Leisure Reading: Sports

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 criticism and speculation about her body, and she became the center of a still-raging firestorm about how gender plays out in sports, our expectations of female athletes, and the right to compete as you are. Told with captivating speed and candor, The Race to Be Myself is the journey of Semenya's years as an athlete in the public eye, and her life behind closed doors.

LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century, and he's in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined--the truth is vastly more interesting than that.

Megan Rapinoe, Olympic gold medallist and two-time Women's World Cup champion, has become a galvanizing force for social change; here, she urges all of us to take up the mantle, with actions big and small, to continue the fight for justice and equality. Using anecdotes from her own life and career, from suing the United States Soccer Federation alongside her teammates over gender discrimination to her widely publicized refusal to visit the White House, Rapinoe discusses the obligation we all have to speak up, and reveals the impact each of us can have on our communities.

As attitudes toward gender have shifted to embrace more fluidity in recent decades, sex continues to be viewed as a static binary that is easily determined: male or female. It is on the very idea of static sex that we have built an entire sporting apparatus. Now that foundation is being hotly debated as a result of intense culture wars. Many transgender and intersex athletes, including a South African runner, a wrestler in Texas, a Connecticut track star, and a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, have captured the attention of law and policymakers who want to decide how and when they compete... But what are those rules and who gets to make them? Fair Play looks at all sides of the issue and presents a reasoned and much-needed solution that seeks to preserve opportunities for all going forward.

Author John Gasaway traces the rise of Catholic college basketball--from its early days (Villanova made an appearance in the Final Four in the first NCAA tournament in 1939) to the dominance of the San Francisco Dons in the 1950s and the ascendance of powerhouses Georgetown, Villanova, and Gonzaga--through their decades-long rivalries and championship games. Featuring interviews with notable coaches, players, alums, and fans--including Loyola Chicago's most famous and dedicated fan, 100-year-old Sister Jean--to get at the heart of how these universities have excelled at this sport. Small in number but devout in the game's spirit, these teams have made the miraculous a matter of ritual, and their greatest works may be yet to come.

In this in-depth look at the heated debates over paying college athletes, Ronald A. Smith starts at the beginning: the first intercollegiate athletics competition--a crew regatta between Harvard and Yale--in 1852, when both teams received an all-expenses-paid vacation from a railroad magnate. This striking opening sets Smith on the path of a story filled with paradoxes and hypocrisies that plays out on the field, in meeting rooms, and in courtrooms--and that ultimately reveals that any insistence on amateurism is invalid, because these athletes have always been paid, one way or another.

In recent decades, the NFL has simultaneously become an athletic, financial, and cultural powerhouse--and a League that can't seem to go more than a few weeks without a scandal. Whether it's about domestic violence, performance-enhancing drugs, racism, or head trauma, the NFL always seems to be in some kind of trouble. Yet no matter the drama, the TV networks keep showing games, the revenue keeps rising, and the viewers keep tuning in. How can a sports league--or any organization--operate this way? Why do the negative stories keep happening, and why don't they ever seem to affect the bottom line? In this wide-ranging book, Mike Florio takes readers from the boardroom to the locker room, from draft day to the Super Bowl, answering these questions and more, and showing what really goes on in the sport that America can't seem to quit.

Over the course of 100 riveting profiles--each drawing upon unparalleled access and superlative storytelling to offer intimate perspective on what made the greatest players tick--these writers reveal their findings... Based on many hundreds of interviews with players, coaches, broadcasters, and others, this is a penetrating look at the greatest players to ever don cleats and pads, as well as a view from the trenches of the harsh realities of a brutal game. 100 photographs throughout the text offer testament to both the glory and the physical toll of football. Deeply reported, beautifully written, and sure to spark heated debate among football fans of all stripes, The Football 100 sets a new standard for writing about the game.