Best Sports Journalism Books
Here you will get Best Sports Journalism Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever
Author: by L. Jon Wertheim
English
336 pages
1328637247
A rollicking guided tour of one extraordinary summer, when some of the most pivotal and freakishly coincidental stories all collided and changed the way we think about modern sports The summer of 1984 was a watershed moment in the birth of modern sports when the nation watched Michael Jordan grow from college basketball player to professional athlete and star.
That summer also saw ESPN’s rise to media dominance as the country’s premier sports network and the first modern, commercialized, profitable Olympics. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s rivalry raged, Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe reigned in tennis, and Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon made pro wrestling a business, while Donald Trump pierced the national consciousness as a pro football team owner.
It was an awakening in the sports world, a moment when sports began to morph into the market-savvy, sensationalized, moneyed, controversial, and wildly popular arena we know today. In the tradition of Bill Bryson’s One Summer: America, 1927, L. Jon Wertheim captures these 90 seminal days against the backdrop of the nostalgia-soaked 1980s, to show that this was the year we collectively traded in our ratty Converses for a pair of sleek, heavily branded, ingeniously marketed Nikes.
2. Can't Knock the Hustle: Inside the Season of Protest, Pandemic, and Progress with the Brooklyn Nets' Superstars of Tomorrow
Author: by Matt Sullivan
English
352 pages
0063036800
Brilliantly audaciouswritten with the profundity of a sage baller and the acuity of a seasoned journalist. Kiese Laymon, New York Times bestselling author of Heavy An award-winning journalist’s behind-the-scenes account from the epicenter of sports, social justice, and coronavirus, Can’t Knock the Hustle is a lasting chronicle of the historic 2019-2020 NBA season, by way of the notorious Brooklyn Nets and basketball’s renaissance as a cultural force beyond the game.
The Nets were already the most intriguing startup in the NBA: a team of influencers, entrepreneurs and activists, starring the controversial Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. But this dynasty-in-the-making got disrupted by the unforeseen. One tweet launched an international scandal, pitting the team’s Chinese owner and the league’s commissioner against its players and LeBron James.
The sudden death of Kobe Bryant, after making his final public appearance in Brooklyn, sent shockwaves through a turbulent season. Then came the unimaginable. A global pandemic and a new civil-rights movement put basketball’s trend-setting status to the ultimate test, as business and culture followed the lead of the NBA and its empowered stars.
3. Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic at the Root of Most Chronic Disease#and How to Fight It
Author: by Benjamin Bikman
English
280 pages
194883698X
2020 Foreword Indie Award Honorable Mention in the Health CategoryA scientist reveals the groundbreaking evidence linking many major diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease, to a common root causeinsulin resistanceand shares an easy, effective plan to reverse and prevent it.We are sick.
Around the world, we struggle with diseases that were once considered rare. Cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes affect millions each year; many people are also struggling with hypertension, weight gain, fatty liver, dementia, low testosterone, menstrual irregularities and infertility, and more.
We treat the symptoms, not realizing that all of these diseases and disorders have something in common. Each of them is caused or made worse by a condition known as insulin resistance. And you might have it. Odds are you doover half of all adults in the United States are insulin resistant, with most other countries either worse or not far behind.
In Why We Get Sick, internationally renowned scientist and pathophysiology professor Benjamin Bikman explores why insulin resistance has become so prevalent and why it matters. Unless we recognize it and take steps to reverse the trend, major chronic diseases will be even more widespread.
4. What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen
Author: by Kate Fagan
Back Bay Books
English
320 pages
The heartbreaking story of college athlete Madison Holleran, whose life and death by suicide reveal the struggle of young people suffering from mental illness today in this #1 New York Times Sports and Fitness bestseller. If you scrolled through the Instagram feed of 19-year-old Maddy Holleran, you would see a perfect life: a freshman at an Ivy League school, recruited for the track team, who was also beautiful, popular, and fiercely intelligent.
This was a girl who succeeded at everything she tried, and who was only getting started. But when Maddy began her long-awaited college career, her parents noticed something changed. Previously indefatigable Maddy became withdrawn, and her thoughts centered on how she could change her life.
In spite of thousands of hours of practice and study, she contemplated transferring from the school that had once been her dream. When Maddy’s dad, Jim, dropped her off for the first day of spring semester, she held him a second longer than usual.
