It happens once a year, creating a seismic divide throughout the country. It pits brother against brother. It breaks up business deals. It ruins relationships. And once it’s finished, all both sides want is for another year to pass by so they can do it again. It is the Texas/Texas A& M football game. And in the football-obsessed state that is Texas, no single game resonates more.Every year during the Thanksgiving holidays, the two teams meet for something that has become much more ...

In 1956, at age 21, Floyd Patterson became the youngest boxer to win the title of world heavyweight champion and then, later, the first ever to lose and regain it.Here, acclaimed author W.K. Stratton chronicles the life of 'The Gentle Gladiator' - an athlete overshadowed by Ali's theatrics and Liston's fearsome reputation, and a civil-rights activist overlooked in the who's who of race politics.From the Gramercy Gym and wild-card manager Cus D'Amato to a final rematch again...

Reaching the top in any sport requires a long, hard climb. But when you start with the baggage of years of family dysfunction and incarceration in a hellish mental hospital, the climb is especially steep. Yet even with such weights to carry, Anissa Zamarron won not one, but two, world championships in women's boxing. Her story, as dramatically intense as the Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby, is one of tremendous courage and determination to overcome the odds against her as ...

"A well-researched and overdue tribute. Like one of Patterson's reliable left hooks, Stratton sharply recounts the life of an important, but often forgotten, two-time world heavyweight champion." — Gary Andrew Poole, author of PacMan: Behind the Scenes with Manny PacquiaoIn 1956, Floyd Patterson became, at age twenty-one, the youngest boxer to claim the title of world heavyweight champion. Later, he was the first ever to lose and regain that honor.Here, the acclaime...

For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, W.K. Stratton's definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute.Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the jo...

"A well-researched and overdue tribute. Like one of Patterson's reliable left hooks, Stratton sharply recounts the life of an important, but often forgotten, two-time world heavyweight champion." — Gary Andrew Poole, author of PacMan: Behind the Scenes with Manny PacquiaoIn 1956, Floyd Patterson became, at age twenty-one, the youngest boxer to claim the title of world heavyweight champion. Later, he was the first ever to lose and regain that honor.Here, the acclaim...

A behind-the-scenes tour of the ups and downs of an NFL season focuses on the Baltimore Ravens and reveals the lesser-known aspects of the professional league, from the dangerous conditions under which athletes are expected to train to the unrelenting pressures faced by coaches and players.In the NFL there is only one certainty: that every day, someone will have to be the Next Man Up. Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, played and practiced at undiminishe...

“Raw, powerful and disturbing—a head-spinning take on Mr. Tyson's life.”—Wall Street JournalPhilosopher, Broadway headliner, fighter, felon—Mike Tyson has defied stereotypes, expectations, and a lot of conventional wisdom during his three decades in the public eye. Bullied as a boy in the toughest, poorest neighborhood in Brooklyn, Tyson grew up to become one of the most ferocious boxers of all time—and the youngest heavyweight champion ever. But his brill...

" One Shot at Forever is powerful, inspirational. . . This isn't merely a book about baseball. It's a book about heart." -- Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author of Boys Will Be Boys and The Bad Guys WonIn 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois, playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats, defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience...

The perfect gift for baseball fans, now with a new epilogue by author R.A. Dickey, winner of the 2012 Cy Young award."An astounding memoir—haunting and touching, courageous and wise."—Jeremy Schaap, bestselling author, Emmy award-winning journalist, ESPNIn 1996, R.A. Dickey was the Texas Rangers’ much-heralded No. 1 draft choice. Then, a routine physical revealed that his right elbow was missing its ulnar collateral ligament, and his lifelo...

“Brilliant . . . entertaining . . . a thought-provoking portrayal of the multi-faceted Howard Cosell in all his glory and enmity.”—Don Ohlmeyer, Wall Street JournalHoward Cosell’s colorful bombast, fearless reporting, and courageous stance on civil rights made him one of the most recognizable and controversial figures in American sports history. “Telling it like it is,” he covered nearly every major sports story for three decades, from the travails of Muhammad Ali to the t...

The legendary college football head coach tells his captivating story—from rural Wyoming to law school to the upper echelons of the SEC.A New York Times BestsellerSwing Your Sword is the first ever book by one of the most fascinating and successful coaches in sports. A maverick who took an unlikely path to coaching through law school, Mike Leach talks about his unorthodox approach to coa...