Access Top-Rated Full Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Sports

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Title: Talk of Champions: Stories of the People Who Made Me: A Memoir

Author: Kenny Smith

Narrator: Kenny Smith

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 6 hours 48 minutes

Release date: May 9, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.25 of Total 4

Ratings of Narrator: 2.5 of Total 2

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

A revealing, humorous, behind-the-scenes memoir from Kenny 'The Jet' Smith—superstar basketball commentator, host of the top-rated show, Inside the NBA, and two-time NBA champion. Smith reveals memorable inside stories of his playing and broadcasting careers, focusing on the star players, coaches, and mentors who inspired him along the way.   Kenny Smith was a star at the University of North Carolina before his storied NBA run, in which he won two championships with the Houston Rockets. His popularity skyrocketed when he joined TNT’s new show, Inside the NBA, which has thrived for twenty-four years and won multiple Emmys, receiving enormous acclaim for the insight, humor, social commentary, and unrivaled basketball coverage from Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Ernie Johnson, Jr. Kenny is known to fans for his laser-sharp analysis and eloquent observations of the basketball scene and culture.    In this honest and profound memoir, Kenny writes chapters about each of the extraordinary people who taught him invaluable life lessons. He illuminates the personalities, affections, and quirks of friends such as Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kobe Bryant, among others, and what he learned from each of them. He writes about his legendary UNC coach, Dean Smith, and other indelible role models through his career. And he interweaves poignant material about his upbringing in Queens, New York, his parents, his children, and his marriage, explaining the rich knowledge he obtained from the important figures around him. Kenny is also a strong, intelligent voice on race, as his fans and TV viewers will know. Ultimately this is a revealing, humorous, and powerful memoir, offering a candid glimpse inside the rarified world of elite sports and broadcasting, with inspiring takeaways.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622451 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Feherty: The Remarkably Funny and Tragic Journey of Golf's David Feherty

Author: John Feinstein

Narrator: John Feinstein

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 1 minute

Release date: May 9, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.8 of Total 5

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

The definitive biography of enigmatic golfer, commentator, and performer David Feherty—one of the most universally beloved figures in the game. John Feinstein, who has spent four decades finding intriguing sports characters and narratives and turning them into classic books, chronicles the life and career of David Feherty. The two have known each other for years, beginning with Feinstein’s work on A Good Walk Spoiled, researched and written at a time when Feherty was an excellent player, who won five times in Europe and was on the '91 Ryder Cup team, but also a functioning alcoholic. In retirement from the game, Feherty has sobered up, while his golf world persona has only grown in stature. Feherty is now a grand ambassador for golf, a man who is feted by US Presidents and respected by every big name in the game.   Feinstein tells hilarious true tales about Feherty’s time in the limelight and interactions with stars such as Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Payne Stewart, and Seve Ballesteros. He also details Feherty’s struggles with alcoholism, the death of his son who was lost to addiction, and the highs and lows of Feherty’s marriages. Feinstein captures the human being behind the athlete, and his triumphant rebound as a golf commentator after his athletic career fell apart. Feherty is fall-down-funny, self-deprecating, and a lifelong underdog who has thrived as a commentator and television interview host, and most recently as a touring standup comic, using the difficult experiences of his life as a source for humor and understanding, which Feinstein mines with an expert’s touch.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/649094 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Surviving to Drive: A Year Inside Formula 1

Author: Guenther Steiner

Narrator: Guenther Steiner

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Release date: April 20, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.71 of Total 7

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 4

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

Brought to you by Penguin. 'People talk about football managers being under pressure. Trust me, that's nothing. Pressure is watching one of your drivers hit a barrier at 190mph and exploding before your eyes...' Guenther Steiner is one of motor racing's biggest and most celebrated characters, known to millions for his show-stealing appearances on Netflix's hugely popular fly on the wall series, Drive to Survive. In Surviving to Drive, the Haas team principal takes readers inside his Formula 1 team for the entirety of the 2022 season, giving an unobstructed view of what really takes place behind the scenes. Through this unique lens, Guenther takes us on the thrilling rollercoaster of life at the heart of high stakes motor racing. Packed full of twists and turns, from hiring and firing drivers, balancing books, pre-season preparations, the design, launch and testing of a car - and of course, the race calendar itself - this is the first time that an F1 team has allowed an acting team principal to tell the full story of a whole season. Uncompromising and searingly honest, told in Steiner's inimitable style, this is a fascinating and hugely entertaining account of the realities of running a Formula 1 team. ©2023 Guenther Steiner (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/619198 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Unraveled: A Climber's Journey Through Darkness and Back

