Sports & Recreation Audiobooks

Anatoli Boukreev's first-hand account of the worst human disaster in the history of Mt. Everest will hold listeners spellbound. A top-rated guide and high altitude climber, Boukreev dictated the raw and powerful details of this ill-fated trek from memories and notes recorded just five days after the catastrophe. In May of 1996, 33 people went up the mountain, but only 28 returned. As two commercial expeditions climbed the world's highest peak, poor planning, miscommunication, and an unpredictable blizzard conspired to defeat them. Although the author made it back to the safety of his tent, he defied his own pain and exhaustion to go back up the mountain. His rescue attempt saved the lives of three climbers. The events of those two fateful days prompted researchers at MIT to develop new technology that could prevent the recurrence of such a disaster. Narrators Richard M. Davidson and Nelson Runger sensitively convey the full scope of a drama and a tragedy the world hopes never to see again.

Anatoli Boukreev, G. Weston Dewalt (Author), Anatoli Boukreev, Lloyd James, Nelson Runger, Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Narrator)

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Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery

Still unsolved, still baffling, still claiming new victims. Here are the untold stories. A pilot reports a strange haze enveloping his plane, then disappears; eleven hours after fuel starvation, as if calling from a void, he is heard 600 miles away. He requests permission to land, then vanishes forever. A freighter steaming over placid seas disappears without a trace. A pleasure yacht ghosts past without a soul on board. A pilot calls for help because a 'weird object' is harassing his plane. A jet collides with an 'unknown' and is never found. . . . Into the Bermuda Triangle is the first comprehensive examination of these baffling disappearances in more than a generation. Drawing on official reports from the NTSB and other investigative agencies as well as interviews with scientists, theorists, and survivors, leading authority Gian Quasar not only sets the record straight on previously examined cases, he also offers a bulging file of new cases, the collective results of his twelve-year investigation. In meticulous detail this unflinching account: Documents confirmed disappearances of airplanes and ships Gathers new testimony and reexamines old interviews from eyewitnesses and survivors Explores possible explanations ranging from zero-point energy to magnetic vortices Challenges our assumptions with the sheer weight of accumulated evidence In this age of technological and scientific discovery, there are still mysteries that transcend understanding. The Bermuda Triangle is one. 'The best book I've ever read on this important subject.'-Andrew Griffin, The Town Talk

Gian J. Quasar (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game

Best-selling author George Vecsey is an esteemed and award-winning sports journalist for the New York Times. In Baseball, he recounts the history of America's national pastime. Baseball has been around in various forms for thousands of years, but within the last 200 years it has become an American institution. Growing from a sport played in open fields and in big city streets, baseball has seen its share of innovators and detractors, heroes and villains. Vecsey details them all from the scandalous Black Sox of 1919 and modern steroid abusers to icons like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and the countless underdogs that came out of nowhere to capture the imaginations of fans everywhere. As with each Modern Library Chronicle, Vecsey's Baseball is a concise history filled with details and stories that will appeal to rookie and veteran fans alike. Narrator Alan Nebelthau's warm voice punctuates all of the wit and charm of Vecsey's prose. Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game is an invitation to [Vecsey's] house for Sunday dinner. The pace is more relaxed, the meal much larger, the result as wonderful as you suspected it would be.-Leigh Montville

George Vecsey (Author), Alan Nebelthau (Narrator)

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The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic

The year is 1925. It is sixty degrees below zero. The wind sweeps tons of snow over the deep-frozen Alaskan landscape. The nearest railhead is seven hundred miles away. Airplanes cannot fly. The way to Nome is blocked by a treacherous frozen sound, an icebound port, and mountains to the west. But there is a diphtheria epidemic in Nome. The children need serum from the outside world if they are to survive. Their only hope is a few chosen Eskimo drivers and their teams of dogs, who must make a relay race across the wilderness if the serum is to get to Nome in time. The heroism and stamina of the men and their dogs can only be called legendary. Now, their story can be told.

Gay Salisbury, Laney Salisbury (Author), Margot Dionne (Narrator)

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Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can’t buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Michael Lewis (Author), Michael Lewis (Narrator)

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Who's Your Caddy?: Looping for the Great, Near Great, and Reprobates of Golf

The funniest and most popular sportswriter in America abandons his desk at Sports Illustrated to caddy for some of the world’s most famous golfers, and some celebrity duffers, recounting it all in this hilarious and revealing look at the world of golf. Who knows a golfer best? Who’s with them every minute of every round, hears their muttering, knows whether they cheat? Their caddies, of course. So sportswriter Rick Reilly figured that he could learn a lot about the players and their games by caddying, even though he had absolutely no idea how to do it. Amazingly, some of the best golfers in the world—including Jack Nicklaus, David Duval, Tom Lehman, John Daly, Casey Martin, and Jill McGill—agreed to let Reilly carry their bags at actual PGA and LPGA Tour events. To round out his portrait of the golfing life, Reilly also caddied at the Masters, persuaded Deepak Chopra and Donald Trump to use him as a caddy, accompanied high-rolling golf hustlers in Las Vegas around the course, and carried the bag for a blind golfer. In Who’s Your Caddy?, Reilly chronicles his experiences in the same inimitable style that makes his back-page column for Sports Illustrated a must-read for more than twenty million people every week. From his laugh-out-loud portrait of Deepak Chopra decomposing on the green, to his portraits of good ol’ boys who bet $100,000 a round, to his hilarious descriptions of his own ineptitude as a caddy, to his insights into what makes the greats of golf so great, Reilly combines a wicked wit with an expert’s eye in a most original and entertaining look at golf. Who’s Your Caddy? is the next best thing to a great round of golf. It is sure to delight low-handicappers, high-handicappers, and everyone in between.

