Here are 89 books that Giant Steps fans have personally recommended if you like
Giant Steps.
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I find it so inspiring to see people pull off something that seems impossible, for example, breaking into a Paris monument every night for a year in order to clandestinely repair its neglected antique clock. So, when an author draws me into a topic that seems to me dry as dust, I enjoy the book so much more than one I knew Iād find interesting.
I aggressively avoid reading books about animals, let alone ones devoted to a single animal (and one that had been written about before), but Hillenbrandās brilliantly deployed, meticulous research into all of the human personalities that surrounded Seabiscuit seduced me, and many other readers.
Now that her book has become a bestseller and a feature film, itās easy to forget how unlikely an accomplishment it was, particularly given her struggles with chronic fatigue, which she later chronicled in a poignant New Yorker essay.
#1Ā NEW YORK TIMESĀ BESTSELLERĀ ā¢ From theĀ author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comesĀ a universal underdog storyĀ about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend.
Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuitās fortunes:
Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile toā¦
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to runā¦
Family history has always fascinated me. I didnāt want mine to be buried with my loved ones. So, out of curiosity, I asked relatives lots of questions. If unsatisfied, I sought answers elsewhere. I traveled as far as Celle San Vito, Italy, where my grandfather was born, to solve a one-hundred-year-old mystery, and I filmed it for others to enjoy. Iāve memorialized momentous family events in poems, handmade greeting cards, memory books, screenplays, a documentary, and now, in my memoir A Cup of Tea on the Commode. The books on my list are about āfamily.ā Iāve been moved by each, and I hope they move you as well.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, Rick Braggās writing is poetry.
He grew up dirt poor in Alabama. I grew up in a middle-class suburb in New Jersey. He and I have little in common but our love for our mothers. This story touched me on many levels. All mothers sacrifice to some extent in raising their children, but Rickās mother went above and beyond while facing dire circumstances to provide for hers.
It made me appreciate my mother even more. And though I hadnāt discovered this book prior to my story, it reconfirmed my commitment to my mother.Ā
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ā¢ From the Pulitzer Prizeāwinner and bestselling author, "a grand memoir.... Bragg tells about the South with such power and bone-naked love ... he will make you cry" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prizeāwinning reporter for The New York Times. It is also the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of runningā¦
I immersed myself in sports when I was young. Watched every game. Knew every statistic and piece of trivia. Lived and died with my favorite teamsā fortunes. But as I aged and became a writer, the outcomes of the games mattered less and less to me. The sports themselves mattered less and less. What mattered were the stories that I could uncover and tellāstories that, by the nature of sports and competition, branched into all the themes and fields of the human condition.
I rushed out to buy Kriegelās bio of Pistol Pete when it hit stores in 2007.
Iād always found Maravich fascinating as a basketball playerāthe guy is still the all-time leading scorer in Division I menās basketball history, and he played just three years of college ballābut didnāt know much about his life.
I wondered: How was there enough material for Kriegel to write a full-length book about him? Turns out, more than enough for Mark to write a brilliant book that, like so many great sports stories, is really about fathers and sons.
The New York Times bestselling Pistol is more than the biography of a ballplayer. It's the stuff of classic novels: the story of a boy transformed by his father's dreamāand the cost of that dream. Even as Pete Maravich became Pistol Peteāa basketball icon for baby boomersāall the Maraviches paid a price. Now acclaimed author Mark Kriegel has brilliantly captured the saga of an American family: its rise, its apparent ruin, and, finally, its redemption.
Almost four decades have passed since Maravich entered the national consciousness as basketball's boy wizard. No one had ever played the game like the kidā¦
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother hadā¦
I immersed myself in sports when I was young. Watched every game. Knew every statistic and piece of trivia. Lived and died with my favorite teamsā fortunes. But as I aged and became a writer, the outcomes of the games mattered less and less to me. The sports themselves mattered less and less. What mattered were the stories that I could uncover and tellāstories that, by the nature of sports and competition, branched into all the themes and fields of the human condition.
Maraniss is best known for his terrific biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Vince Lombardi; some consider that last one, When Pride Still Mattered, the best sports book ever written.
