Product Description: The idea for Nothing Finer grew out of several years of work by Wilt Browning with the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, specifically the writing of biographies of nominees who would be considered for induction. Again and again, that annual exercise was a reminder of just how deep and how rich North Carolina's sports heritage is...read more

Twenty-year-old American gymnast Shawn Johnson is a four-time Olympic gold and silver medalist; a national- and world-champion athlete. Already a popular role model to all ages, in 2009 she captured the national spotlight again when she won the widely popular Dancing with the Stars. Yet Shawn is no stranger to hard work and adversity. Her loss of the major gymnastics prize everyone expected her to win in Beijing, the all-around Olympic gold medal, was the loss of a dream she’d worked for since childhood. And later, she suffered a potentially career-ending injury in a skiing accident that forced her life to a halt and made her rethink what was really important. She wasn’t sure who she was anymore. She wasn’t sure what her goals were. And she wasn’t sure she was satisfied with where she was with her faith and God. Could she find the right kind of success in life―the kind that doesn’t involve medals or trophies, but peace, love, and lasting joy? This is the amazing true journey of how the young woman who won an Olympic gold medal on the balance beam became even more balanced.

Product Description: The inspiring story of a pint-size American gymnast with a big smile and an even bigger heart. You’ve seen her perform gravity-defying gymnastics moves. You’ve seen her win Olympic medals in Beijing and the coveted mirror ball trophy on Dancing with the Stars...read more

Product Description: The inspiring story of a pint-size American gymnast with a big smile and an even bigger heart. You’ve seen her perform gravity-defying gymnastics moves. You’ve seen her win Olympic medals in Beijing and the coveted mirror ball trophy on Dancing with the Stars...read more

Product Description: This compelling blend of biography and cultural history depicts five important yet nearly forgotten athletes from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who had a transformative effect on their sports and on the evolution of sports in general...read more

The first comprehensive biography of the legendary figure who defined excellence in American sports: Jim Thorpe, arguably the greatest all-around athlete the United States has ever seen.With clarity and a fine eye for detail, Kate Buford traces the pivotal moments of Thorpe’s incomparable career: growing up in the tumultuous Indian Territory of Oklahoma; leading the Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team, coached by the renowned “Pop” Warner, to victories against the country’s finest college teams; winning gold medals in the 1912 Olympics pentathlon and decathlon; defining the burgeoning sport of professional football and helping to create what would become the National Football League; and playing long, often successful—and previously unexamined—years in professional baseball.But, at the same time, Buford vividly depicts the difficulties Thorpe faced as a Native American—and a Native American celebrity at that—early in the twentieth century. We also see the infamous loss of his Olympic medals, stripped from him because he had previously played professional baseball, an event that would haunt Thorpe for the rest of his life. We see his struggles with alcoholism and personal misfortune, losing his first child and moving from one failed marriage to the next, coming to distrust many of the hands extended to him. Finally, we learn the details of his vigorous advocacy for Native American rights while he chased a Hollywood career, and the truth behind the supposed reinstatement of his Olympic record in 1982. Here is the story—long overdue and brilliantly told—of a complex, iconoclastic, profoundly talented man whose life encompassed both tragic limitations and truly extraordinary achievements.

Product Description: John Schulian, a much-honored sportswriter for nearly forty years, takes us back to a time when our greatest athletes stood before us as human beings, not remote gods. In this compelling collection, Schulian paints prose portraits to remind fans of what today’s cloistered stars won’t share with them...read more

It was a horrific car crash. On the way home from swim practice, eighteen-year old Brian Boyle’s future changed in an instant when a dump truck plowed into his Camaro. He was airlifted to a shock-trauma hospital. He had lost sixty percent of his blood, his heart had moved across his chest, and his organs and pelvis were pulverized. He was placed in a medically-induced coma. When Brian finally emerged from the coma two months later, he had no memory of the accident. He could see and hear, but not move or talk. Unable to communicate to his doctors, nurses, or frantic parents, he heard words like “vegetable” and “nursing home.” If he lived, doctors predicted he might not be able to walk again, and certainly not swim. Then, miraculously, Brian clawed his way back to the living. First blinking his eyelids, then squeezing a hand, then smiling, he gradually emerged from his locked-in state. The former swimmer and bodybuilder had lost one hundred pounds. Iron Heart is the first-person account of his ordeal and his miraculous comeback. With enormous fortitude he learned to walk, then run, and eventually, to swim. With his dream of competing in the Ironman Triathlon spurring him on, Brian defied all odds, and three-and-a-half years after his accident, crossed the finish line in Kona, Hawaii. Brian’s inspiring journey from coma to Kona is brought to life in this memoir.

Product Description: Since 1990, Jean Driscoll has been one of the most inspiring leaders in women's sports. Her tenacity for winning at women's wheelchair racing has delivered her into the record books, and her charisma and enthusiasm for life has captured the hearts of audiences worldwide...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Arndt, Rick