An often controversial figure, Jerry 'The King' Lawler has been at the top of his profession both as a wrestler and most recently as a commentator for over 30 years. Holder of more than 90 regional or national titles over the course of his career, he is as well known for his feuds, both in and out of the ring, as he is for his achievements and his expertise. No stranger to the airwaves, he has hosted his own show both on radio and on television, and he is also a successful commercial artist whose work can be seen on several sites around his home city of Memphis. Outside the WWE arena perhaps his most famous dispute was with actor and comedian Andy Kaufman, a long-running conflict that at one point put Kaufman in hospital and culminated in a televised brawl on 'Late Night With David Letterman'. Now in a no-holds barred autobiography 'The King' is prepared to tell all both about his sometimes stormy career and about the backstage secrets of the WWE.

    Fox: Actor. Husband. Father. Activist. But readers of Always Looking Up will soon add another to the list: Optimist. Michael writes about the hard-won perspective that helped him see challenges as opportunities. Instead of building walls around himself, he developed a personal policy of engagement and discovery: an emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual outlook that has served him throughout his struggle with Parkinson's disease. Michael's exit from a very demanding, very public arena offered him the time-and the inspiration-to open up new doors leading to unexpected places. One door even led him to the center of his own family, the greatest destination of all. The last ten years, which is really the stuff of this book, began with such a loss: my retirement from Spin City. I found myself struggling with a strange new dynamic: the shifting of public and private personas. I had been Mike the actor, then Mike the actor with PD. Now was I just Mike with PD Parkinson's had consumed my career and, in a sense, had become my career. But where did all of this leave Me? I had to build a new life when I was already pretty happy with the old one. .Always Looking Up is a memoir of this last decade, told through the critical themes of Michael's life: work, politics, faith, and family. The book is a journey of self-discovery and reinvention, and a testament to the consolations that protect him from the ravages of Parkinson's.With the humor and wit that captivated fans of his first book, Lucky Man, Michael describes how he became a happier, more satisfied person by recognizing the gifts of everyday life.

    But there is more to Chloe than viewers see on the TV, and the drama doesn’t stop when the camera stops rolling. Just two years ago, Chloe was a single mother struggling to make ends meet doing a string of jobs she hated and wondering if she would ever find happiness. Since joining the cast of The Only Way Is Essex, her life is now a whirlwind of glitzy parties and jet-set holidays, but life hasn’t always dealt Chloe a good hand. Her story is one of triumph over adversity, with plenty of laughs along the way. From her turbulent childhood where she was raised by a neighbor after her mother abandoned her, to battling with bullies and struggling with an eating disorder, to the magical moment when she met the man of her dreams.

    He was a below-average student with a lackluster work ethic and a bad attitude, who hung with the wrong crowd and made a lot of bad choices. He was a kid whose life was headed for disaster—until a local coach took interest in him, suggested that he take up amateur wrestling, and offered to work with him if he promised to stay out of trouble.It was in North Dakota that Bob Backlund had the first of several chance encounters that would shape his destiny. While working out at the YMCA gymnasium in Fargo, North Dakota, where he wrestled for North Dakota State, Backlund met a well-known professional wrestler, “Superstar” Billy Graham. The men talked, and at Graham’s suggestion, Backlund was inspired to pursue a career in professional wrestling.Less than five years from that day, on February 20, 1978, Backlund would find himself halfway across the country, standing in the middle of the ring at Madison Square Garden with his hand raised in victory as the newly crowned World Wide Wrestling Federation Heavyweight Champion. The man Backlund pinned for the championship that night was none other than Superstar Billy Graham.Featuring contributions from Bruno Sammartino, Harley Race, Terry Funk, Pat Patterson, Ken Patera, Sergeant Slaughter, The Magnificent Muraco, George “The Animal” Steele, “Mr. USA” Tony Atlas, The Iron Sheik, and many others, this book tells the incredible story of the life and nearly forty-year career of one of the most famous men to ever grace the squared circle.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    In fact, that's exactly what he's done in this book which manages to be simultaneously poignant and funny.