But Rome 1960, his narrative of the 1960 Summer Olympics, is my favorite. The reason is timing. I read it in 2008 while I was working on my second book. Each morning, Iād consume Maranissā smooth prose, which was fortified by the depth of his research.
Each afternoon and evening, inspired, Iād write some of my book, trying my damnedest to equal him, always falling short, of course, but thrilled in the attempt.
An account of the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome reveals the competition's unexpected influence on the modern world, in a narrative synopsis that pays tribute to such athletes as Cassius Clay and Wilma Rudolph while evaluating the roles of Cold War propaganda, civil rights, and politics. 250,000 first printing.
Iām a lifelong basketball nut. I played through high school and college and have been a fan for as long as I can remember. After earning a PhD in History from Purdue University (Boiler Up!), I began to do research and write books about basketball. The books on this list are my favorite of the hundreds Iāve read on the topic and will give you a great start on learning about hoop's history!
Fans of the HBO drama Winning TimeĀ know about the rise of the Los Angeles Lakers of the early 1980s powered by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. Like the show, this book is about more than basketball.
It is a look inside the lives of high-profile athletes in the decade of decadence, and the money, drugs, sex, and egos that defined the eighties are here in full force. The show was greatāthe book is better.
The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness and Gunslinger delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sportsā most-reveredāand dominantādynasties. Ā The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin āMagicā Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lakers played basketball with gusto and pizzazz,Ā unleashing coach Jack McKinneyāsĀ āShowtimeā run-and-gun style on a league unprepared for their speed and ferocityāand became the most captivating show in sports and, arguably, in all-around American entertainment.ā¦
Leah Naomi Green is the author of The More Extravagant Feast, selected by Li-Young Lee for the Walt Whitman Award of The Academy of American Poets. She received the 2021 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award for compassion, courage, truth-telling, and commitment to justice, as well an Academy of American Poets 2021 Treehouse Climate Action Poetry Prize. The More Extravagant Feast was named āone of the best books of 2020ā by The Boston Globe, is a silver winner of the 2020 Nautilus Book Awards, and was featured on NPRās āAll Things Consideredā. She lives in Rockbridge County, Virginia where she and her family homestead and grow or find much of their food for the year.
In this book-length poem, Ross Gay manages to ātalkā to the reader intimately without once āmansplaningā the way that so much of the tradition of ānature writingā has, for centuries, done. With the refrains of āwhat am I seeing?ā and āwhat am I practicing?ā Gay creates what feels like a genuine conversation with the reader, allowing me to ask myself the same questions as I read, to form my own thoughts and feelings, rather than passively receiving his.
In what I find to be his best work yet, Gay offers a genuine invitation to the reader to join into the seeing and feeling and meaning-making, thus making the meaning-making infinitely more meaningful. Be Holding is like a personal letter taken from its envelope, but somehow intended for all of us. It is as intricate as it is accessible and clear.
Through a kind of lyric research, or lyric meditation, Be Holding connects Dr. J's famously impossible move from the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers to pick-up basketball and the flying Igbo and the Middle Passage, to photography and surveillance and state violence, to music and personal histories of flight and familial love.
Be Holding wonders how the imagination, or how our looking, might make us, or bring us, closer to each other. How our looking might make us reach for each other. And might make us be reaching for eachā¦
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man sheā¦
Race has always been a primary issue in American lifeāand a test of how well our ideals as a nation sync up with reality. Because sports are a national passion, they have long put questions of inclusion on full display. Itās a fascinating, illuminating clash: the meritocracy of sports vs. the injustice of racism.
The National Basketball Associationās color barrier was not as long-lasting as Major League Baseballās, but it was in place in 1950 when the more enlightened white owners and talented Black players shattered it.
Author Thomas recalls the economic justification for racism, with how one owner warned another owner that his āplayers will be 75% Black in five years and youāre not going to draw people.ā Fears that racial fairness would ruin the NBA were ridiculous, of course. The first Black player drafted and the first to sign a contract were Harlem Globetrotters. Through deep research and interviews, Thomas explains in an engaging manner how the NBA was integrated.
