Sports History

This book is about the batters who see what mortals don’t. Javed Miandad purposefully makes errors to manipulate the field, Sachin Tendulkar dug up a pitch to take on Warne, Shivnarine Chanderpaul practised non-stop on a beach with tennis balls until he mastered technique and Joe Root’s great play against spin is known to be a confluence of three random events. Others, such as Smith, Pietersen and Richards, carried on the work of a man 100 years before their time, and Ranji changed cricket with a bucket.

Test cricket is on the cusp of its 150th anniversary. For the first time, Test Cricket: A History tells the full, gripping story of the players and stories that have shaped the game's evolution since 1877. Award-winning author Tim Wigmore brings to life both Test cricket on the pitch and the game's social significance around the world. This captivating tour is illuminated by dozens of exclusive interviews with the game's greatest players, including Sachin Tendulkar, Pat Cummins, Michael Holding, Muthiah Muralidaran, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Chappell, Dale Steyn and Rahul Dr

On an overcast day in 1987, the pro wrestling landscape was altered forever when a reported 93,173 fans converged on the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit to see Hulk Hogan defend his championship against André the Giant. For several years, Vincent Kennedy McMahon had been transforming old-time rasslin' into mainstream "sports entertainment," incorporating A-list celebrities into storylines and forcing even cynics to follow the proceedings.

The IPL has expanded, but Australia's Big Bash is contracting; the 2023 men's Ashes were concertinaed into a tiny window but The Hundred continues to dominate. Is there still hope for Test cricket in this tumultuous sporting landscape? Turbervill recalls the poignancy of the final Test of the English summer at The Oval in 2022, and describes how the match could be seen as a metaphor for the demise of the longer game.

From Jim Lampley, HBO’s ringside face and voice of boxing, comes a first-person, blow-by-blow account of the evolution of sports television chock full of famous names, history-making events, and never-before-told stories from the world of sports.

From spring training to the World Series, 1978 gave baseball fans one of the sport's greatest seasons, full of legendary moments like the battle between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox for the American League East pennant, Gaylord Perry's three thousandth strikeout, Tom Seaver's only career no-hitter, Willie McCovey's five hundredth home run, and Pete Rose's marathon forty-four-game hitting streak.

From minor league baseball exploitation to spectator hooliganism, Sailofsky shows the connections between the business of sports and violence, but also, more importantly, he imagines new forms of sport that are not places of harm.

From the secret training halls of ancient Sparta to the Arctic strength training methods of the Inuit to the magical underwater world of a tribe of aquatic superhumans in the Pacific, ‘A History of Physical Fitness’ will take you on a journey through history that will forever change the way you look at physical fitness.

The Story of the Masters is the first comprehensive year-by-year history of the world’s most famous golf tournament. Veteran golf journalist David Barrett draws upon contemporaneous reporting and other source material to offer dramatic accounts of each year the tournament has been played, starting in 1934.

Tucked away on the shores of Cape Cod Bay lies one of the greatest amateur athletic organizations in American sport’s history. Welcome to the 101-year-old tradition of the Cape Cod Baseball League. This great tradition was built on the values that have made our great nation so special. Within the confines of the Cape League there is a quaint and sleepy town that that doesn’t even have a red-light. Every summer, this special place produces some of the greatest players in Major League Baseball history.