Showing titles in Olympics & Paralympics

Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. Most famously, he won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, he was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind.

On January 26, 1996, Dave Schultz, Olympic gold medal winner and wrestling golden boy, was shot three times by du Pont family heir John E. du Pont at the famed Foxcatcher Farms estate in Pennsylvania. Following the murder, there was a tense standoff when du Pont barricaded himself in his home for two days before he was finally captured. Foxcatcher is gold medal winner Mark Schultz's memoir, revealing what made him and his brother champion and what brought them to Foxcatcher Farms.

By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting - a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.

In this poignant and uplifting memoir, Dancing with the Stars sensation Amy Purdy reveals the story of how losing her legs led her to find a spiritual path. When the Las Vegas native was just nineteen, she came down with bacterial meningitis and was given less than a two percent chance of survival. In a near-death experience, she saw three figures who told her: “You can come with us, or you can stay. No matter what happens in your life, it's all going to make sense in the end." In that moment, Amy chose to live.

When young Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini realized her boat's engine shut down as she was traveling from Syria to Greece with other refugees, there was no hesitation: She dove into the water. This bold act of bravery saved the lives of a boatload of refugees heading to Turkey from Syria.

In this exhilarating memoir, three-time World Champion and Olympic gold-medalist Nathan Chen tells the story of his remarkable journey to success, reflecting on his life as a Chinese American figure skater and the joys and challenges he has experienced—including the tremendous sacrifices he and his family made, and the physical and emotional pain he endured.

Half an audiobook on basketball, half an audiobook on management techniques, The Gold Standard captures Coach K's personal style and approach to getting different (and sometimes difficult) people to work hard and succeed in reaching a common goal. "In all forms of leadership, whether you are a coach, a CEO, or a parent, there are four words that, when said, can bring out the best in your team, your employees, and your family...I believe in you. These four words can mean the difference between a fear of failure and the courage to try".

Cast aside by his family at an early age, abandoned and left to fend for himself in the woods of Washington State, young Joe Rantz turns to rowing as a way of escaping his past. What follows is an extraordinary journey, as Joe and eight other working-class boys exchange the sweat and dust of life in 1930s America for the promise of glory at the heart of Hitler's Berlin. Stroke by stroke, a remarkable young man strives to regain his shattered self-regard, to dare again to trust in others–and to find his way back home.

Many people will remember Eric Liddell as the Olympic gold medalist from the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Famously, Liddell would not run on Sunday because of his strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, and so he did not compete in his signature event, the 100 meters, at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He was the greatest sprinter in the world at the time, and his choice not to run was ridiculed by the British Olympic committee, his fellow athletes, and most of the world press.

Oksana Masters, the United States’ most decorated winter Paralympic or Olympic athlete, tells her jaw-dropping story of triumphing over extraordinary Chernobyl disaster-caused physical challenges to create a life that, by example, challenges everyone to push through what is holding them back. This is Oksana’s astonishing story of journeying through a series of dark tunnels—and how, with her mother’s love, she finally found her way into the light. Her message to anyone who doesn’t fit in: you can find a place where you excel—where you have worth.

With its winning mix of gripping narrative and easy-to-implement performance-raising tips, this book has become a best-selling classic. It’s garnered five-star reviews and wide-ranging endorsements - from Sebastian Coe and Dame Kelly Holmes to Lord Digby Jones.

Even today, it’s considered one of the most thrilling races in Olympic history. The hundred-meter sprint final at the 1924 Paris Games, featuring three of the world’s fastest swimmers—American legends Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller, and Japanese upstart Katsuo Takaishi—had the cultural impact of other milestone moments in Olympic history: Jesse Owens’s podiums in Berlin and John Carlos’s raised, black-gloved fist in Mexico City. Never before had an Olympic swimming final prominently featured athletes of different races, and never had it been broadcast live.

It started with a kiss. In 1955, that’s what the best beach volleyball players in the world played for: A kiss from Hollywood star Greta Thyssen. It was a seminal moment for the sport, and the subculture that it soon birthed: Players could ditch the 9-5 work life and instead spend their days on the beach, working odd jobs to make ends meet, doing whatever it took to stay on the sand.

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American, were malnourished and barefoot, and had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields.

Just in time for the 2012 Olympics - prepare to peek into the mind of a champion with this newly updated edition of Michael Phelps’ autobiography, Beneath the Surface. In this candid memoir, Phelps talks openly about his battle with attention deficit disorder, the trauma of his parents’ divorce, and the challenges that come with being thrust into the limelight.

In May 2017, journalist Matt Hart received a USB drive containing a single file—a 4.7-megabyte PDF named “Tic Toc, Tic Toc. . . .” He quickly realized he was in possession of a stolen report prepared a year earlier by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, part of an investigation into legendary running coach Alberto Salazar, an endocrinologist named Dr. Jeffrey Brown, and cheating by Nike-sponsored runners. Combining sports drama and business exposé, Win at All Costs tells the full story of Nike’s running program, uncovering a corporate win-at-all-costs culture.

For years the world has followed his progress, from teen sensation in Sydney to bona fide phenom in Athens, and now as a living Olympic legend in Beijing with a peerless record of gold medals, more than any Olympic athlete throughout history. In No Limits, Michael Phelps - the greatest competitor we've seen since Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, or Lance Armstrong - will share with listeners the secrets to his remarkable success, from training to execution.

The first ever memoir from the most decorated female skier of all time, revealing never-before-told stories of her life in the fast lane, her struggle with depression, and the bold decisions that helped her break down barriers on and off the slopes.

It is late summer 2013. Ben Ryan, a red-haired, 40-something, spectacle-wearing Englishman, is given 20 minutes to decide whether he wants to coach Fiji's rugby sevens team, with the aim of taking them to the nation's first-ever Olympic medal. He has never been to Fiji. There has been no discussion of contracts or salary. But he knows that no one plays rugby like the men from these isolated Pacific islands, just as no one plays football like the kids from the Brazilian favelas, or no one runs as fast as the boys and girls from Jamaica's boondocks.

Con orígenes en la Depresión norteamericana y a pocos años de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Daniel James Brown narra la epopeya del equipo de ocho remeros y su timonel de la Universidad de Washington, y su épica misión de ganar la medalla de oro en 1936 en los Juegos Olímpicos del Berlín de Hitler. El equipo de remo estadounidense que sorprendió al mundo y que transformó este deporte atrajo la atención de millones de personas.