Book picks similar to
My Life Story: An Autobiography by Joe Louis
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Road Racer: It's in My Blood
Michael Dunlop - 2017
Brother of William, also an accomplished rider, son of the late Robert and nephew of the late great Joey Dunlop, Michael can fairly claim that racing is in his blood. Now for the first time he talks in depth about his family story, how he got involved in the family business and how he manages to keep getting back on his bike despite all he knows of the deadly risks he encounters every time he crosses the start line.The death of his uncle during a competition in Estonia in 2000 was followed just eight years later by the death of his father at the North West 200. But despite these tragic losses Michael was undeterred and, two days after his father's death, he returned to the North West, and won. The next year Michael won his first TT, joining both his father and uncle in the record books.Now with thirteen TT wins to his name Michael is a phenomenal competitor, and in this sensational autobiography he reveals the highs and lows of racing, what it was like growing up part of a motorcycle dynasty and how that made him the incredible racing driver he is today.
Blood, Sweat and McAteer: A Footballer's Story
Jason McAteer - 2016
But for eleven-year-old Jason McAteer, growing up in the shadow of Liverpool FC, football became the dream. After signing with Bolton Wanderers at the age of twenty-one, the call to the international scene followed with the Republic of Ireland and, soon after, to his beloved Liverpool FC. The dream had become a reality. From his time with the Irish World Cup squad of 1994 to those tumultuous days in Saipan in 2002; on through his decision to leave Liverpool for Blackburn Rovers; his move to Sunderland, and the depression he fell into after finishing his professional career with Tranmere Rovers, Jason McAteer looks back with characteristic honesty and humour on his life - the jokes, the matches, and the personalities.This is the real Jason McAteer: a little bit bruised, a little bit battered. But still fighting.
Hard Knocks Soft Spots
Paddy Doherty - 2012
I teach my children to be proud too. Because being a traveller means everything to me. It's not just a label, it goes much deeper. It's an identity that is burned into my heart.Paddy Doherty loves his life as an Irish traveler, but as a child he felt like an outsider. He was different from his siblings. On the rare occasions he went to school, he was bullied. And beyond the gates of the camp he found nothing but hostility. Slowly, Paddy's hurt turned into anger and by the age of 11 he had started out on an illustrious career as a bare-knuckle boxer. This earned him a position as one of the most well-respected (and feared) men in the traveling community. Yet while he won countless brutal fights in the ring, the real battles he faced were very much outside. In this deeply honest autobiography, he tells of how he has loved and lost five children, and plummeted to seven stone while battling depression, drink, and drugs. He describes how it feels to be shot point-blank in the head and the lengths he'll go to to protect his people. Told with all the warmth and humor he is famed for, Paddy's rich and colorful story is one that will stay with you for a long time to come.
Roughy: The Autobiography
Jarryd Roughead - 2020
Lining up alongside some of the greatest to ever play the game, he was a key player in a Hawthorn team that will live on as one of the best of any era.In 2015, when a melanoma was found on his bottom lip, it seemed like only a small setback. The spot was removed and, soon after, Jarryd was back on the ground, helping the Hawks secure their famous three-peat – his fourth premiership. He was newly married, planning a family, and life seemed carefree. Then, during a routine check-up in 2016, a scan showed the melanoma had moved into his lungs. He had cancer.Jarryd was one of the first to receive an immunotherapy treatment that is now saving lives around the world – and ultimately saved his. But the side effects were brutal. Endless days and nights of agony, including nerve damage to his feet that threatened any possible return to footy.What saw Jarryd through was the same resilience, drive and positivity that had turned him into an elite footballer in the first place. Not only did he return to play AFL, he was named captain of Hawthorn. A one-club man, Roughy retired as a legend and an inspiration.
Around the World in 80 Pints: My Search for Cricket's Greatest Places
David Lloyd - 2018
It's all a long way from his childhood, growing up in a terraced house in post-war Accrington, Lancashire. But cricket has taken him all over the globe, and he has experienced everything from excruciating agony Down Under to the Bollywood glamour of the IPL - he's even risked it all to cross the Pennines into Yorkshire. In Around the World in 80 Pints, Bumble relives some of the most exciting and remarkable periods in his life, showing how his travels have opened up new and exciting avenues for him. The book is packed full of brilliant stories from famous Ashes matches and Roses clashes, sharing the commentary box with Ian Botham and Shane Warne, and much else besides - all told in his idiosyncratic style that has won him so many fans the world over. His previous autobiography, Last in the Tin Bath, was a huge bestseller, and this one is sure to appeal to anyone who shares Bumble's unquenchable love for cricket - and life!
