Here are 93 books that The Greatest Story in Sports fans have personally recommended if you like
The Greatest Story in Sports.
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I have spent four decades studying the sports business. A lifelong sports fanatic and a trained antitrust lawyer, I originally approached the problem as a straightforward cartel by owners. When consulting for a UK government investigation into sports, I learned how often owners “leave money on the table” because they can’t agree on how to divide things up, and how often league decisions are not responsive to consumer preference. The book is part of a career of analyzing how the structure of sports governance fails to meet the expectations of fans and the general public.
Although now quite old, I still think the wonderful journalistic description of Pete Rozelle’s success in what the author coined as “LeagueThink” to overcome the structural problems in sports identified in my book is a great model.
I knew David Harris by reputation as an anti-Vietnam War activist and singer Joan Baez ex-husband, but I found he pivoted to this topic with excellence.
Based on three years of research, extensive interviews, and confidential NFL documents, an investigative report documents the little-known power struggles that have recently reorganized the internal structure and politics of the football business
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 run…
I grew up in Green Bay and my dad was the official scorer for the Packers, so I was immersed in pro football history even as a child. During my careers as a newspaper feature writer and editor and as an advertising copywriter, I also became a sports historian. My magnum opus was “The Encyclopedia of North American Sports History,” 650,000 words. But my favorite by far is my biography of Johnny Blood. I was 12 or 13 when I decided I wanted to write it, 33 when I began working on it, 38 when I finished it, and 78 when it was finally published.
Professional football didn’t begin with the National Football League.
Starting in the 1890s, football teams were organized in various cities and towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. They were amateur teams at first, but occasionally one team or another would pay a player or two to strengthen the lineup. Eventually, more and more players were being paid until teams became entirely professional.
Keith McClellan covers that era of pro football history, paying special attention to teams like the Columbus Panhandles, the Youngstown Patricians, and the Fort Wayne Friars. He clearly dug through hundreds of old newspapers and he presents his findings in often entertaining prose.
In the most complete and compelling account of the origins of professional football, The Sunday Game tells the stories of all the teams that played independent football in the small towns and industrial cities of the Midwest, from early in the twentieth century to the beginning of the National Football League shortly after the end of World War I. The foundations of what is now the most popular professional sport in America were laid by such teams as the Canton Bulldogs and the Hammond Clabbys, teams born out of civic pride and the enthusiasm of the blue-collar crowds who found,…
I grew up in Green Bay and my dad was the official scorer for the Packers, so I was immersed in pro football history even as a child. During my careers as a newspaper feature writer and editor and as an advertising copywriter, I also became a sports historian. My magnum opus was “The Encyclopedia of North American Sports History,” 650,000 words. But my favorite by far is my biography of Johnny Blood. I was 12 or 13 when I decided I wanted to write it, 33 when I began working on it, 38 when I finished it, and 78 when it was finally published.
In a work that is almost as much cultural history as pro football history, Michael McCambridge looks at the growth of the National Football League from the end of World War II to the 21st century
This well-researched and well-written book covers the league’s inner workings as well as the on-the-field highlights. The establishment of the NFL Players Association is treated equally with the establishment of the Super Bowl.
It’s difficult to imagine today—when the Super Bowl has virtually become a national holiday and the National Football League is the country’s dominant sports entity—but pro football was once a ramshackle afterthought on the margins of the American sports landscape. In the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age.
America’s Game traces pro football’s grand transformation, from the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting…
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 had…
I grew up in Green Bay and my dad was the official scorer for the Packers, so I was immersed in pro football history even as a child. During my careers as a newspaper feature writer and editor and as an advertising copywriter, I also became a sports historian. My magnum opus was “The Encyclopedia of North American Sports History,” 650,000 words. But my favorite by far is my biography of Johnny Blood. I was 12 or 13 when I decided I wanted to write it, 33 when I began working on it, 38 when I finished it, and 78 when it was finally published.
Obviously, this book is a biography, not a history. But, because it’s the biography of Joe F. Carr, who was the president of the National Football League from 1921 to 1939, it’s also the history of the league during those formative years.
Under Carr’s guidance, the NFL grew from a loose collection of mostly small-town teams into a well-organized league of teams in big cities, with the sole exception of the Green Bay Packers.
