Book picks similar to
T.O. by Terrell Owens


autobiography
biography
biographies-and-memoirs
juno-year

No Nonsense


Joey Barton - 2016
    Think again. No Nonsense is a game-changing autobiography which will redefine the most fascinating figure in British football. It is the raw yet redemptive story of a man shaped by rejection and the consequences of his mistakes. He has represented England, and been a pivotal player for Manchester City, Newcastle United, Queens Park Rangers, Marseille and Burnley, but his career has featured recurring controversy. The low point of being sent to prison for assault in 2008 proved to be the catalyst for the re-evaluation of his life.No Nonsense reflects Barton’s character – it is candid, challenging, entertaining and intelligent. He does not spare himself, in revealing the formative influences of a tough upbringing in Liverpool, and gives a survivor’s insight into a game which to use his phrase 'eats people alive'. The book is emotionally driven, and explains how he has redirected his energies since the birth of his children. In addition to dealing with his past, he expands on his plans for the future. The millions who follow his commentaries on social media, and those who witnessed him on BBC’s Question Time, will be given another reason to pause, and look beyond the caricature.

Me And My Mouth: The Austin Healey Story


Austin Healey - 2006
    His new career as a BBC pundit keeps him in the public eye. 16pp colour plates. Full description

Hosoi: My Life as a Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor


Christian Hosoi - 2012
    A mix of Tony Hawk and Brian Welch comes together in skateboarding legend Christian Hosoi, who reveals everything about his rise, fall, and redemption, in this amazing tell-all—from being named the greatest skater of all time to bottoming out on drugs to finally finding redemption through God.Fans of Slater Kelly’s Pipe Dreams and Brian Welch’s Save Me From Myself, and followers of Tony Alva, Jay Adams, and Steve Caballero, will be captivated by this extraordinary, star-studded story, a gripping read that ranges from the heart of the 1980s skateboarding scene to the inside of a prison, from Hollywood parties to intense prayer sessions.Hosoi: My Life as a Skateboarder Junkie Inmate Pastor takes readers to the heart of one little-known world after another—and he portrays them in all their gore and glory for all the world to see.

It's Always Summer Somewhere: A Matter of Life and Cricket


Felix White - 2021
    His passion for the game is at the fore on the BBC 's number one cricket podcast and 5Live show, Tailenders, which he co-presents with Greg James and Jimmy Anderson. It's Always Summer Somewhere is his funny, heartbreaking and endlessly engaging love letter to the game.Felix takes us through his life growing up in South West London and describes how his story is forever punctuated and given meaning by cricket. Through his own exploits as a slow left arm spinner of 'lovely loopy stuff', to the tragic illness of his mother, life with The Maccabees and his cricket redemption, Felix touches on both the comedic and the tragic in equal measure. Throughout, there's the ever-present roller coaster of following the England cricket team. The exploits of Tufnell (another bowler of 'lovely loopy stuff'), Atherton, Hussain et al, are given extra import through the eyes of a cricket-obsessed youth. Felix meets them at each signposted moment to find out what was really behind those moments that gave cricket fans everywhere sporting memories that would last forever, sending the book into an exploration of grief, transgenerational displacement and how the people we've known and things we've loved culminate and take expression in our lives. It's Always Summer Somewhere is an incredibly honest detail of a life lived with cricket. It offers a sense of genuine empathy and understanding not just with cricket fans, but sports and music fans across the world, in articulating our reasons for pouring so much meaning into something that we simply cannot control.Culminating in the heart-stopping World Cup Final in 2019, the book finally answers that question fans have so often asked...what is it about this game?

Sea Legs: One Family's Year on the Ocean


Guy Grieve - 2013
    Sick of the weather, perennial colds and their increasingly routine lifestyle, they’d all been getting restless. Finally, Guy and Juliet broke in spectacular style – they re-mortgaged their house and bought a yacht. Her name was Forever.The plan? To pick up Forever from her mooring in the Leeward Antilles off the coast of Venezuela, and sail around the West Indies before crossing the Atlantic back to Scotland. This was despite the fact that Guy, skipper of the expedition, had almost no sailing experience.Travelling around the lush tropical islands of the Caribbean and up the waterways of America, the family had countless sublime moments as they discovered the freedoms of sailing – anchoring in deserted bays, night passages under star-studded skies, and entering New York by water, greeted by the Statue of Liberty. But there were also testing times as they grappled with seasickness and bad weather, coping with young children at sea and learning to run a large, complex boat. Far from being the idyllic escape they’d envisaged, the journey forced Guy and Juliet to draw on reserves of courage and endurance they never knew they had.Wry, funny and buccaneering, this is a compelling tale of bravery and endeavour, out on the open sea.