Mourinho
José Mourinho - 2014
In the legendary manager's very first book, and in his own images and captions, Jose Mourinho charts the peaks and troughs of the opening fifteen years of what has been a stellar rise to the summit of the global game.Through more than 120 personally selected images (some of which are exclusive to the book), fans will relish an intimate and unmissable opportunity to understand and further appreciate this giant of the sport.
Undisputed Truth
Mike Tyson - 2013
Philosopher, Broadway headliner, fighter, felon—Mike Tyson has defied stereotypes, expectations, and a lot of conventional wisdom during his three decades in the public eye. Bullied as a boy in the toughest, poorest neighborhood in Brooklyn, Tyson grew up to become one of the most thrilling and ferocious boxers of all time—and the youngest heavyweight champion ever. But his brilliance in the ring was often compromised by reckless behavior. Years of hard partying, violent fights, and criminal proceedings took their toll: by 2003, Tyson had hit rock bottom, a convicted felon, completely broke, the punch line to a thousand bad late-night jokes. Yet he fought his way back; the man who once admitted being addicted �to everything” regained his success, his dignity, and the love of his family. With a triumphant one-man stage show, his unforgettable performances in the Hangover films, and his newfound happiness and stability as a father and husband, Tyson’s story is an inspiring American original. Brutally honest, raw, and often hilarious, Tyson chronicles his tumultuous highs and lows in the same sincere, straightforward manner we have come to expect from this legendary athlete. A singular journey from Brooklyn’s ghettos to worldwide fame to notoriety, and, finally, to a tranquil wisdom, Undisputed Truth is not only a great sports memoir but an autobiography for the ages.
This Is The One: Sir Alex Ferguson - The Uncut Story Of A Football Genius
Daniel Taylor - 2007
A year earlier his managerial career had reached its nadir amid speculation he would be forced out of Old Trafford. He was taken to the limit over the Roy Keane scandal, his volatile relationship with the media, the political fallout of Malcolm Glazer's takeover and a miserable six-month run in which the team were humbled in Europe, embarrassed by the Conference side Burton Albion and barracked by their own fans. Ferguson, it is claimed, came close to quitting. But the great man has used his inimitable managing skills and bloody-minded determination to turn it around yet again and remind everyone he is still the most formidable manager in the business.Written over the course of two hugely eventful, diverse and controversial seasons, "This Is The One" offers a unique, warts-and-all portrait of Ferguson from a privileged behind-the-scenes position. As a football writer for the Guardian, Daniel Taylor has been there from day one and seen every side of Ferguson, from the flint-faced authoritarian to the kind, quick-witted man with the heart the size of the Old Trafford trophy room. Entertaining, revelatory, sometimes shocking but always affectionate, this is the close-up look at one of the most talked-about figures in sport, in good times and bad, and culminating in the glory of his ninth tittle win.
Eddie Olczyk: Beating the Odds in Hockey and in Life
Eddie Olczyk - 2019
Against all odds, he played on the 1984 U.S. Olympic hockey team as a 17-year-old, and four months later he was drafted in the first round by his hometown Chicago Blackhawks. During an illustrious 16-year career, he played for and alongside some of the greatest franchises and players in history, winning a Stanley Cup with the unforgettable 1994 New York Rangers. Years later, he coached former teammate Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby on the Pittsburgh Penguins before transitioning into the broadcast booth, where he has become one of the most recognizable voices of the sport. He then combined his skills as an analyst with his second passion— horse racing—and became an integral part of NBC’s coverage of thoroughbreds. Away from the spotlight, Olczyk and his wife of three decades raised four adoring children. He was respected and admired by fans, friends, and peers. Life was sweet. Then, at 7:07 pm on August 4, 2017, his entire world turned upside down. In Eddie Olczyk: Beating the Odds in Hockey and in Life, one of the biggest names in American hockey has written an inspiring and entertaining memoir of his life both on and off the ice. From shooting hundreds of tennis balls at a goal in his childhood living room to the ups and downs of his improbable hockey career to rollicking stories from the booth and the backstretch, Olczyk guides readers on his journey toward his ultimate test: a battle against Stage 3 colon cancer. For years, Olczyk’s goal was to be the best husband, father, broadcaster, and handicapper he could be. Today he has a new one: to bring as much awareness and support to those fighting cancer as he possibly can. In this emotional but often hilarious autobiography, you’ll learn why the people who know Eddie Olczyk best might describe him as “tremendously tremendous.”