Founded in 1920, the National Football League chose famed athlete Jim Thorpe as its first president, a position he held briefly until a successor was elected. From 1921 to 1939, Joe F. Carr guided the sport of professional football with intelligence, hard work, and a passion that built the foundation of what the NFL has become: the number one sports organization in the world. During his eighteen-year tenure as NFL President, Carr created the organization's first Constitution & By-Laws; implemented the standard player's contract; wrote the NFL's first-ever Record and Fact Book; helped split the NFL into two divisions and…
I have been a professional business writer with a keen interest in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey since the early 1960s. My life was literally changed on January 12, 1969, when the New York Jets shocked me and the world with their upset victory in Super Bowl III. For over 40 succeeding years, I was beyond curious about the under-publicized players on that Jets team (aside from Joe Namath) and what they experienced and felt that day and season. I’m especially proud that the VP of Public Relations for that Jet team read and praised my book for bringing exposure to all “the other guys.”
I read this book because, in the annals of football history (up until the decades of Super Bowl success by Bill Belichick), Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers made him the runaway choice as pro football’s greatest coach.
He was considered coaching’s ultimate leader, motivator, and fundamentals technician. This book filled in the very little I knew about Lombardi’s lengthy history before he landed in Green Bay.
In this groundbreaking biography, David Maraniss captures all of football great Vince Lombardi: the myth, the man, his game, and his God.
More than any other sports figure, Vince Lombardi transformed football into a metaphor of the American experience. The son of an Italian immigrant butcher, Lombardi toiled for twenty frustrating years as a high school coach and then as an assistant at Fordham, West Point, and the New York Giants before his big break came at age forty-six with the chance to coach a struggling team in snowbound Wisconsin. His leadership of the Green Bay Packers to five world…
From a kid playing backyard games with family (girls included), I grew up as football itself grew from a brawling, often ponderous grind into an explosive, even balletic, spectacle—and the most popular sport in the U.S. Family fate also placed me at Long Beach Poly High, which has sent more players to the NFL than any other, and where I played. Thirty years later, as a sportswriter and author, fate again put the first-ever championship game in my sights—months before anyone realized it—and I spent a year following 177 kids around the country, their coaches, and their families.
A perfect counterpart to Plimpton’s book, Jerry Kramer’s gritty account of gridiron trench warfare arrived two years later and is considered the first “adult” book about football for its inside look at a season that culminated in an NFL championship. It may read like Neanderthal times, but it’s almost more fascinating than today’s game.
This book fed America’s hunger for a story about what goes on in the locker rooms and playing fields—particularly those of legendary coach Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers.
A sports classic, Jerry Kramer and Dick Schaap's Instant Replay takes readers inside the 1967 season of the Green Bay Packers, following that storied team from training camp to their dramatic victory in Super Bowl II.
Candid and often amusing, Jerry Kramer describes from a player’s perspective a bygone era of sports, filled with blood, grit, and tears. No game better exemplifies this period than the classic “Ice Bowl” conference championship game between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, which Kramer, who made the crucial block in the climactic play, describes in thrilling detail. We also get a rare and…
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 she…
As a sports reporter since 1990, my never-ending passion for reading and studying the best sports journalism is captured in these five books. The art of column writing, while capturing the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and the intricacies of every game under the sun, is celebrated in these books by David Halberstam, Paul Zimmerman, Red Smith, Dave Anderson, and Dave Kindred. My voracious reading of sports columns plus magazine profiles, online essays, and thousands of books, has given me a great appreciation for authors who capture the essence of competition and reveal the biggest and smallest examples of themes unique to teams and eras, iconoclasts and forgotten figures.
John Schulian, one of the premier American sports journalists from the 1970s to the present, has recommended The Red Smith Reader with unsparing enthusiasm: “Quite simply the most thorough collection ever of the master’s work... a joy to everyone who picks it up.” A compilation of 131 Smith columns published in 1982, the year of his death, the book showcases his literary prose, which elevated the profession. The biggest games (Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Reggie Jackson’s three home runs on three consecutive at-bats in the 1977 Fall Classic) and individuals (Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, Secretariat) are the foundation of Smith’s invaluable contributions to the understanding and appreciation of sports culture. His profiles of boxing and horse racing trainers are also exceptionally astute portraits.
Red Smith was a deadline artist, crafting timeless columns. As a fan of good writing and an admirer of his literary…
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1976, Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith is considered one of the greatest sportswriters ever to live. Put alongside Ring Lardner, Red Smith was beloved by those who read him because of his crisp writing and critical views.
