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Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business & Life

In Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business & Life high-profile personality Dr. Gene Landrum presents, in a self-help format, the 13 winning behaviors modeled by the 13 greatest athletes of the modern era. Landrum’s research into the lives of the great entrepreneurs and athletes, supported by a growing body of evidence, suggests that eminence, whether in business or sports derives not from genetic superiority, but from winning behaviors and learned emotional dispositions.

With a delightful blend of gifted story-telling and intellectual scholarship, Dr. Landrum has created a book that melds the recent discoveries in psychology and brain research with the dramatic performances of the world’s greatest athletes. Charismatic athletes such as Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, Martina Navratilova and Tiger Woods are analyzed in psycho-biographical profiles that focus on the underlying motivations and behaviors of these preeminent personalities rather than on what they achieved. In this respect and in its connection to the recent research in brain function and psychology, Dr. Landrum’s work is unprecedented in the extant literature on athletes and athletic technique.

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The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

In high school, I wondered whether the Jamaican Americans who made our track team so successful might carry some special speed gene from their tiny island. In college, I ran against Kenyans, and wondered whether endurance genes might have traveled with them from East Africa. At the same time, I began to notice that a training group on my team could consist of five men who run next to one another, stride for stride, day after day, and nonetheless turn out five entirely different runners. How could this be?

We all knew a star athlete in high school. The one who made it look so easy. He was the starting quarterback and shortstop; she was the all-state point guard and high-jumper. Naturals. Or were they?

The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training?
The truth is far messier than a simple dichotomy between nature and nurture. In the decade since the sequencing of the human genome, researchers have slowly begun to uncover how the relationship between biological endowments and a competitor’s training environment affects athleticism. Sports scientists have gradually entered the era of modern genetic research.

In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle. He investigates the so-called 10,000-hour rule to uncover whether rigorous and consistent practice from a young age is the only route to athletic excellence.

Along the way, Epstein dispels many of our perceptions about why top athletes excel. He shows why some skills that we assume are innate, like the bullet-fast reactions of a baseball or cricket batter, are not, and why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like an athlete’s will to train, might in fact have important genetic components.

This subject necessarily involves digging deep into sensitive topics like race and gender. Epstein explores controversial questions such as: Are black athletes genetically predetermined to dominate both sprinting and distance running, and are their abilities influenced by Africa’s geography? Are there genetic reasons to separate male and female athletes in competition? Should we test the genes of young children to determine if they are destined for stardom? Can genetic testing determine who is at risk of injury, brain damage, or even death on the field? Through on-the-ground reporting from below the equator and above the Arctic Circle, revealing conversations with leading scientists and Olympic champions, and interviews with athletes who have rare genetic mutations or physical traits, Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism.
 

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Fantasy Life: The Outrageous, Uplifting, and Heartbreaking World of Fantasy Sports from the Guy Who’s Lived It

Now a New York Times bestseller!

Fantasy football, fantasy baseball, fantasy basketball, even fantasy sumo wrestling: the world of fantasy sports is huge, and still growing. Today, more than 35 million people in the United States and Canada spend hours upon hours each week on their fantasy sports teams. And as the Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst for ESPN, Matthew Berry is on the front lines of what has grown from a niche subculture into a national pastime.

In Fantasy Life, Berry celebrates every aspect of the fantasy sports world. Brilliant trash talk. Unbelievable trophies. Insane draft day locations. Shake-your-head-in-disbelief punishments. Ingenious attempts at cheating. And surprisingly uplifting stories that remind us why we play these games in the first place.

Written with the same award-winning style that has made Berry one of the most popular columnists on ESPN.com, Fantasy Life is a book for both hard-core fantasy players and people who have never played before. Between tales of love and hate, birth and death, tattoos and furry animal costumes, the White House Situation Room and a 126-pound golden pelican, Matthew chronicles his journey from a fourteen-year-old fantasy player to the face of fantasy sports for the largest sports media company in the world.

Fantasy will save your life. Fantasy will set you free. And fantasy life is most definitely better than real life. You’ll see.

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Chicken Soup for the Sports Fan’s Soul: Stories of Insight, Inspiration and Laughter in the World of Sport

For pure exhilaration and drama, there’s nothing quite like sports: It’s the crack of the bat as it connects with the baseball, hurtling it into the bleachers for a home run; the swish of the basketball as it drops into the net for a three-point play at the buzzer; the roar of the crowd as the quarterback delivers a perfect spiral pass for the winning touchdown. Most importantly, sports bring out the best in the human spirit. There is an intensity and a richness inherent in every sporting experience that amplifies our emotions and our connection with the moment and, indeed, with ourselves.

This latest collection of Chicken Soup honors all that is good in the world of sports. From major leaguers to little leaguers, from hockey stars to figure skaters, and from horseracing to mushing, the stories in this book highlight the positive and transformative nature of sports. Readers will come to see sports as one of our most important and powerful teachers. They can teach us to focus and stay the course, or to develop a new strategy and rededicate ourselves to a goal. They can teach us to be humble in victory and gracious in defeat. They can teach us the importance of teamwork and remind us that we must strive to give our individual all. At their best, sports will build us up and they will wear us down; they will build character and teach us to overcome adversity.

This book is for anyone who has ever enjoyed watching or participating in any sport, from the professional athlete to the weekend warrior, from the soccer mom to the diehard sports fan, from the marathon runner to the neighborhood jogger.