    Now, in a gripping work of narrative nonfiction, acclaimed reporter John Branch tells the shocking story of Boogaard's life and heartbreaking death.  Boy on Ice is the richly told story of a mountain of a man who made it to the absolute pinnacle of his sport. Widely regarded as the toughest man in the NHL, Boogaard was a gentle man off the ice but a merciless fighter on it. With great narrative drive, Branch recounts Boogaard's unlikely journey from lumbering kid playing pond-hockey on the prairies of Saskatchewan, so big his skates would routinely break beneath his feet; to his teenaged junior hockey days, when one brutal outburst of violence brought Boogaard to the attention of professional scouts; to his days and nights as a star enforcer with the Minnesota Wild and the storied New York Rangers, capable of delivering career-ending punches and intimidating entire teams. But, as Branch reveals, behind the scenes Boogaard's injuries and concussions were mounting and his mental state was deteriorating, culminating in his early death from an overdose of alcohol and painkillers.Based on months of investigation and hundreds of interviews with Boogaard's family, friends, teammates, and coaches, Boy on Ice is a brilliant work for fans of Michael Lewis's The Blind Side or Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights. This is a book that raises deep and disturbing questions about the systemic brutality of contact sports—from peewees to professionals—and the damage that reaches far beyond the game.

    Drafted by the Detroit Red Wings as a 19-year-old defenseman out of his native Sweden, Lidstrom spent the next two decades manning the Motor City blueline. During those years he became a Hockeytown legend, amassing a mind-boggling collection of accomplishments and accolades: four Stanley Cups, seven Norris Trophies as the NHL’s best defenseman, a Conn Smythe Trophy, 12 All-Star selections, and gold medals in both the Olympics and World Championships. Off the ice, life appears equally idyllic: Lidstrom is uniformly respected and admired by opponents, observers, and teammates alike, and he and his wife of more than 20 years have four boys who split their time between Sweden and their adopted homeland. Perhaps only one question remains unanswered about the man teammates referred to as the Perfect Human: exactly how did he do it? In Nicklas Lidstrom: The Pursuit of Perfection, the Hall of Fame defenseman and a who’s-who of hockey luminaries investigate and reveal precisely how he made dominating the game he loves appear so effortless. How did an unimposing prospect catch the eye of Red Wings scouts during an era when few Swedes made it to the NHL? What was the secret to his remarkable endurance and longevity, allowing him to miss just 44 games in 20 grueling NHL seasons? And what level of preparation and study was required to transform a man who was not the biggest or fastest at his position into one of the greatest defensemen in hockey history? You’ll find the answers to all of this and more in Nicklas Lidstrom: The Pursuit of Perfection

    By the time I was ten I had discovered the pain of unbearable loss. I had felt joy and jealousy. Most important of all, I knew how to love and how to let myself be loved. All these things I learnt through animals. Horses and dogs were my family and my friends. This is their story as much as it is mine'Clare Balding grew up in a rather unusual household. Her father a champion trainer, she shared her life with more than 100 thoroughbred racehorses, mares, foals and ponies, as well as an ever-present pack of boxers and lurchers. As a toddler she would happily ride the legendary Mill Reef and take breakfast with the Queen.She and her younger brother came very low down the pecking order. Left to their own devices, they had to learn life's toughest lessons through the animals, and through their adventures in the stables and the idyllic Hampshire Downs. From the protective Candy to the pot-bellied Valkyrie and the frisky Hattie, each horse and each dog had their own character and their own special part to play.The running family joke was that "women ain't people". Clare had to prove them wrong, to make her voice heard - but first she had to make sure she had something to say.My Animals and Other Family is a funny, brave, tender story of self- discovery.

