🧲 Books like this
The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch
Jonathan Gottschall · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Way of the Fight
Georges St-Pierre · 227 pages
UFC fighter, Georges "Rush" St. Pierre, shares the lessons he learned on his way to the top, in The Way of the Fight, revealing how he overcame bullying and injury to become an internationally celebrated athlete and champion.
My Fight / Your Fight
Ronda Rousey, Maria Burns Ortiz · 313 pages
Ronda Rousey, the Olympic medalist in judo, reigning UFC women's bantamweight champion, and new Hollywood action hero, charts her difficult path to glory. Rousey's account of the toughest fights of her life -- in and outside the Octagon -- reveals the painful loss of her father when she was eight years old, the intensity of her judo training, her battles with love, her meteoric rise to fame, the s
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Joshua Foer · 307 pages
The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory “Highly entertaining.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “Funny, curious, erudite, and full of useful details about ancient techniques of training memory.” —The Boston Globe An instant bestseller that has now become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlo
How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind Over Muscle
Matt Fitzgerald · 301 pages
"Fitzgerald puts you into the pulse-pounding action of more than a dozen epic races from running, cycling, triathlon, XTERRA, and rowing with thrilling race reports and revealing post-race interviews with the elites. Their own words reinforce what the research has found: strong mental fitness lets us approach our true physical limits, giving us an edge over physically stronger competitors. Each ch
The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
Steven Kotler · 234 pages
"An exploration of how extreme athletes are able to break the limits of ultimate human performance and what we can learn from their mastery of the state of consciousness known as "flow." "--
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
W. Timothy Gallwey · 141 pages
Concentrates upon overcoming mental attitudes that adversely affect tennis performance, including learning to relax, effectively concentrating, and discarding bad habits.
Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success
Matthew Syed · 312 pages
In this thoughtful, provocative book, a former Olympian persuasively demonstrates how sports offer powerful and often overlooked tools with which to explore fundamental subjects, including biology, morality, globalization, culture, gender, race, and economics.
Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won
Tobias J. Moskowitz, L. Jon Wertheim · 278 pages
In Scorecasting, University of Chicago behavioral economist Tobias Moskowitz teams up with veteran Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim to overturn some of the most cherished truisms of sports, and reveal the hidden forces that shape how basketball, baseball, football, and hockey games are played, won and lost. Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economi
A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex
Chris Jericho, Peter T. Fornatale · 432 pages
Chris Jericho is the first undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the WWE and WCW, and has been called one of the fifty greatest wrestlers of all time. Now retired, he is writing his memoir, telling the story of his journey from wrestling school in Canada to his time in leagues in Mexico and Japan to his big break in the WCW. He'll dish the dirt on how he worked his way through the ranks alongside maj
Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby · 247 pages
In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that's before the players even take the field. Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Horn
Foley Is Good: And The Real World Is Faker Than Wrestling
Mick Foley · 592 pages
Running Like a Girl
Alexandra Heminsley · 220 pages
"In her twenties, Alexandra Heminsley spent more time drinking white wine than she did in pursuit of athletic excellence. When she decided to take up running in her thirties, she had high hopes for a blissful runner's high and immediate physical transformation. After eating three slices of toast with honey and spending ninety minutes on iTunes creating the perfect playlist, she hit the streets--an
A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL
Stefan Fatsis · 346 pages
Drawing on rare access to an NFL team’s players, coaches and facilities, the author of The New York Times bestseller Word Freak trains to become a professional-caliber placekicker. As he sharpens his skills, he gains surprising insight into the daunting challenges—physical, psychological, and intellectual—that pro athletes must masterIn Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis infiltrated the insular world of co
The Bullpen Gospels: A Non-Prospect's Pursuit of the Major Leagues and the Meaning of Life
Dirk Hayhurst · 340 pages
From the humble heights of a Class-A pitcher's mound to the deflating lows of sleeping on his gun-toting grandmother's air mattress, veteran reliever Dirk Hayhurst steps out of the bullpen to deliver the best pitch of his career—a raw, unflinching and surprisingly moving account of his life in the minors.I enjoyed the visualizations, maybe a little too much, and would stop only when I felt I'd cen
American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China
Matthew Polly · 359 pages
Growing up a ninety-pound weakling tormented by bullies, Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become a fighter like in his favorite 1970s TV series, Kung Fu. Later, Matthew decided to pursue this quixotic dream: he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism. Expecting to find a
Don't Put Me In, Coach: My Incredible NCAA Journey from the End of the Bench to the End of the Bench
Mark Titus · 257 pages
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages
*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell · 320 pages
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their
The Will to Climb: Obsession and Commitment and the Quest to Climb Annapurna--the World's Deadliest Peak
Ed Viesturs, David Roberts · 281 pages
Gironimo! Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy
Tim Moore · 360 pages
"The 1914 Giro d'Italia : The hardest bike race in history. Eighty-one riders started and only eight finished after enduring cataclysmic storms, roads strewn with nails, and even the loss of an eye by one competitor. And now Tim Moore is going to ride it. And he's committed to total authenticity"--