Today, black players comprise more than eighty percent of the National Basketball Association's rosters, providing a strong and valued contribution to professional basketball. In the first half of the twentieth century, however, pro basketball was tainted by racism, as gifted African Americans were denied the opportunity to display their talents. A few managed to eke out a living playing for the New York Renaissance and Harlem Globetrotters, black professional teams that barnstormed widely, playing local teams or in short-lived leagues. Also, a sprinkling of black players were on integrated teams. Modern professional basketball began to take shape in the lateā¦
Iām a lifelong basketball nut. I played through high school and college and have been a fan for as long as I can remember. After earning a PhD in History from Purdue University (Boiler Up!), I began to do research and write books about basketball. The books on this list are my favorite of the hundreds Iāve read on the topic and will give you a great start on learning about hoop's history!
I disagree with a lot of what Bill Simmons writes about in this bookāand that is part of what makes it so wonderful! Simmons is a great storyteller, and this book feels like a bunch of basketball fans arguing about the best player or greatest team of all time.
This is the perfect book for someone who loves basketball and wants to learn more about the history of the game.Ā
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ā¢Ā The wildly opinionated, thoroughly entertaining, and arguably definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBAāfrom the founder of The Ringer and host of The Bill Simmons Podcast
āEnough provocative arguments to fuel barstool arguments far into the future.āāThe Wall Street Journal Ā In The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons opensāand then closes, once and for allāevery major NBA debate, from the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time. Then he takes itā¦
When Jay Rosenstein and I started writing Boxed Out of the NBA, we thought we were writing a light collection of mostly humorous anecdotes from old ballplayers about playing in the minor league. But as we interviewed the old Eastern Leaguers and understood how the league gave a home to players who couldnāt make the NBA in large part because of race, we realized we had a much more important and socially significant story. Itās been our privilege to get to know these gentlemen, and feel like they have entrusted us to tell their story. We want to help them get the respect and recognition they deserve while they are still here to appreciate it.
OK, Iām stretching a bit to include this on my list.
John Thompson made his mark on basketball as a college coach, not from his two years as Bill Russellās back-up with the Celtics. But Iāve got a personal interest here: I was a student sportswriter at Georgetown from Coach Thompsonās second year as coach, and as a junior and senior got to attend his weekly press conferences with the student press. Iāve often said I learned more about life from those meetings in Coachās office than I did from any other class at Georgetown.
I feel the same about this book, written with Andscape senior writer Jesse Washington. If you read this book you probably wonāt agree with all of it, but I have no doubt that youāll learn from it.Ā
The long-awaited autobiography from Georgetown Universityās legendary coach, whose life on and off the basketball court throws Americaās unresolved struggle with racial justice into sharp relief
John Thompson was never just a basketball coach and I Came As a Shadow is categorically not just a basketball autobiography.
After three decades at the center of race and sports in America, the first Black head coach to win an NCAA championship is ready to make the private public. Chockful of stories and moving beyond mere stats (and what stats! three Final Fours, four times national coachā¦
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the worldās most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the bookā¦
I am the head coach of Excelsior Athletic Development Club. I set this up after working with professional sports teams and young international athletes for a decade. I saw how poorly prepared they were and how many dropped out of the sport. I wanted to do something better for my children and the local people that had the focus on development and support rather than the prevailing āwin on Saturdayā at all costs mentality. Many good practitioners do this under the radar but are lost in the race to win medals and secure funding. I hope this list shows coaches there is a better way.
Brian is a basketball coach with experience coaching in the USA and Europe. This is a collection of essays and articles about coaching, teaching, athletic development, and session planning. While Brian draws heavily on basketball examples, the lessons, and warnings are easily transferred to other sports.
I dipped into this book, finding it easy to read. The 63 essays are just the right length to give me time to think and reflect.Ā
Free Play: A Decade of Writings on Youth Sports is a collection of 70 columns and 6 blogs written around themes of play, learning, and the complexity of athlete, child, skill, and talent development for the parents of young athletes between 2007 and 2016. These columns were published originally in Los Angeles Sports & Fitness and subsequently on various blogs, and now are collected into one book organized around 11 themes: Nature vs. nurture, talent identification, play and physical activity, motivation, early specialization, injuries, long term athlete development, the coachās role, the parentās role, learning, and athletic genius.The book isā¦
