Go for the win! Achieve excellence and be better than you've ever been! In his years as a professional ice-skater, Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton learned to embrace the mind-set of working hard to "beat" the competition. But it seems competition has gotten a bad rap...

Now in paperback, this first global history of sports offers all spectators and participants a reason to cheer--and to think.   Games People Played is, surprisingly, the first global history of sports. The book shows how sports have been practiced,...

Longlisted for the 2019 PEN/ESPN Literary Sports Writing Award "Raw and poetic...lean and ferocious." --The New York Times "I swim for every chance to get wasted--after every meet, every weekend, every travel trip. This is what I look forward to and...

A 2024 Christopher Award Winner "A gut-wrenching, wildly inspiring story about overcoming the most daunting obstacles through steely tenacity, sheer will, and a great big dose of motherly love." --Jeannette Walls, #1 New York Times bestselling author of<...

"Eighty-five years before Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs fought the 'battle of the sexes,' a Victorian teenager showed what women could do . . . [Abramsky] celebrates her as a brave and talented and determined original. In sports, the battle of the sexes is far from over, but Dod won more than...

Olympian and World Champion Caster Semenya is finally ready to share the vivid and heartbreaking story of how the world came to know her name. Thrust into the spotlight at just eighteen years old after winning the Berlin World Championships in 2009, Semenya's win was quickly overshadowed by...

"If you're not strong enough to swim fast, you're probably not strong enough to swim 'pretty,'" said a young Esther Williams to theater impresario Billy Rose. Since the nineteenth century, tensions between beauty and strength, aesthetics and athleticism have both impeded and propelled the careers...