and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby memorized hundreds of chess books in several languages, and he was only 13 when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history.   But his strange behavior started early.  In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition.  It was merely a prelude to what was to come. Arriving back in the United States to a hero’s welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he went—a figure as exotic and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced.  No player of a mere “board game” had ever ascended to such heights.  Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 million—but Bobby demurred.  Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature.   After years of poverty and a stint living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, Bobby remerged in 1992 to play Spassky in a multi-million dollar rematch—but the experience only deepened a paranoia that had formed years earlier when he came to believe that the Soviets wanted him dead for taking away “their” title.  When the dust settled, Bobby was a wanted man—transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U.S. sanctions.  Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, and wearing a long leather coat to ward off knife attacks, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugitive – one drawn increasingly to the bizarre.  Mafiosi, Nazis, odd attempts to breed an heir who could perpetuate his chess-genius DNA—all are woven into his late-life tapestry.  And yet, as Brady shows, the most notable irony of Bobby Fischer’s strange descent – which had reached full plummet by 2005 when he turned down yet another multi-million dollar payday—is that despite his incomprehensible behavior, there were many who remained fiercely loyal to him.  Why that was so is at least partly the subject of this book—one that at last answers the question: “Who was Bobby Fischer?”

    This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

    It is the tale of a civil war that dragged Britain's most successful football club to its knees, through the High Court and almost into administration.Players Stephen Gerrard and Jamie Carragher tell of their anger at the broken promises, as well as their pain at watching loyal fans in open revolt. Manager chief executive, board members, leading fans and journalists reveal the torment at a revered sporting institution run by two men at war with each other, who trampled Liverpool's cherished traditions into the gutter. No story sums up the naked greed at the heart of modern football quite like Hicks' and Gillett's attempt to turn a buck at Liverpool. No-one has had as much access to the truth, or tells it with as much passion, wit and insight as Brian Reade. 'An epic Swindle' is the riveting story of how close one of the great football clubs came to financial implosion.

    And lost a lot.One afternoon he added up how much he had squandered during the course of his professional career. It made for uncomfortable reading...Manchester United £60,000Newcastle United £1,102,000Blackburn Rovers £3,510,000Leicester City £1,050,000Sheffield United £670,000Bradford City £15,000 Glentoran £43,875Total (plus extras) £7,215,875That day seemed a world away from 1993 when he burst on to the scene as a fresh-faced young star with Manchester United. A dark-haired lad from the streets of Northern Ireland with a God-given talent, he was dubbed the new George Best.One of the famous Fergie fledglings, he made his debut aged just 17 before moving on to Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle where he came so close to landing a Premiership title winner’s medal. International caps piled up too. It was a thrilling adventure. Flying down the wing and sharing pitches and dressing rooms with legends, but behind the success and glamour, it was a different story.Like Best, Gillespie had a talent for self-destruction. He liked a drink and there were women but they weren’t causing a big problem – it was keeping hold of the millions he had earned from the game that ultimately proved his downfall.It wasn’t just about gambling. A nightmare ordeal during a training break in La Manga landed him in jail for a crime he did not commit. Then, in 2010, Gillespie became headline news again when a series of flawed business deals saw him declared bankrupt.How Not To Be A Football Millionaire is one of the most honest autobiographies you will read, about a player who lived the football life to the full.It tells a fascinating and moving human story of the darker side of the glory game. About winning and losing, fortune and fate, hope and heartache... About having the world at your feet and being left to ask yourself: ‘Where did it all go wrong?

    Whether it is a manager being sacked, the signing of a new star player, television rights negotiations, player misconduct or multi-million-pound club takeovers, lawyers remain at the heart of all football business dealings. Written by leading Premier League lawyer Daniel Geey, who has dealt with all these incidents first hand, this highly accessible book explores the issues - from pitch to boardroom - that shape the modern game and how these impact leagues, clubs, players and fans.Featuring insider anecdotes and expert contributions, Done Deal provides football fans with a fresh and authoritative perspective on all off-field football matters.

    More than just Pelé and the New York Cosmos, it lured the biggest names of the world game like Johan Cruyff, Franz Beckenbauer, Eusebio, Gerd Müller and George Best to play the sport as it was meant to be played-without inhibition, to please the fans.The first complete look at the ambitious, star-studded NASL, Rock 'n' Roll Soccer reveals how this precursor to modern soccer laid the foundations for the sport's tremendous popularity in America today. Bringing to life the color and chaos of an unfairly maligned league, soccer journalist Ian Plenderleith draws from research and interviews with the men who were there to reveal the madness of its marketing, the wild expectations of businessmen and corporations hoping to make a killing out of the next big thing, and the insanity of franchises in scorching cities like Las Vegas and Hawaii. That's not to mention the league's on-running fight with FIFA as the trailblazing North American continent battled to innovate, surprise, and sell soccer to a whole new world.As entertaining and raucous as the league itself, Rock 'n' Roll Soccer recounts the hype and chaos surrounding the rapid rise and cataclysmic fall of the NASL, an enterprising and groundbreaking league that did too much right to ignore.