    Signed by the Detroit Red Wings at 16, Gordie became a six-time leading scorer, a six-time Hart Trophy winner as the most valuable player, and he surpassed Rocket Richard's NHL goals record to reach an amazing total of 801--unmatched for years until Gretzky finally caught up to his mentor and idol. Gordie also includes a new introduction.

    He was good. Good enough to have been signed by the Boston Bruins. Just not quite good enough to play in the NHL.Until January 18 of that year. O'Ree was finally called up, and when he stepped out onto the ice against the Montreal Canadiens, not only did he fulfil the childhood dream he shared with so many other Canadian kids, he did something that had never been done before.He broke hockey's colour barrier. Just as his hero, Jackie Robinson, had done for baseball.In that pioneering first NHL game, O'Ree proved that no one could stop him from being a hockey player. But he soon learned that he could never be just a hockey player. He would always be a black player, with all that entails. There were ugly name-calling and stick-swinging incidents, and nights when the Bruins had to be escorted to their bus by the police.But O'Ree never backed down. When he retired in 1979, he had played hundreds of games as a pro, and scored hundreds of goals, his boyhood dreams more than accomplished.In 2018, O'Ree was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in recognition not only of that legacy, but of the way he has built on it in the decades since. He has been, for twenty years now, an NHL Executive and has helped the NHL Diversity program expose more than 40,000 boys and girls of diverse backgrounds to unique hockey experiences.Inspiring, frank, and shot through with the kind of understated courage and decency required to change the world, Willie is a story for anyone willing to persevere for a dream.

    Comeback 2.0 is Lance Armstrong’s first-person photo-journal of his 2009 comeback season with the goal to take the LIVESTRONG message around the world..Heavily illustrated with color photos and text , Comeback 2.0 includes an introduction by Lance that frames his decision to return to competitive cycling followed by journal-like entries written through the course of his comeback season beginning with the Tour Down Under, followed by the Tour of California, his spectacular crash in the first stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon race in Spain that resulted in a broken collar bone, the Giro d’Italia, and finally the Tour de France. The journal entries will accompany spectacular four-color photos, that offer breathtaking views of the race stages as well as intimate, behind-the-scenes shots. Renowned sports photographer and photojournalist Elizabeth Kreutz has been granted unparalled access to Lance’s day-to-day world in this, his most triumphant season. .

    He tells the story of his journey from wrestling school in Canada to his time in leagues in Mexico and Japan to his big break in the WCW. He'll dish the dirt on how he worked his way through the ranks alongside major wrestling stars like Chris Benoit and Lance Storm to become a major superstar.

    The forces at play in the decade's battle for hockey supremacy-dazzling speed vs. brute force-are now, for better or worse, part of hockey's DNA. This book is a welcome reappraisal of the ten years that changed how the sport was played and experienced. Informed by first-hand interviews with players and game officials, and sprinkled with sidebars on the art and artifacts that defined Seventies hockey, the book brings dramatically alive hockey's most eventful years.

    In Found, the star of "Paper Moon," TV's "Rescue Me," and the OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) docuseries "Ryan and Tatum: The O'Neals" shares her hard-won insights on recovery, forgiveness, and the healing power of love.

    When he heard that Coach Dick Vermeil was holding open tryouts, he decided to give it a shot. Shocking himself and the coaches, he ran an explosive 40-yard-dash in just 4.5 seconds -- a world-class time -- and was offered a contract on the spot. When he joined the team, Papale became the oldest non-kicking rookie in NFL history, a fan favorite who played for four years and was named a team captain. Invincible is Vince Papale's story, and a tie-in to the Disney Pictures film of the same name starring Mark Wahlberg as Papale and Greg Kinnear as Vermeil. But more than just a tie-in, it tells Papale's story in his own words, covering subjects not included in the film. Like Rudy, Glory Road, and Rookie, it is the true story of an ordinary man who achieves an extraordinary goal.