Sociology of Sports

In a world where we are having to work harder than ever before, where talk of ‘burnout’ is everywhere and where pressures increase in many areas of our lives, some of us are turning to endurance sport and extreme challenges.

One of the greatest and most beloved golf books ever written is now available on audio—“a cause for celebration” (The Wall Street Journal)—with a new introduction by Golf in the Kingdom author Michael Murphy, and a new afterword. Thirty years (and counting!) after publication, To the...

In Sport, the term 'good bloke' doesn't mean what it says. Like 'fun run', it in fact often means the exact opposite. Titus O'Reily, the sports historian Australia neither needs nor deserves, examines why our nation's sportspeople can do terrible things yet be so readily forgiven. In this Great...

Pull back the curtain on the most powerful position in all of sports: the Quarterback, the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized and worshiped.

A captivating and moving account of the first England women's football team that took part in the 1971 World Cup - detailing the injustice faced by those who took part and its effect on the women's game as a whole.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A “meticulously documented and endlessly chilling” (The New York Times) exploration of the NFL’s decades-long attempt to deny and cover up mounting evidence connecting brain damage from football with CTE. “A first-rate piece of reporting [that] adds crucial...

As lead presenter for Sky Sports Formula One live coverage, Simon Lazenby is at the centre of Grand Prix race-weekend action. In this book, he takes us off camera to give us exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to the people who power this multi-billion-pound sport.

Putting the games in the context of Rome's rise and dramatic fall, Mannix captures all the history, planning, and savage pageantry that went into creating the first spectator sports.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the high-octane, high stakes world of F1, these are the key lessons learned at the top level of the sport – and how to take them out of the pitlane and make them work for you Foreword by JAKE HUMPHREY, author of HIGH PERFORMANCE 'Marc's lessons ... will change...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Rap Year Book and Basketball (and Other Things), a clever and inventive examination of some of basketball's most iconic players, moments, games, and more. Everything in basketball is measured. Everything in basketball is counted, and...

Brought to you by Penguin. Hurling is Ireland’s national game – a source of fascination and pride, even to people who have never played it. Ciarán Murphy, a lifelong club footballer, used to be one of those people. Then he spent a summer trying to play hurling with a tiny club in the West...

From ESPN reporter Marc Raimondi comes a compelling, gripping narrative history of professional wrestling’s legendary faction, The NWO (New World Order), from their inception in 1996 to their influence on American pop culture today. In 1996, professional wrestling was one of the most watched...

Fixed breaks new ground as Moses Swaibu becomes the first player ever to write openly about how he helped to fix games, revealing exactly what happens on the pitch when a match is being manipulated.

In this extraordinary tour de force, David Goldblatt tells the full story of soccer's rise from chaotic folk ritual to the world's most popular sport - now poised to fully establish itself in the USA....

Drugs in sport are big news and the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport is common....

A hard-hitting and powerful look at hockey's moment of reckoning in Canada, and the ways in which a game that is so universally loved has been rocked in recent years by court cases involving sexual assault and startling incidents of hazing and abuse throughout junior hockey. The allegations read...

After a lifetime of writing about the professional sport, Michael Bamberger, “the poet laureate of golf” (GOLF magazine), delivers an exhilarating love letter to the amateur game as it’s played—and lived—by the rest of us. Over Michael Bamberger’s celebrated writing career, he has...

If you’re struggling with today’s sports parents, you are not alone....

A hilarious but nonetheless groundbreaking contribution to the argument about which force shapes American life the most. For two kinds of readers—those who know it’s football and those who are about to find out. Chuck Klosterman—New York Times bestselling critic, journalist, and, yes...

Alejandro Valverde - the 'Green Bullet' - was a symbol of Spanish sport. Supremely talented, hard-working beyond belief, he was ranked no.1 in the world four times before retiring in 2022...

The GAA is Ireland's largest civil society organisation, woven into the fabric of families and communities - and yet most books about Gaelic games focus on the greatest players and inter-county teams. This is the Life takes a witty and provocative look at grassroots GAA....

The definitive, devastating account of the largest sex abuse scandal in American sports history-with new details and insights into the institutional failures, as well as the bravery that brought it to light. For decades, osteopathic physician Larry Nassar built a sterling reputation as the go-to...

""Water Mirror Echo is a remarkable story of a man, the traditions and communities that created him, and the new worlds he made possible. Like Bruce Lee himself, Jeff Chang is blessed with the vision to see things we do not yet see, thinking and writing with a restless, chasm-crossing, almost...

The bad*ss story of the female, queer, bi, and nonbinary skaters who charted a path to the Olympics and changed the face of skateboarding. Who gets to tell the story of skateboarding? Drop In is the first book to recognize and historicize the female, queer, bi, and nonbinary humans who blazed...

New York Times bestselling authors Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski travel the world in a hilarious and heartwarming celebration of fans and the things they love: baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football, futbol, Indigenous North American stickball, pickleball, WWE, Taylor Swift, Star Wars...