Best Sports Books

Nine working-class young men from the University of Washington defeat Hitler's German eight at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Brown builds to the Berlin race through 350 pages of character establishment and rowing physics that make the climax genuinely emotional. Extraordinary research and pacing.

Skip this if: Skip this if you don't want period detail — the Depression-era Pacific Northwest is as important as the rowing.

How Billy Beane and Peter Brand used statistical analysis to compete against rich teams with a fraction of the payroll. Lewis uses baseball to make a point about the market for undervalued assets and the resistance of established institutions to new information. Changed how professional sports are run.

Skip this if: Skip this if you don't enjoy baseball — the Oakland A's context is central and can't be abstracted away.

Agassi's memoir is the most honest athlete autobiography ever published — he admits to drug use, to hating his sport, to the psychological damage of an overbearing father. The tennis sections are excellent but the memoir's value is in its refusal to construct a heroic narrative.

Skip this if: Skip this if you want hagiography — Agassi admits to hating tennis for most of his career and to using crystal meth.

The story of the Tarahumara people of Mexico's Copper Canyon, who run hundred-mile races in sandals, becomes a larger exploration of human physiology and the natural joy of running. McDougall writes with enormous enthusiasm and the central story is wonderful.

Skip this if: Skip this if you want clinical research over narrative — some of McDougall's claims about barefoot running have been contested.

A year following a Texas high school football team becomes an examination of what sports mean to communities without other outlets for shared identity. The football is good; the cultural portrait is devastating. The best sports book that's really about something else.

Skip this if: Skip this if you want pure sports narrative — Bissinger uses high school football to examine race, class, and the cost of small-town sports obsession.