5. New York Times Story of the Yankees: 1903-Present: 390 Articles, Profiles & Essays
Author: by The New York Times
Black Dog & Leventhal
English
560 pages
Experience a century of the pride, power, and pinstripes of the Yankees, Major League Baseball’s most successful team, as told through the stories of their hometown newspaper, The New York Times. The New York Yankees are the most storied franchise in baseball history.
They consistently draw the largest home and away crowds of any team, command the largest broadcast audiences in baseball, draw the greatest number of on-line followers, and routinely sell more copies of books and magazines than any other professional sports team.
The New York Times Story of the Yankees includes more than 350 articles chronicling the team’s most famous milestonesas well as the best writing about the ball club. Each article is hand-selected from The Times by the peerless sportswriter Dave Anderson, creating the most complete and compelling history to date about the Yankees.
Organized by era, the book covers the biggest stories and events in Yankee history, such as the purchase of Babe Ruth, Roger Maris’s 61st home run, and David Cone’s perfect game. It chronicles the team’s 27 World Series championships and 40 American League pennants; its rivalries with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox; controversial owners, players, and managers; and more.
6. Keith Haring (Rizzoli Classics)
Author: by Jeffrey Deitch
0847842983
Rizzoli
English
Closely based on Haring’s own concept for the monograph he wanted to publish before his untimely death, this volume represents more than a decade of research and contains a wealth of unpublished photographic and written material including drawings, studio photographs, and journal entries.
From chalk drawings deep in the New York City subways to murals in Pisa and Berlin; collaborations with William Burroughs and the famous body painting of Grace Jones, this book follows the incredible trajectory of Keith Haring’s artistic career: how a young man from a small town in rural Pennsylvania came to revolutionize the art worldand the course of art historywithin little more than a decade.
An incredibly prolific artist, Keith Haring created countless bold, provocative, endearing, and unforgettable images that continue to inspire artistsand delight childrenworldwide. Tracing the arc from his early subway “tags” to his poignant work on social issues as diverse as AIDS, illiteracy and apartheid, this visually stunning book is the definitive work on Keith Haring.
7. Sidecountry: Tales of Death and Life from the Back Roads of Sports
Author: by John Branch
English
368 pages
1324006692
Breathtaking tales of climbers and hunters, runners and racers, winners and losers by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. New York Times reporter John Branch’s riveting, humane pieces about ordinary people doing extraordinary things at the edges of the sporting world have won nearly every major journalism prize.
Sidecountry gathers the best of Branch’s work for the first time, featuring 20 of his favorites from the more than 2,000 pieces he has published in the paper. Branch is renowned for covering the offbeat in the sporting world, from alligator hunting to wingsuit flying.
Sidecountry features such classic Branch pieces, including Snow Fall, about downhill skiers caught in an avalanche in Washington state, and Dawn Wall, about rock climbers trying to scale Yosemite’s famed El Capitan. In other articles, Branch introduces people whose dedication and decency transcend their sporting lives, including a revered football coach rebuilding his tornado-devastated town in Iowa and a girls’ basketball team in Tennessee that plays on despite never winning a game.
8. Hello, I'm Paul Page: It's Race Day in Indianapolis
Author: by Paul Page
English
288 pages
168157215X
Live from the broadcast booth, Paul Page captured the excitement of 27 Indy 500 races, first as the Voice of the Indy 500 for the radio broadcast and then as chief announcer for the ABC telecast. From his first race as a pit reporter to his semi-retirement in 2016, generations of fans have witnessed the Greatest Spectacle in Racing as told by Paul Page.
In a life uniquely shaped by the Indy 500, Page fell in love with racing and the Speedway as a teenager, and it became his obsession. After receiving his first press pass in 1965, Page became a fixture in Gasoline Alley, and a trusted friend and confidante to generations of drivers, mechanics and owners.
His rise to fame followed a relentless pursuit of his dream, overcoming many obstacles along the way: dropping out of college, the suicide of his mentor, and recovering from a harrowing helicopter crash. No matter the setback, he used every opportunity to learn the trade of broadcast journalism and the sport of motor racing.
9. Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture
Author: by Elizabeth Semmelhack
Rizzoli Electa
English
256 pages
A groundbreaking traveling exhibition, Out of the Box showcases sneakers, from the mid-nineteenth century to sports performance breakthroughs, to present-day cultural icons. Drawn from the collection of the Bata Shoe Museum and significant private collectors, museums, and archivesincluding adidas AG, Converse Archives, Kosow Sneaker Museum, Nike Archives, Northampton Museums and Art Gallery, and Reebok Archivesthis selection is richly contextualized with interviews and essays by design innovators, sneaker collectors, and cultural historians, creating a backdrop of the technical innovation, fashion trends, social history, and marketing campaigns that shaped the form over the past two centuries.