Bend It Like Bullard


Jimmy Bullard - 2014
    But what he has in spades is a genuine love for The Beautiful Game that few of his peers can match. One of the last graduates from football's old school, Jimmy actually worked in the real world - including as a painter and decorator - before turning pro. Maybe that's why he played football with a smile on his face, always says what's on his mind, and is no stranger to a spot of mischief.Having played under the likes of Barry Fry, Harry Redknapp and Phil Brown, appeared alongside names as diverse as Neil Ruddock and Paolo di Canio, and as long as Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, Jimmy has racked up an amazing collection of tales and pranks both on and off the football front-line. Told with candour, Bend It Like Bullard is the extraordinary story of his journey from cable TV fitter to cult hero. It will make you smile, chuckle and, occasionally, ROFL.

The Royal W.E. Unique Glimpses of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor


Victoria Martinez - 2011
    The truth is: politics and innuendo clouded that story from the very beginning, with the result that few people really understand who The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were and what forces propelled them to their infamous fate. The Royal W.E. examines the individual and intertwined lives of Wallis and Edward – or “W.E.” as they referred to themselves – and provides readers with unique glimpses of the real people, as opposed to the sensationalized characters, that were The Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Through careful study of more than 75 years of rhetoric and scholarship, Victoria Martínez takes on the most controversial charges lodged against the couple (Was Wallis a hermaphrodite? Were the Duke and Duchess Nazi sympathizers?) with candor and evenhandedness. In analyzing the early lives of Wallis and the ex-king and their later relationships with other members of the Royal Family, her approach is to deal with all parties as human beings, whose true faults – though significant – were far less sinister than history has led us to believe. Ms. Martínez also addresses the ever-popular subject of the Duchess’s jewels, including new research on the famous 1946 Ednam Lodge jewel heist to dispel the long-held rumors that the Duke and Duchess committed jewel theft and insurance fraud. The subjects in this book are not always mainstream, well-known, or even consistent with “popular” opinion, and the objective is not to make anyone “like” the couple. Instead, readers will find refreshingly honest and accurate portrayals of W.E. that will help them understand the real people behind the myth and hype. “Prejudice and preconception are difficult things to set aside, particularly after so many years of negative stories and sordid rumor, but I think readers here will discover an alternative and convincing look at the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. I am sure they would approve and perhaps, just perhaps, the future may be a little bit kinder to Edward and Wallis because of the efforts of people like Ms. Martínez.” -Greg King, author of The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson

Meat Rack Boy


Michael Tarraga - 2019
    She left him there the day he was born, with his twin brother. She also abandoned their two year old sister. This is a story of what happened next and how a child without a family can be exploited, abused and sold. Michael was continually anally raped for half a crown, sold out by Bob and Ivy Woods who he had to call Mum and Dad. Michael is now 70 years old and dying from COPD. Keen for his story to be told before he leaves this world - so that he and others can one day get peace and justice, but more importantly that this kind of horrific sexual abuse, happens to no other child. "I don’t want money, I want my story to be told. I need my story to be told before I die. " Michael Tarraga. All the proceeds of the book will be spent on helping other survivors like Michael, finally have a chance to tell their story and get it heard.

War and Peace


Ricky Hatton - 2013
    Gasping for breath, down and out, it was then that something extraordinary happened: 20,000 fans began to sing his name. Ricky Hatton: War and Peace is the story of one of British boxing’s true icons. From a Manchester council estate to the lights of Las Vegas, Ricky Hatton experienced incredible highs in his career, including one of the greatest ever wins by a British boxer, over the IBF Light Welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu. But heavy defeats to two legends of the ring, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, brought him quickly down to earth to face a new set of battles against depression, drink and drugs.Through it all, however, Ricky Hatton has remained the same charismatic, genuinely funny, eloquent man – a man who boxing fans have always taken to their heart. A man who has survived a lifetime of wars both in and out of the ring, and who in defeat has finally found something close to peace.

Andy Murray, Champion: The Full Extraordinary Story


Mark Hodgkinson - 2012
    After four previous defeats in Grand Slam finals, Murray had finally achieved what no British man had managed since the 1930s. But the story of how he got there was just as compelling as the final itself, with as many twists and turns along the way. Writer Mark Hodgkinson has been covering that story since the start - he was actually the first person to interview Murray for a national newspaper back in 2004, and has worked closely with Judy Murray in the past. In Andy Murray: Champion, Hodgkinson explains how Murray first emerged as a tennis player of true quality, and how his rivalry with his brother Jamie spurred him on. He looks at the close relationship Murray has with his mother, and the various coaches who haved worked with him to assess their influence on his game. In a hugely competitive era of tennis, with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic all counted to be among the greatest tennis players of all time, Murray has earned the right to be ranked alongside them all - and this book explains how and why he has done so, becoming a true national sporting icon in the process.