12 Years a Slave and the Emancipation Proclamation
Solomon Northup - 2013
He provided details of slave markets in Washington, DC, as well as describing at length cotton cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana.President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
The Greatest Game
Duncan Hamilton - 2010
Twenty20 and the Indian Premier League, seen as a short cut to riches by both players and administrators, threaten the future of Test cricket; the County Championship, the traditional—but increasingly moribund—nursery for England's Test players, struggles to reinvent itself; technology is eroding the authority of umpires. The age-old weave of the game is being slowly unpicked and rearranged for the modern, global age. 2009 may even be the last summer of cricket as we know it. Against this backdrop Duncan Hamilton embarks on an elegiac odyssey in which he aims to capture the spirit and atmosphere of English cricket before its character is irrevocably altered. The stopping-points of his journey—and the framework on which he hangs his thoughts and observations—are 14 significant cricket matches played over the course of the 2009 season: from an Ashes Test match to a game of village cricket, from a brash Twenty20 encounter attended by thousands to a sleepy county game watched by five pensioners and a dog. He not only explores such issues as the future of the County Championship and the financial pressures faced by the wider game, but also creates vivid sketches of players, umpires, administrators, and the people who pay (and even suffer) to watch cricket. Combining reportage, anecdote, biography, history and personal recollection, The Greatest Game is an honest and passionate reflection on cricket's past, present, and future. A memorable and acutely observed portrait of one summer of cricket from an award-winning sports writer who has watched—and loved—cricket since he was a boy, it is essential reading for anyone who cares about the English game.
Wrestling Observer's Tributes: Remembering Some of the World's Greatest Wrestlers
Dave Meltzer - 2001
Book by Meltzer, Dave
The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway's Ghost in the Last Days of Castro's Cuba
Brin-Jonathan Butler - 2015
This book is the culmination of Butler's decade spent in the trenches of Havana, trying to understand a culture perplexing to Westerners: one whose elite athletes regularly forgo multimillion-dollar opportunities to stay in Cuba and box for their country, while living in penury. Butler's fascination with this distinctly Cuban idealism sets him off on a remarkable journey, training with, befriending, and interviewing the champion boxers that Cuba seems to produce more than any other country. In the process, though, Butler gets to know the landscape of the exhilaratingly warm Cuban culture—and starts to question where he feels most at home. In the tradition of Michael Lewis and John Jeremiah Sullivan, Butler is a keen and humane storyteller, and the perfect guide for this riotous tour through the streets of Havana.
Harry the K: The Remarkable Life of Harry Kalas
Randy Miller - 2010
To millions of football fans across America, he was the “Voice of the NFL.” And as open and giving as Harry Kalas was throughout his professional and personal life, there are countless layers of the man that have remained unknown . . . until now. Author Randy Miller interviewed more than 160 people—including all of Harry’s surviving family, many of his close friends from childhood to present, numerous colleagues from baseball and the NFL, and even Harry’s longtime personal psychologist—to craft a loving and shockingly honest portrayal of one of the most celebrated broadcasters in the history of sports. With incredible details from all phases of his life—from his upbringing in the Chicago suburbs, to his Hall of Fame broadcasting career in baseball, to his ubiquitous voiceover work with the NFL, to his personal vices for drinking and women, to his legendary friendship with Richie “Whitey” Ashburn, to his ongoing feud with on-air partner Chris Wheeler—
Harry the K: The Remarkable Life of Harry Kalas
will surprise, delight, and enlighten all fans of the man they called “Harry the K.”
The Eternal Summer: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Hogan in 1960, Golf's Golden Year
Curt Sampson - 1992
Here was Arnold Palmer, the workingman's hero, "sweating, chain-smoking, shirt-tail flying"; Ben Hogan, the greatest player of the fifties, a perfectionist battling twin demons of age and nerves; and, making his big-time debut, a crew-cut college kid who seemed to have the makings of a champion: twenty-year-old Jack Nicklaus. And of course, the rest: Ken Venturi, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Doug Sanders, Gary Player, and the many other colorful characters who chased around a little white ball--and a dream. Would Palmer win the mythical Grand Slam of golf? Could Hogan win one more major tournament? Was Nicklaus the real thing? Even more than an intimate portrait of these men and their exciting times, The Eternal Summer is also an entertaining, perceptive, and hypnotically readable exploration of professional golf in America.