2016
The league’s first swashbuckling pass thrower, the mythical southpaw Southerner famous for come-from-behind drives late in the game, Stabler led the Raiders to their first Super Bowl championship in 1977. In an era dominated by gentleman quarterbacks like Roger Staubach and Bob Griese, this 1974 NFL MVP, four-time Pro-bowler, and Super Bowl champion was an iconoclast who partied as hard as he played and lived life unapologetically on his own—not the NFL’s—terms.Though Stabler’s legacy is larger-than-life, there has never before been an exclusive account of him, until now. Snake goes deep under the surface of Stabler’s persona to reveal a man who, despite his penchant for partying and debauchery, was committed to winning and being the best player he could be. From his college days playing for Bear Bryant at Alabama to his years with the Raiders under coach John Madden, his broadcasting career to his death in 2015 and the revelation that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as C.T.E., Snake probes the myriad facets of Stabler’s life on and off the field to tell his complete story, and explores how his legacy and the culture and times that pivotally shaped it, continues to impact football today.
The Curse: The Colorful & Chaotic History of the LA Clippers
Mick Minas - 2016
Author Mick Minas goes behind the scenes-- interviewing players, coaches, and front office personnel--to create the first in-depth look at the history of the Clippers.The Curse is filled with drama: the unauthorized relocation of the franchise that led to the NBA filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Clippers, the disruption of the team's first playoff appearance by the Los Angeles riots, the bold but unsuccessful attempt to sign Kobe Bryant at the peak of his career, and the scandal that ultimately resulted in owner Donald Sterling being banned from the NBA for life. Featuring some of basketball's biggest names, including World B. Free, Elgin Baylor, Danny Manning, Doc Rivers, Larry Brown, Dominique Wilkins, Elton Brand, Baron Davis, Blake Griffin, and Chris Paul, The Curse delves into the disasters of the past and the complications of the present. This is the definitive history of the NBA's most dysfunctional franchise.
Ruffian: A Race Track Romance
William Nack - 2007
Since winning her first race a little more than a year earlier, the unbeaten, unflappable Ruffian had literally raced her way into the hearts of a nation. One of those hearts belonged to Newsday turf reporter William Nack.As a boy in Illinois, Nack had carried in his pocket a trading card of his hero, Swaps, the winner of the 1955 Kentucky Derby. As a young soldier in Vietnam, Nack tuned out the midnight bomb blasts by listening to racetrack broadcasts from Santa Anita. Now, fresh off the publication of his astonishing biography of Secretariat -- described by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand as "the gold standard of horse books" -- he found himself smitten once again.But tragedy struck that summer's day at Belmont Park. After charging from the gate, Ruffian stumbled and shattered her right foreleg. She had to be put down. Nack's heartbreaking run with thoroughbred racing's most famous filly will soon be immortalized in a made-for-TV movie to be broadcast on ESPN and ABC. In this moving, lyrical memoir, he relives the afternoon that forever changed his love affair with the track.
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.
Botham: My Autobiography
Ian Botham - 1994
A completely revised and updated edition of the bestselling autobiography of cricketing legend Ian Botham, including his first-hand insight into the 1999/2000 winter tour to South Africa.Ian Botham’s bestselling autobiography is an intriguing cocktail of sex and drugs allegations, personal upheavals, confrontations with his peers, and remarkable achievements both on and off the field.From his heroic deeds against the Aussies art Headingly in 1981 through to the dark clouds surrounding the court case with Imran Khan, from battling in the mud for Scunthorpe United FC to walking half the length of the country for Leukaemia Research, it’s all here in this unforgettable story of a truly larger-than-life character.In an extra chapter for this revised edition, Botham digs deep to unravel the reasons behind the sorry state of English cricket, and provides a compulsive insight into the 1999/2000 winter tour to South Africa where England attempt to recover from a traumatic year under the new leadership of Nasser Hussain.
No Run Intended
Hannah Phillips - 2015
Chubby is cute was her motto and cake with pints of cider her diet. Then came 'the' fateful night that saw her staring awkwardly at a ‘fat bird’ with her top on. When that 'fat bird' turned out to be her very own reflection Hannah ran (quite quickly) to the toilets to wail in self-pity and humiliation. Hannah knew she had to make a decision, so she decided to lace up a pair of trainers she happened to have in the cupboard and head for the hills…or at least to the nearest park…if she could ever make it. Chased by geese, the police and Jack Russel’s, No Run Intended is a small story about a big journey that follows Hannah’s running progress through good times, bad times and can’t be bothered times. Deeply honest, insightful and a little bit funny, it’s definitely not a how to but a what if kind of book that celebrates running in all its beautiful, ugly glory.
Eclipse: The Horse That Changed Racing History Forever
Nicholas Clee - 2009
An adventurer and rogue who has made his money through gambling, Dennis O'Kelly is also companion to the madam of a notorious London brothel.While O'Kelly is destined to remain an outcast to the racing establishment, his horse will go on to become the undisputed, undefeated champion of his sport. Eclipse's male-line descendants include Secretariat, Barbaro, and all but three of the Kentucky Derby winners of the past fifty years.
The Art of Cycling
Cadel Evans - 2016
On the afternoon of Sunday, the first of February 2015, Cadel Evans crossed the finish line in the first-ever race of the event that would immortalise his name: the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. At that moment, an extraordinary cycling career, spanning 20 years and more than 750 professional races, came to a close. Now, looking back on his journey, Cadel Evans tells his story of the races and moments that mattered, taking you with him as he places in the top ten in six Tours de France and becomes Australia's first and only Tour de France champion; as he wins the Mountain Bike World Cup twice and Australia's first and only UCI Road World Championship; as he claims the points jersey in the Giro d'Italia; and as he wins a succession of other great races, including the Tour of Austria (twice), Tour de Romandie (twice), Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali, Tirreno-Adriatico, Flèche Wallonne, Criterium International and Giro del Trentino. Ranging from the dirt tracks of his early 1990s mountain-biking days to the Tour de France's famous podium in 2011 and beyond, The Art of Cycling is a tale of potential realised and ambition fulfilled. It's also the inspiring story of a young boy from the Australian bush, whose focus, talent and dedication conquered the elite world of international cycling in an era when few Australians competed, let alone won. Famous in the sport for his meticulous preparation and as an athlete who pridedhimself on his ability to give his all, Evans writes with forensic detail about the triumphs, the frustrations, the training, the preparation, the psychology of the sport, his contemporaries, the legends, the controversies and, above all, his enduring love of cycling.
Manchester United Ruined My Life
Colin Shindler - 1998
Colin Shindler recalls the problems of growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family in central Manchester in the 1950s and 1960s as a Manchester City fan, permanently under the shadow of Manchester United.