    At twenty, she graduated, the women’s professional soccer league folded, and her career was over. In Finding the Game, Oxenham, along with her boyfriend and two friends, chases the part of the game that outlasts a career. They bribe their way into a Bolivian prison, bet shillings on a game with moonshine brewers in Kenya, play with women in hijab on a court in Tehran—and discover what the world looks like when you wander down side streets, holding on to a ball. An entertaining, heartfelt look at the soul of a sport, this book is proof that on the field and in life, some things need no translation.

    Escobar's criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage in a reign of terror that would only end with his death. In an intense, up-close account, award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes details never before revealed about the U.S.-led covert sixteen-month manhunt. With unprecedented access to important players including Colombian president Cisar Gaviria and the incorruptible head of the special police unit that pursued Escobar, Colonel Hugo Martinez-as well as top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden has produced a gripping narrative that is a stark portrayal of rough justice in the real world."

    The consequences have shaken the leaders of nations worldwide. This is the inside story of Snowden's deeds and the journalists who faced down pressure from the US and UK governments to break a remarkable scoop.From the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Hawaii, carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of secret-spilling in Hong Kong and his battle for asylum, Snowden's story reads like a globe-trotting thriller.

    This is the book that changed the way the world viewed Michael Jordan, while delivering nonstop excitement, tension, and thrills. The Jordan Rules chronicles the season that changed everything for Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. After losing in the playoffs to the “Bad Boys” Detroit Pistons for three consecutive years, the Bulls finally broke through and swept the Pistons in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals, on the way to their first NBA championship. Celebrated sportswriter Sam Smith was there for the entire ride. He reveals a candid and provocative picture of Michael Jordan during the season in which his legacy began to be defined, and seeks to figure out what drove him. The Jordan Rules covers everything from his stormy relationships with his coaches and teammates and power struggles with management—including verbal attacks on general manager Jerry Krause and tantrums against coach Phil Jackson—to Jordan’s obsessions with becoming the leading scorer, and his refusal to pass the ball in the crucial minutes of big games. Jordan’s teammates also tell their side of the story, from Scottie Pippen, to Horace Grant, to Bill Cartwright. And Phil Jackson—the former flower child who blossomed into one of the NBA’s top motivators and finally found a way to coax Jordan and the Bulls to their first title—is studied up close. “Smith takes us into the locker room, aboard the team plane and team bus, and seats us on the bench during games. Sometimes, books reflecting on a team’s success don’t reach the personal level with the people who made it happen: The Jordan Rules does” (Associated Press). Discover the team behind the man, and the man behind the living legend, in this intense, fascinating inside story of the incomparable Michael Jordan.

    She delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject.

    These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans, forming a growing community of nomads.Nomadland tells a revelatory tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one which foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, it celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, but have not given up hope.

    At 42, many would say he's done that - probably including Mourinho, who has called himself the Special One. From translator and assistant to Sir Bobby Robson at Barcelona, to Champions League-winning manager at Porto and on to (potentially) Europe's most successful football club at Chelsea, Jose Mourinho's ascent has been rapid. Backed by Abramovich's billions, Mourinho has weeded out those not fully committed to his methods, has made several astute signings and has improved the game of many Chelsea stars. The result: in his first season, Chelsea won both the Premier League title and the Carling Cup. Patrick Barclay, award-winning football correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, has written an intelligent, analytical and concise account of the psychology of Mourinho. To develop this portrait, he has interviewed those who have worked with him, such as Sir Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal, as well as the players who provide a revealing insight into what has made Mourinho the most successful manager in the world at the moment.

    Throughout his playing career, he was synonymous with Total Football, a style of play in which every player could play in any position on the pitch. Today, his philosophy lives on in teams across Europe, from Barcelona to Bayern Munich and players from Lionel Messi to Cesc Fabregas. My Turn tells the story of Cruyff's life starting at Ajax, where he won eight national titles and three European Cups before moving to Barcelona where he won La Liga in his first season, in 1973, and was named European Footballer of the Year. He won the Ballon d'Or three times, and led the Dutch national team to the final of the 1974 World Cup, famously losing to West Germany, and receiving the Golden Ball as the player of the tournament. While on the field Cruyff was in total control, off the field his life was more turbulent with a kidnapping attempt and bankruptcy. After retiring in 1984, he became a hugely successful manager of Ajax and then Barcelona when he won the Champions league with a young Pep Guardiola in his team. In 1999 Cruyff was voted European Player of the Century, and came second behind Pele in the World Player of the Century poll. In March 2016 Cruyff died after a short battle with lung cancer bringing world football to a standstill in an outpouring of emotions. A brilliant teacher and analyst of the game he love, My Turn is Johan Cruyff's legacy.

    No other was so emblematic of the era during which he flourished. And no other will ever be as memorable as George Best. On the field Best's skills were sublime and almost other-worldly. Off it, he had a magnetic appeal. He was treated like a pop icon and a pin-up; a fashion-model and a sex-symbol. Every man envied him and every woman adored him. To mark the 50th anniversary of his debut for Manchester United, Duncan Hamilton examines Best's crowded life and premature death. But most importantly, Hamilton presents Best at his glorious peak - the precocious goals, the labyrinthine runs, the poise and balletic balance and the body swerves. This is George Best: footballing immortal.