Olympics and sports book recommendations for your summer reading list
Rae-Anne Norwood, from Canada, lays in the sun reading a book. (J Pat Carter/AP)
Do the Olympics have you wanting to read more about sports? Here & Now‘s Scott Tong gets book recommendations from Traci Thomas of “The Stacks” podcast.
Book recommendations from Traci Thomas
Nonfiction
- “Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports” by Dave Zirin
- “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” by Laura Hillenbrand
- “Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose and the Last Glory Days of Baseball” by Keith O’Brien
- “The Sixth Man: A Memoir” by Andre Iguodala
- “There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension” by Hanif Abdurraqib
- “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis
- “Coming Home” by Britney Griner with Michelle Burford
- “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters” by Joan Ryan
- “Among the Thugs” by Bill Buford
- “One Day in September: The Full Story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli Revenge Operation ‘Wrath of God’” by Simon Reeve
- “We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality” by Louis Moore
- “The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports” by Michael Waters
- “Land of Second Chances: The Impossible Rise of Rwanda’s Cycling Team” by Tim Lewis
- “The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team and How It Changed the World” by Jere Longman
- “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen” by Christopher McDougall
- “Victory, Stand: Raising My Fist for Justice” by Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes, and Dawud Anyabwile
Fiction
- “Headshot” by Rita Bullwinkel
- “The Swimmers” by Julie Otsuka
- “The Natural” by Bernard Malamud
- “Godwin” by Joseph O’Neill
- “The Art of Fielding” by Chad Harbach
- “Ghost” by Jason Reynolds
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