Out of the Box includes sneakers ranging from an 1860 spiked running shoe, a pair of 1936 track shoes, Air Jordans IXX3, the original Air Force 1, and early Adidas Superstars to contemporary sneakers by prominent figures including Damien Hirst, Jeremy Scott, Jeff Staple, and Kanye West.
10. There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America
Author: by Alex Kotlowitz
0385265565
Doubleday
English
This is the moving and powerful account of two remarkable boys struggling to survive in Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex disfigured by crime and neglect.
11. The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
Author: by Donald Maass
1440348375
Writer's Digest Books
English
Engage Your Readers with Emotion While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader’s experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters’ struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you.
That’s where The Emotional Craft of Fiction comes in. Veteran literary agent and expert fiction instructor Donald Maass shows you how to use story to provoke a visceral and emotional experience in readers. Topics covered include: emotional modes of writing beyond showing versus telling your story’s emotional world moral stakes connecting the inner and outer journeys plot as emotional opportunities invoking higher emotions, symbols, and emotional language cascading change story as emotional mirror positive spirit and magnanimous writing the hidden current that makes stories moveReaders can simply read a novel…
12. Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty
Author: by Jeff Pearlman
Mariner Books
English
448 pages
The story of the Lakers dynasty from 1996 through 2004, when Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal combinedand collidedto help bring the Lakers three straight championships and restore the franchise as a powerhouseIn the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O’Neal loathed Kobe Bryant, and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O’Neal.
From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history.
Together, the two led the Lakers to three straight championships and returned glory and excitement to Los Angeles. In the tradition of Jeff Pearlman’s bestsellers Showtime, Boys Will Be Boys, and The Bad Guys Won, Three-Ring Circus is a rollicking deep dive into one of sports’ most fraught yet successful pairings.
13. I Got the Horse Right Here: Damon Runyon on Horse Racing
Author: by Joseph James Reisler
English
448 pages
1493052209
Burned out by working the baseball beat for years, in the summer of 1922 Damon Runyon was looking for a new sport to cover for The New York American as a change of pace. Having pilloried golf just a few years before, he went to Saratoga that August to sample horse racing and found that There, right in front of him, were so many of the characters he so loved from his time covering the comings and goings of the Manhattan night crowd.
This was just the tonic Runyon needed to emerge from his malaise. Runyon didn’t just cover the great races and which horse won: he would get to the track days before and roam along the backstretch, speaking with the trainers, the gamblers, the rich owners, and the wise guys, many of which became model characters in his fiction and in the musical Guys and Dolls.
This book collects the best of Runyon’s horse racing columns to 1936, when he moved on to other beats.
14. Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever
Author: by Jack McCallum
Ballantine Books
English
400 pages
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Acclaimed sports journalist Jack McCallum delivers the untold story of the greatest team ever assembled: the 1992 U.S. Olympic Men’s Basketball Team. As a writer for Sports Illustrated, McCallum enjoyed a courtside seat for the most exciting basketball spectacle on earth, covering the Dream Team from its inception to the gold medal ceremony in Barcelona.
Drawing on fresh interviews with the players, McCallum provides the definitive account of the Dream Team phenomenon. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at the controversial selection process. He takes us inside the team’s Olympic suites for late-night card games and bull sessions where superstars like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird debated the finer points of basketball.
And he narrates a riveting account of the legendary intrasquad scrimmage that pitted the Dream Teamers against one another in what may have been the greatest pickup game in history. In the twenty years since the Dream Team first captivated the world, its mystique has only grown.
15. Gods at Play: An Eyewitness Account of Great Moments in American Sports
Author: by Tom Callahan
English
304 pages
1324004274
A beautifully observed narrative of American sport: character, grit, tragedy, unremarked heroism, and, always, the illuminating story behind the story. As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades.
He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad AliGeorge Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he’d tested positive for HIV.
There are also little-known private moments: Joe Morgan whispering thank you to a virtually blind Jackie Robinson on the field at the 1972 World Series, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar saying he was more interested in being a good man than in being the greatest basketball player.
Brimming with colorful vignettes and enlivened by Callahan’s eye for detail, Gods at Play offers surprising portraits of the most celebrated names in sports. Roger Rosenblatt calls Callahan the most complete sportswriter in America. He knows the most and writes the best.” 15 illustrations
