The Perilous Fight

By: Colin Kaepernick

Narrated by: Colin Kaepernick

A defining and uncompromising memoir from Super Bowl quarterback and renowned civil rights activist, Colin Kaepernick.

“A candid, observant, generous chronicle of his development as an elite, suddenly dispensable NFL quarterback and also of the relentless, high-profile civil rights warrior he's become.”―Booklist Starred Review

On September 1, 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during “The Star Spangled Banner,” but the world never fully understood the whole story. Not the “why” or the cost of his courage. That story begins in Turlock, California, where Kaepernick, a Black kid adopted into a white family, navigated constant resistance to His Blackness and sense of self. Sports became his refuge and his proving ground, where his talent could not be questioned. The extraordinary result? A quarterback whose arm and instincts would carry him to the Super Bowl and into history books. But with success came an education he hadn’t anticipated.

In the fraught world of sports politics, he saw the hidden powerhouses pulling the strings. Steeled with the readings of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Huey P. Newton, and Angela Davis, he saw in the NFL, in Turlock, in the repeated, unpunished police killings of Black and Brown Americans, an undeniable truth revealed: this was not someone else’s fight. It was his. It is ours.

When Kaepernick knelt, the NFL blackballed him. But in the ten years since, the questions his protest raise have not gone away. In The Perilous Fight, Kaepernick delivers his story with the same unflinching conviction that defined his most-watched moment, a single act of protest that changed American sports and culture forever. And ultimately, it is a story about the future we are all still fighting to build.

©2026 Colin Kaepernick (P)2026 Audible, Inc.

One of the most important events in the USA

I didn't dislike anything. Great to hear the story from his mouth and not all the media hype and misinformation and racism is alive and well.

Book of The Year!

This book is a must read! Well written so inspiring to make you want to do better and be better!

Worth The Wait

This was so worth the wait. Colin's narration really draws you in. In light of what's happening right now, the timing is divine intervention.

Learned so much about Colin

Learned so much about his interesting story and was left wanting to know more. Appreciated his commitment to justice and willingness to sacrifice it all. Few of us are presented that choice and even fewer would choose the harder path. I was left wondering more about his relationship with his parents and what’s next for him.

The parents thinking he was being treated equally

The book was a great read,and learning about how much racism he put up with his whole life, and parents not having a clue