Sports and Recreation Nonfiction Book Gift Ideas
Where are my sports and recreation book gift-givers?
I'll be sharing my annual Bossy book gift lists leading up to the holidays, and I hope you'll find a book or two in these lists of ideas to delight someone you love--or to give to yourself! Last week I posted about cookbook gift ideas that look delicious; you can check out that list here.
Below you can find short snippets about the six 2024 sports-focused releases that sound so promising, I'm excited to give them as gifts this holiday season--plus six bonus books, listed below, that also look intriguing:
Queen of the Court: The Many Lives of Tennis Legend Alice Marble by Madeleine Blais (2022)
Macho Man: The Untamed, Unbelievable Life of Randy Savage by Jon Finkel (2024)
Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know about Women by Maggie Mertens (2024)
1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession by Ned Boulting (2023)
The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 Into the World's Fastest-Growing Sport by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg (2024)
Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon by Mirin Fader (2024)
Don't forget to check my past Bossy gift idea lists for quirky books, perennial classics, modern favorites, nonfiction must-haves, or other new-to-you titles that might be perfect for the people on your holiday list!
2023 Bossy Book Gift Guides
2022 Bossy Book Gift Guides
2021 Bossy Book Gift Guides
2020 Bossy Book Gift Guides
Bossy Independent Bookstore Love
A Bossy book-buying note: If you're buying books this holiday season, please support your local independent bookstore. They need and appreciate our business! (The book covers on this site link you to Bookshop, a site that supports the beloved indies that keep us swimming in thoughtful book recommendations and excellent customer service all year round.)
I love my local independent bookstore here in Charlotte, Park Road Books. They have a fantastic selection of titles, staff members offer spot-on recommendations (and sparkling personalities!), and they can order almost anything they don't have in stock.
01 There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
In There's Always This Year, Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America and They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, offers a book about baseball and life that defies categorization.
Abdurraqib grew up in the 1990s, the golden age of basketball and the period in which legends like LeBron James flourished.
The author's obsession with the sport serves as a catalyst to reflect with personal, sometimes poetic reflections upon who makes it and why, the fraught nature of role models, the tension between expectation and achievement, how sports shape our culture's thinking, dreams, notions of success, and more.
02 Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments by Joe Posnanski
From Patrick Mahomes's magic to the Ice Bowl, from Doug Flutie's Hail Mary pass to a plethora of football "miracles," Why We Love Football is an unforgettable, conversational masterpiece...
Last year's Bossy sports-book gift roundup included Joe Posnanski's Why We Love Baseball. In Posnanski's Why We Love Football, 100 key moments from our nation's number-one sport include well-known tales and lore as well as hidden gems that even football's biggest fans might not be familiar with.
Posnanski--who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina--is also the author of Why We Love Baseball, The Baseball 100, Paterno, and The Secret of Golf.
03 In My Element: Life Lessons from the World's Toughest Solo Ocean Race by Pip Hare
The boat picks up another wave and surfs again, faster this time, deafening. My eyes are streaming, sore from the icy wind that throws spray in my face. And over the top of it all I can hear my own laughter. I feel powerful, strong. I am a thousand miles from land in one of the world's most dangerous environments. Alone and free.
In My Element includes Pip Hare's firsthand account of her experiences in The Vendée Globe Race, one of the world's most grueling sporting events, a singlehanded, nonstop loop of Earth, without assistance. The route carries sailors from the edges of Antarctica, through the dangers of the rough Southern Ocean and onward.
Hare shares the mental fortitude, grueling physical challenges, and how she became a middle-aged woman defying all expectations--and living a thrilling life of adventure.
04 Narcoball: Love, Death and Football in Escobar's Colombia by David Arrowsmith
Narcoball uncovers the incredible story of Colombian football during the early 1990s--shaped by drug lords, rivalries, and ambition. It uncovers a football empire backed by cartels--where victory was a currency of its own, and defeat, a matter of life and death.
Pablo Escobar's number-one obsession was football, and in Narcoball, David Arrowsmith reveals the elaborate machinations that allowed Escobar to shape the Medellin football clubs, as told by players and politicians.
From the murders of referees, to the untold influence of drug cartels upon football officials, to the killing of the defender Andres Escobar, who died after an own goal in the 1994 World Cup, the meticulously researched Narcoball offers details of the shocking lengths the drug lord and his biggest rival were willing to go to in order to control their favorite sport.
05 Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O'Brien
A page-turning work of narrative nonfiction chronicling the incredible story of one of America’s most iconic, charismatic, and still polarizing figures—baseball immortal Pete Rose—and an exquisite cultural history of baseball and America in the second half of the twentieth century.
O'Brien tells the story of the legendary Pete Rose, a polarizing baseball figure who decades ago secured the record for most hits--a record that still stands--and who was also at the center of the biggest sports-gambling scandal of all time.
Charlie Hustle also explores the many layers of complications, conflicts of interest, and potential influence related to the modern-day explosion of sports betting.
06 The Catch of a Lifetime: Moments of Flyfishing Glory by Peter Kaminsky
With its tales of brown trout in Montana and bluefish at Montauk Point, smallmouth in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and unforgettable adventures with giant taimen on the steppes of central Asia, bonefish in New Caledonia, white marlin in the Baja, and golden dorado in the tribal lands along the Amazon’s headwaters, this gorgeously illustrated anthology is a transporting testament to the call that all anglers heed—to get out there and be one with the water.
Author Peter Kaminsky offers a beautifully illustrated set of first-person accounts of fly-fishing experiences they'll never forget.
The authors, artists, poets, and guides who share their stories include Carl Hiaasen, Joan Wulff, Nick Lyons, Rachel Finn, Tom Colicchio, Rachel Maddow, Mark Kurlansky, Brittany Howard, Hilary Hutcheson, and John McPhee.
Peter Kaminsky is also the author dozens of other books.
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