Absolutely Foxed


Graeme Fowler - 2016
    Suddenly one of the most active men you'd ever meet couldn't even get up off the sofa to make a cup of tea. In Absolutely Foxed, a cricket memoir like no other, Fowler takes the reader on a vivid ride, with riotous stories of life on England tours, partying with Ian Botham and Elton John, combined with a moving account of his battle with mental-health issues. A hugely influential coach, and one of the most original thinkers about the game, Fowler looks back over his 40 years in the professional game, including his 16 years on the county circuit with Lancashire and Durham, and his three years as an England international - a period that was cut short by a life-threatening injury. He followed that with a spell working on Test Match Special, before running the Durham Centre of Excellence for 18 years. In his Foreword, lifelong friend Sir Ian Botham describes Fowler as 'one of the gutsiest I ever encountered', but also points out how he 'made a dressing room tick'. Those elements of courage, knowledge and humour are all present in Absolutely Foxed - a truly unmissable read.

Stay With Me, Rhys: The heartbreaking story of Rhys Jones, by his mother. As seen on ITV’s new documentary Police Tapes


Mel Jones - 2018
    ‘Please stay with me. I love you.’ There was still no expression in his eyes. I was talking and talking to him, desperate to let him know I was there, but there was no flicker in his face. In hindsight, it was like he’d already gone. It's a Wednesday evening in Liverpool in the summer holidays, and Melanie is expecting her Everton-mad eleven-year-old son back from football practice very soon. She turns on Coronation Street and sets about stripping the wallpaper off the walls in the lounge, which is long-overdue a makeover. Suddenly she receives a frantic knock at the door. Rhys has been shot on his way home.From that fateful day when Melanie cradled her child as he lay dying, repeating to him ‘Stay with Me, Rhys’, to the day in court when his killers were finally sent down, this is a story of a family in trauma, of a community united behind them and of how a notorious local gang who terrorised the neighbourhood was brought to justice.In 2017, more than 7 million people watched the drama unfold in the highly-acclaimed ITV series Little Boy Blue. And now Melanie Jones tells the family's unbelievable story for the first time.Melanie, her husband Steve and Rhys’s brother Owen have been through unimaginable pain. The grief doesn’t go away, but the strength they’ve found within it is an inspiration.

Underneath the Southern Cross


Michael Hussey - 2013
    This is THE cricket biography of 2013. Michael Hussey's huge popularity does not rest solely on his incredible playing record. Popularly known as Mr Cricket, he made his Test debut against the West Indies in Brisbane in November 2005, and has scored 6,183 Test runs over 78 Tests in his career. But to his fans, it is the way he plays the game rather than simply the sum of his achievements that marks him out as one of the best-loved cricketers of his generation. He is a middle-order maestro with a batting average of 51.52, but he has always played cricket with an integrity and sense of values that is the epitome of what cricket stands for. His autobiography takes you behind the scenes to his world of cricket. From his lengthy struggle to break into the Australian side, through to his masterly achievements in the Australian team, in ODI and Indian Premier League - this book follows his extraordinary cricket career., with plenty of surprisingly frank admissions & behind the scenes dramas.

Made in Reality


Stephanie Pratt - 2015
    In Made in Reality, Stephanie gives an exclusive insight into the trials and tribulations of life on reality TV, taking us behind the scenes of The Hills, Made in Chelsea and even the Big Brother House. Nothing is off-limits, from the drama of her relationship with Spencer Matthews, to her issues with her brother Spencer Pratt. But there is more to Stephanie than the glamour of Beverly Hills and the Kings Road. For the first time, she shares her struggles with drug addiction, eating disorders, and the pressures of fame in the internet age.Inspiring, fascinating, and insightful throughout, this is an honest account of the truth behind reality.

Change Up: How to Make the Great Game of Baseball Even Better


Buck Martinez - 2016
    Currently the play-by-play announcer for the Toronto Blue Jays, Martinez has witnessed enormous change in the game he loves, as it has morphed from a grassroots pastime to big business. Not all of the change has been for the better, and today’s fans struggle to connect to their on-the-field heroes as loyalty to club and player wavers and free agency constantly changes the face of every team’s roster.In Change Up, Martinez offers his unique insights into how Major League Baseball might reconnect with its fanbase, how the clubs might train and prepare their players for their time in “The Show,” and how players might approach the sport in a time of sagging fan interest. Martinez isn’t shy with his opinions, whether they be on pitch count, how to develop players through the minor-league system, and even if there should be a minor-league system at all. Always entertaining, ever insightful, Martinez shares brilliant insights and inside pitches about summer’s favourite game.