book-excerpt Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Day The War Came For Muhammad Ali
The following is excerpted from Leigh Montville’s new book, Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. The United States of America, 1966-71....

How NFL Quarterback Jersey Sales Nearly Destroyed The Union
The following excerpt comes from Matthew Futterman’s Players: The Story of Sports and Money, and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution, released yesterday by Simon & Schuster. This excerpt tells the little-known story of NFL executives Frank Vuono and Mike Ornstein, who attempted to thwa...

The Time Robert Parish Won Thousands By Dunking On Manute Bol
The following story about the 1985-86 Boston Celtics is excerpted from Back from the Dead, released last month by Simon & Schuster, and available here....

Rory McIlroy Is A Shark
The following is excerpted from the New York Times bestseller Slaying the Tiger: A Year Inside the Ropes on the PGA Tour. The paperback version was released this week, and is available here....

College Football Is My Terrible Boyfriend
Excerpted from Diane Roberts’s new book, Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America, now on sale....

Walter Matthau Was Addicted To Losing
A Siegel Film, Don Siegel’s account of his life as a film director is an entertaining and instructive guide to making movies. I especially like the section about Siegel’s experience working with Walter Matthau on Charley Varrick. ...

The Time I Went To Havana And Hooked Up With Castro's Granddaughter
The following is excerpted from The Domino Diaries: My Decade with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost in the Last Days of Castro’s Cuba, by Brin-Jonathan Butler....

Surging Into Adolescence With William Finnegan
William Finnegan’s new book, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life looks like a choice read. Dig the excerpt in The New Yorker: ...

No One Tells You About The Banana Peels: My Very Brief Career In Surgery
It started with a banana peel....

Not Minding That It Hurts
Little Boy Blues is Malcolm Jones’ beautiful memoir about growing up with his mother (and sometimes, his father) in North Carolina in the late Fifties and early Sixties. It’s my favorite kind of memoir—understated, succinct, honed. The prose is precise without being delicate: “My father was a quiet...

A Credible Saint: How Dean Smith Became North Carolina's Moral Compass
The following is excerpted from To Hate Like This is to Be Happy Forever, by Will Blythe. ...

There's Nothing More Loathsome Than Making A Film
From the funtastic new book, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany, check out this short essay Westlake wrote about working with Stephen Frears....

The Oral History Of The 2003 World Series Of Poker Main Event, Day One
The 2014 WSOP Main Event begins airing this weekend. Here's an account of the tournament that started the poker boom, from the people who were there. Excerpted from the full oral history, The Moneymaker Effect: The Inside Story Of The Tournament That Forever Changed Poker....

Machers And Rockers: Jews And The Blues
From Rich Cohen's winning book, The Record Men, here's an excerpt about Leonard Chess and Muddy Waters:...

Harper Lee: Roll Tide!
Harper Lee, author of one of the most popular American novels ever written, was famous for not granting interviews. But Marja Mills, a former reporter and feature writer for the Chicago Tribune, became friendly with Lee and her sister, Alice Finch Lee, and was permitted to write about them. Mills's ...

Playing For Keeps
Ah, yet another sure shot from our pals over at Longform. Dig this excerpt from David Halberstam's book about MJ, Playing For Keeps:...

Who Does Jameis Winston Think He Is—Joe Namath?
A story about the other famous shoplifting quarterback, excerpted from the book Rising Tide: Bear Bryant, Joe Namath and Dixie's Last Quarter....

Missing A Beat: Library Of America's Story Of The Week
The LOA's story of the week comes from the great Seymour Krim. Check it out and then g'head and pick up the fine LOA collection, The Cool School. ...

Paper Tiger
Dig this excerpt from Stanley Woodward's classic memoir, "Paper Tiger." It concerns Red Smith and the great horse racing columnist, Joe Palmer:...