Rick Reilly (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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The Teammates

More than 6 years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his ground-breaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves. The Teammates is the profoundly moving story of four great baseball players who have made the passage from sports icons--when they were young and seemingly indestructible--to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the book is the friendship of these four very different men--Boston Red Sox teammates Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams--who remained close for more than sixty years. The book starts out in early October 2001, when Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky begin a 1,300-mile trip by car to visit their beloved friend Ted Williams, whom they know is dying. Bobby Doerr, the fourth member of this close group--"my guys," Williams used to call them--is unable to join them.This is a book--filled with historical details and first-hand accounts--about baseball and about something more: the richness of friendship.

David Halberstam (Author), Tate Donovan (Narrator)

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The Long Ball : The Summer of '75-Spaceman, Catfish, Charlie Hustle, and the Greatest World Series E

Includes an exclusive interview with the author Critically acclaimed writer Tom Adelman crafts a dynamic re-telling of baseball's thrilling 1975 season. The year ended with the greatest World Series of all time, featuring a legendary home run by Boston catcher Carlton Fisk. From the preseason through the final game, Adelman gives a behind-the-scenes account that is blunt, funny, and sometimes shocking.

Tom Adelman (Author), Richard Davidson, Richard M. Davidson (Narrator)

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My Losing Season

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply affecting coming-of-age memoir about family, love, loss, basketball-and life itself-by the beloved author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini During one unforgettable season as a Citadel cadet, Pat Conroy becomes part of a basketball team that is ultimately destined to fail. And yet for a military kid who grew up on the move, the Bulldogs provide a sanctuary from the cold, abrasive father who dominates his life-and a crucible for becoming his own man. With all the drama and incandescence of his bestselling fiction, Conroy re-creates his pivotal senior year as captain of the Citadel Bulldogs. He chronicles the highs and lows of that fateful 1966-67 season, his tough disciplinarian coach, the joys of winning, and the hard-won lessons of losing. Most of all, he recounts how a group of boys came together as a team, playing a sport that would become a metaphor for a man whose spirit could never be defeated. Praise for My Losing Season "A superb accomplishment, maybe the finest book Pat Conroy has written."-The Washington Post Book World "A wonderfully rich memoir that you don't have to be a sports fan to love."-Houston Chronicle "A memoir with all the Conroy trademarks . . . Here's ample proof that losers always tell the best stories."-Newsweek "In My Losing Season, Conroy opens his arms wide to embrace his difficult past and almost everyone in it."-New York Daily News "Haunting, bittersweet and as compelling as his bestselling fiction."-Boston Herald From the Hardcover edition.

Pat Conroy (Author), Chuck Montgomery (Narrator)

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Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Michael Lewis (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator)

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Golf for Enlightenment: The Seven Lessons for the Game of Life

Deepak Chopra has discovered the delights-and frustrations-of golf, and he is passionate about the game. Confronted by the wild ups and downs of his own play, he consulted with golf professionals and developed a new approach to the game that any golfer can follow-from the novice to the expert. The results can be measured not only in increased enjoyment and skill, but also in greater wisdom about life beyond the 18th hole. Chopra's own game has improved dramatically since incorporating the elements of his program. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of a "perfect" swing, Chopra reveals how golf can be mastered through mindfulness, a form of awareness that combines sharp focus and relaxation at the same time. Expanded awareness, he tells us, can accomplish much more than external mechanics to improve one's game. But Golf for Enlightenment is also an engrossing story about Adam, an Everyman who is playing a terrible round of golf when he meets a mysterious young teaching pro named Leela. In seven short but profound lessons detailing spiritual strategies, she teaches Adam the essence of a game that has much to explain about life itself. Chopra has spent the last year taking the unique message in Golf for Enlightenment nationwide, teaching the essential tenets of his program at lectures and seminars to golfers everywhere. His message continues to help players turn an obsession into a positive life path.

Deepak Chopra, Deepak Chopra MD, Deepak Chopra, M.D., M.D. Deepak Chopra (Author), Deepak Chopra, Deepak Chopra MD, Deepak Chopra, M.D., M.D. Deepak Chopra (Narrator)

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The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic

Gay Salisbury, Laney Salisbury (Author), Barrett Whitener, Margot Dionne (Narrator)

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