Showing titles in Sociology of Sports

Jeanette Lee was 18 years old when she walked into a New York City pool hall and became enamored by the elegant geometry of the game. Before long, she was an unmistakable figure on the international competition circuit, dressed head-to-toe in black, stalking the billiards table, and gazing down her cue as if tracking her prey. In this new memoir, the woman nicknamed “The Black Widow” opens up about her legendary career and the rich, unpredictable life she’s woven around it.

Everything in basketball is measured. Everything in basketball is counted, and quantified, and computed. And yet, no matter how expansive the list of various pinpoint-specific statistical categories gets, some basketball things remain uncountable, and unquantifiable. Some moments are more poetry than calculation; more art than numerical value; more feeling than data processing. And thus: Expensive Basketball.

Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in The Big Time, no decade in American sports history featured such convulsive cultural shifts as the 1970s. So many things happened during the decade—the move of sports into prime-time television, the beginning of athletes’ gaining a sense of autonomy for their own careers, integration becoming—at least within sports—more of the rule than the exception, and the social revolution that brought females more decisively into sports, as athletes, coaches, executives, and spectators.

Michael Crawley immerses himself in various endurance cultures and asks what makes enduring together meaningful to people. He learns how Nepalese runners face different challenges depending on their location up a mountain, from those in the lowlands and ‘middle hills’ to Sherpas from the Solu Khumbu, and observes Tarahumara ultrarunners’ ability to cover extreme distances on highly technical terrain. But he also delves into the history of Dance Marathons, six-day pedestrianism races in Madison Square Gardens and the unique Enhanced Games.

Are you ready to join the club? If your desire is to build a stronger and well-chiseled body naturally without steroids; then this is the book for you! It will not only enable you shape the body of your dreams, but it will also empower you to stay the course.

Sir Trevor McDonald is one of Britain's most celebrated broadcasters and his devotion for cricket is almost as well known as his legendary professional achievements. In this inspirational memoir, On Cricket, Sir Trevor explores his childhood in the Caribbean and celebrates his life-long love of the sport that followed him no matter where in the world his illustrious journalistic career would take him.

Jürgen Said to Me is a human-interest story centred around Liverpool FC's most successful and charismatic leader of recent times. It charts Jürgen Klopp's impact on Liverpool through the voice of the author and those at the heart of his revival. In October 2015, Klopp took the helm at Liverpool at a time when the famous club were entering a third decade of league-title drought. The German coach had prospered with his brand of 'heavy-metal football', but little was known about his personality beyond an obvious energy and charisma.

'Magnificent . . . Goldblatt is the doyen of sports historians and brings to this account his forensic and telling eye for detail' - Mail on Sunday A Sunday Times Best Sports Book of the Year The epic exploration of society, politics, and economics in the twenty-first century through the prism...

This Is Your Brain on Sports is the audiobook for sports fans searching for a deeper understanding of the games they watch and the people who play them. Sports Illustrated executive editor and best-selling author L. Jon Wertheim teams up with Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers to take listeners on a wild ride into the inner world of sports.

What if running in beautiful places was paradoxically contributing to the destruction of those precious environments and causing irreversible global harm to people and animals, too? In We Can’t Run Away from This, ultrarunner Damian Hall examines the impact of running in our climate and ecological emergency. Packed with insights from experts, it is an enlightening book that will prompt us all to really think about our kit, food, and travel and to identify simple changes we can make to our running and wider lives.

Every year, more than 3.5 million children under age 15 require medical treatment for sports injuries, nearly half of which are the result of simple overuse. Journalist Mark Hyman investigates the evolution of youth sports from mere games to full-on quests to turn children into tomorrow's superstar athletes by pushing them beyond physical and emotional limits. Opening up a crucial discussion about the perils of youth-sports culture today, Hyman offers the solutions and answers we need.

A massive audience in sitting rooms, parks and pubs watched England in the 2018 World Cup. Yet as Duncan Hamilton demonstrates with style, insight and wit in Going to the Match, watching on TV is no substitute for being there. Hamilton embarks on a richly entertaining, exquisitely crafted journey through football. Glory game or grass roots, England v Slovenia or Guiseley v Hartlepool, he delves beneath the action to illuminate the stories which make the sport endlessly compelling.

For decades, osteopathic physician Larry Nassar built a sterling reputation as the go-to doctor for America's Olympians while treating countless others at his office on Michigan State University's campus. It was largely within the high-pressure world of competitive gymnastics that Nassar exploited young girls, sexually assaulting hundreds of them under the guise of medical treatment. In Start by Believing, John Barr and Dan Murphy confront Nassar's acts, which represent the largest sex abuse scandal to impact the sporting world.

Sports media superstar Clay Travis wants to save sports from the social justice warriors seeking to turn them into another political battleground. Having ruined journalism and Hollywood, far-left-wing activists have now turned to sports. Travis argues it’s time for right-thinking fans everywhere to put down their beers and reclaim their teams and their traditions. In Republicans Buy Sneakers, Too, he replays the arguments he’s won and lays out all the battles ahead. His goal is simple: to make sports great again.

Some 75% of American families want their kids to play sports. Athletics are training grounds for character, friendship, and connection; at their best, sports insulate kids from hardship and prepare them for adult life. But youth sports have changed so dramatically over the last 25 years that they no longer deliver the healthy outcomes everyone wants. Instead, unbeknownst to most parents, kids who play competitive organized sports are more likely to burn out or suffer from overuse injuries than to develop their characters or build healthy habits. What happened to kids' sports?

Professional wrestling has always been wrapped in mystery. After a century of masquerading as legitimate sport, at last pro-wrestling has begun to show the potential of its form. At its core, it is live combat theatre, and no one has done more to codify and analyze this mesmerizing art form than Mike Quackenbush. To aid a generation of evolving performers to meet the demands of modern audiences, here is Toolbox - Building Better Pro-Wrestling.

The NBA has returned to prominence on the backs of phenoms like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett. The media promotes them, the shoe companies pay them, and America applauds. But how exactly do such players reach the pros? What do they give up to get there? And what happens to those who fall short?

Football is the people's game. A sport accessible to everyone and enjoyed by millions around the world. But football is broken. Beneath the glamorous sheen of the Premier League, it's a game that's rusting and rotten. The growing influence and wealth of the biggest teams is harming the game, leaving fans out of pocket and other clubs clinging to survival. This isn't what football is about. Gary Neville has had a front-row seat in football for over 30 years, witnessing the sport at every level. Most of all, he's a fan. The People's Game is Gary's vision for a brighter future.

Chuck Klosterman—New York Times bestselling cultural critic, journalist, and, yes, football psychotic—did not write this book to help you deepen your appreciation of football, or to be that person at a party, or to make better bets, or validate your preexisting views, positive or negative. Football does in fact do all of these things, but only as steps on the path to the commanding heights.

If you're the kind of fan who cheers every single time you watch Rocky beat Drago, or remembers who said "Be the ball, Danny" and "If you build it, he will come," this is the book for you. Movies with Balls celebrates and analyzes more than two dozen of the greatest sports films of all time, with expert play-by-play and color commentary on the movies themselves and the athleticism they portray.