Originally released in 1982, The Red Smith Reader is a wonderful collection of 131 columns with subjects ranging from baseball and fishing to golf, basketball, tennis, and boxing. As John Leonard of the New York Times appropriately stated, “Red Smith was to sports what Homer was to war.”
With a fantastic foreword by his son, successful journalist Terence Smith,…
I have been privileged to cover sports for the Boston Globe for the last 40-plus years. It is the best place in the country to do what I do. New England has tradition, smart readers, historic teams, and a great deal of success, especially in this century. As an author of 14 books, it's nice to bring some sports to the conversation on this site.
A political writer, Leibovich brings tremendous levity to the ever-serious NFL. The author had good access to Tom Brady and outs Jerry Jones and Bob Kraft for the needy buffoons they are. You will learn and laugh. Jones and Kraft, two of the most powerful owners in the might National Football League, engage in wild and hilarious competition for a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
"A raucous, smash-mouth, first-person takedown of the National Football League." -Wall Street Journal
The New York Times bestseller
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Town, an equally merciless probing of America's biggest cultural force, pro football, at a moment of peak success and high anxiety
Like millions of Americans, Mark Leibovich has spent more of his life tuned into pro football than he'd care to admit. Being a lifelong New England Patriots fan meant growing up on a steady diet of lovable loserdom. That is, until the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick era made the Pats the most…
I have been a teacher for over 30 years and a writer of juvenile nonfiction for 10. In my research, I immersed myself in the early decades of the 20th century, which saw the rise of spectator sports and an increasing tension between amateur and professional. Investigating the evolution of competitive running for my book whet my appetite for more. I read other writers for young people to see how they treated the subject in different sports. The best works of children’s literature are informative, well-written, and worthwhile even for adult readers. (One project had me researching the War in the Pacific, hence the apparent outlier, Unbroken.)
This book tells the story of Jim Thorpe, Pop Warner, the Carlisle Indian School, and football itself. In 1900, the game could be deadly for players and deadly dull for fans. The rules were changed to make it safer, but it took Warner, Thorpe, and the Carlisle eleven to reinvent how it was played.
This is an uplifting story that nonetheless raises serious issues of sportsmanship, racism, and hypocrisy. I appreciated that Sheinkin does not preach. He acknowledges limits to our knowledge. He asks questions, suggests answers, and allows readers to make their own interpretations. He allows for complexity and never judges. Above all, his writing is as muscular as an All-American halfback, his storytelling as compelling as a championship rivalry.
When superstar athlete Jim Thorpe and football legend Pop Warner met in 1904 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football," they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools such as Harvard and the Army in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work.
But this is not just an underdog story. It's an unflinching look at the persecution of Native Americans and its intersection with the beginning of one of the most…
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 world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As I write in Fight Songs, my name has nothing to do with it: It refers to a geography an ocean away, and predates any notion of the American South (or of America, for that matter). I have spent most of my life in the South, though, loving football, basketball, and other sports that didn’t always love me back. I became curious about why they’ve come to play such an outsized role in our culture. Why did my home state come to a standstill for a basketball tournament? Why does my wife’s home state shut down for a football game? Writing Fight Songs was one way of exploring those questions. Reading these books was another.
The book that started it all (for me, at least): I read this book just before the 2007 season, when my beloved Wake Forest Demon Deacons were the reigning conference champs, when Alabama was about to start the Nick Saban Era.
It was a fall of unusual hope after a summer of deaths and distances. From The Last Coach I not only learned a lot about the legendary Bear Bryant, and about America in the American Century, but also felt like I got a pep talk from Bryant himself.
Soon after I finished reading this I met a beautiful woman. When I learned she was an Alabama fan I told her I’d just read this and asked if she had. She told me to check the dedication page: The author’s her uncle.
The explosive biography of the greatest college football coach in history.
When Paul William "Bear" Bryant died on January 26, 1983, it was the lead story on the all three networks' evening news. New York City newspapers reported his death on their front pages. ("Crimson Tears," read the headline in the New York Post, "Nation weeps over death of legendary Bear Bryant, 69.") Three days later, America watched in awe as an estimated quarter of a million mourners lined the fifty-five mile stretch from Tuscaloosa to a Birmingham cemetery to pay their respects as his three-mile long funeral cortege drove…
