Women Sport Memoir

Lauren Fleshman has grown up in the world of running. One of the most decorated collegiate athletes of all time and a national champion as a pro, she was a major face of women’s running for Nike before leaving to shake up the industry with feminist running brand Oiselle and now coaches elite young female runners. Every step of the way, she has seen the way that our sports systems—originally designed by men, for men and boys—fail young women and girls as much as empower them. Written with heart and verve, Good for a Girl is a joyful love letter to the running life.

Caitlin Clark arrived as a sports and cultural icon a little more than fifty years after the passage of Title IX, the 1972 law that opened the floodgates for girls and women to play sports in America. On Her Game is a sports story, certainly, but it’s also the story of a nation falling in love with what it has created because of that law—millions of new athletes, led by the magical Caitlin Clark.

In 2006, Kit DesLauriers made history by becoming the first person to climb - and then ski - from the summit of each continent's highest mountain, the famed Seven Summits. Centered on this quest, Higher Love represents a hero's journey, rich with personal insights, life-threatening consequences, and a thrilling crescendo. Spanning seven continents in just two years, this deeply personal memoir recounts Kit's initially secret journey that would change her life forever.

After graduating from college, Jennifer isn't sure what she wants to do with her life. She is drawn to the Appalachian Trail, a 2,175-mile footpath that stretches from Georgia to Maine. Though her friends and family think she's crazy, she sets out alone to hike the trail, hoping it will give her time to think about what she wants to do next. The next four months are the most physically and emotionally challenging of her life.

Few people know the answers better than Emma Hayes. As the coach of Chelsea FC Women, she has led the club to 14 major trophies. She is a widely celebrated figure in sports media as a woman starting to get equal recognition in this space, and has been named TV pundit of the year by both Broadcast Magazine and the Sports Journalists Association. In this book, Emma shares her experience of managing a high-performance football team to draw out life lessons and techniques that listeners can apply to their own professional and personal circumstances.

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

A three-time Olympic Gold medalist, six-time WNBA All-Star, and the first person to win the Naismith College Player of the Year award as both a player and coach, Staley has shattered expectations at every level of the game. While her name resonates with both longtime WNBA fans and newcomers, she has kept her personal life private. UncommonFavor reveals the journey that led to Staley’s success, including the challenges she faced.

Lissa Bachner was born with a passion for horses and won her first blue ribbon at age five. Other awards would follow as a young rider, and for years Lissa trained with jumpers, tackling more difficult leaps, and working to perfect her ride. When blindness struck in her teens, it appeared her passion for riding would come to an end. How could she jump hurdles when she could barely navigate through her own home? But success, trust, and love came to Lissa when her trainer convinced her to buy a "diamond in the rough" from Germany.

In early 2018, Larry Nassar, the former doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, was sentenced to serve out the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty to a variety of sex crimes. New York Times best-selling author Mary Pilon and Carla Correa chronicle the scandal from its inception, tracking the institutions that Nassar hid behind, the athletic culture that he benefited from, and the women who eventually brought him to justice.

A new edition of a sports icon's memoir, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Kathrine Switzer's historic running of the Boston Marathon as the first woman to run. In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to officially run what was then the all-male Boston Marathon, infuriating one of the event's directors who attempted to violently eject her. In one of the most iconic sports moments, Switzer escaped and finished the race. She made history - and is poised to do it again on the 50th anniversary of that initial race, when she will run the 2017 Boston Marathon at age 70.

Honest, relatable, and raw, every listener will connect with Sally’s story and see how they too can overcome even the most difficult situations in life and sport. Choose Strong is a story for everyone from every age and walk of life looking to live their strongest life.

By age twenty, at the height of the Jazz Age, Trudy Ederle was the most accomplished swimmer in the world. She’d won Olympic gold and set a host of world records. But the greatest challenge remained: the English Channel. Only a few swimmers, none of them women, had ever made the treacherous twenty-one mile crossing. Trudy’s failed first attempt seemed to confirm what many naysayers believed: No woman could possibly accomplish such a thing. In 1926, Ederle proved them wrong.

When Des woke up on April 16, 2018, the morning of the Boston Marathon, it was 39 degrees and raining, with high, gusty winds. The weather didn’t bother her. In fact, she thought it might be a blessing. She was far from peak form—recovering from illness and questioning her running future—and didn’t expect much of herself that day. But as she ticked off mile after mile in the brutal conditions, passing familiar landmarks on the course she knew and loved, something shifted. Opportunity unexpectedly presented itself. Des tapped into her inner strength and found a reason to race.

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.

In 2015, the US Women's National Soccer Team won its first FIFA championship in 16 years, culminating in an epic final game that electrified soccer fans around the world. It featured a gutsy, brilliant performance by team captain and midfielder Carli Lloyd, who made history that day, scoring a hat trick - three goals in one game - during the first 16 minutes. But there was a time when Carli almost quit the sport. In 2003 she was struggling, her soccer career at a crossroads.

Megan Rapinoe, Olympic gold medalist and two-time Women's World Cup champion, reveals for the first time her life both on and off the field. Guided by her personal journey into social justice, brimming with humor, humanity, and joy, she urges all of us to ask ourselves, What will you do with your one life?

Saraya-Jade Bevis, formerly WWE’s Paige, is one of the biggest names in the wrestling world. She is the youngest two-time WWE Divas Champion and was inaugural NXT’s Women Champion. She ranked first in Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Female 50 and was named Diva of the Year by Rolling Stone in 2014. She was also the subject of the critically and commercially successful 2019 film Fighting with My Family, produced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and starring Florence Pugh. But before ascending to wrestling superstardom, she was just Saraya. Hell in Boots is Saraya’s real, uncensored, story.

Keira D’Amato was an all-American runner who used to chase success. But after being injured in her early twenties, she assumed her running career was over, and settled into life as a military spouse and mother of two young children. In her early thirties, she found herself overweight, out of shape, and battling postpartum depression. She knew that improving her fitness would make her feel better, and told herself to just get out and run ninety seconds, down her street and back.

Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history and best-selling author of Reach for the Summitt and Raise the Roof, tells for the first time her remarkable story of victory and resilience as well as facing down her greatest challenge: early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Pat Summitt was only 21 when she became head coach of the Tennessee Vols women's basketball team. For 38 years, she has broken records, winning more games than any NCAA team in basketball history.

Veteran ski journalist and former ski bum Heather Hansman takes listeners on an exhilarating journey into the hidden history of American skiing, offering a glimpse into an underexplored subculture from the perspective of a true insider. Hopping from Vermont to Colorado, Montana to West Virginia, Hansman profiles the people who have built their lives around a cold-weather obsession. Along the way she reckons with skiing's problematic elements and investigates how the sport is evolving in the face of the existential threat of climate change.