Author: Katie Brown

Narrator: Sarah Zimmerman

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

Release date: April 18, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

As a teenager in the 1990s, Katie Brown was one of climbing's first 'comp kids'—a young natural who, along with her peers, redefined the image of a strong and successful climber. After climbing for less than two years, Brown won her first junior national title. The next year she became the Junior World Champion at age fourteen in Laval, France. In 1996 she won both the Rock Master—a prestigious international contest in Arco, Italy—and the esteemed X-Games. From 1996 on, Brown won every US Adult National that she entered, as well as a World Cup Title in France in 1999. Yet even as she reigned on the podium, Brown felt her life begin to unravel. A quiet child, she struggled with a home life that was very different behind closed doors than it seemed on television. A fundamentalist version of Christianity was at the center of the household, and Brown fought to live according to rules that were strict, ever-changing, and irrational. Isolated and feeling hopeless, Brown latched onto food as something she could control. She quit competitive climbing and bounced in and out of the industry, eventually disappearing in her late twenties. Now, more than two decades later, Brown is ready to share her story. Unraveled answers the question thousands of fans worldwide have wondered: 'What ever happened to Katie Brown?'

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/630273 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson

Author: Ashley Brown

Narrator: Karen Chilton

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 24 hours 4 minutes

Release date: April 11, 2023

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career, Althea Gibson became the most famous Black sportswoman of the mid-twentieth century. In her unprecedented athletic career, she was the first African American to win titles at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open.In this first full-scale biography, Ashley Brown narrates the public career and private struggles of Althea Gibson (1927–2003). Based on extensive archival work and oral histories, Serving Herself sets Gibson’s life and choices against the backdrop of the Great Migration, Jim Crow racism, the integration of American sports, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and second wave feminism. Throughout her life Gibson continuously negotiated the expectations of her supporters and adversaries, including her patrons in the Black-led American Tennis Association, the white-led United States Lawn Tennis Association, and the media, particularly the Black press and community’s expectations that she selflessly serve as a representative of her race. An incredibly talented, ultracompetitive, and not always likeable athlete, Gibson wanted to be treated as an individual first and foremost, not as a member of a specific race or gender. She was reluctant to speak openly about the indignities and prejudices she navigated as an African American woman, though she faced numerous institutional and societal barriers in achieving her goals. She frequently bucked conventional normsof femininity and put her career ahead of romantic relationships, making her personal life the subject of constant scrutiny and rumors. Despite her major wins and international recognition, including a ticker-tape parade in New York City and the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time, Gibson endeavored to find commercial sponsorship and permanent economic stability. Committed to self-sufficiency, she pivoted from the elite amateur tennis circuit to State Department–sponsored goodwill tours, attempts to find success as a singer and Hollywood actress, the professional golf circuit, a tour with the Harlem Globetrotters and her own professional tennis tour, coaching, teaching children at tennis clinics, and a stint as New Jersey Athletics Commissioner. As she struggled to support herself in old age, she was left with disappointment, recounting her past achievements decades before female tennis players were able to garner substantial earnings.A compelling life and times portrait, Serving Herself offers a revealing look at the rise and fall of a fiercely independent trailblazer who satisfied her own needs and simultaneously set a pathbreaking course for Black athletes.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/608893 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: LeBron

Author: Jeff Benedict

Narrator: Chris Jackson

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 17 hours 36 minutes

Release date: April 11, 2023

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

The first definitive biography of basketball legend LeBron James, by the acclaimed author of Tiger Woods. LeBron is unquestionably the greatest basketball player of the 21st century. Off the court, LeBron's political activism, outspoken stance on racism and social injustice have helped build a social media presence that includes 117 million followers on Instagram and 51 million followers on Twitter. He is an international brand worth billions of dollars. He doesn’t just have huge endorsement deals with some of the biggest corporations in the world; LeBron sits on boards of directors and has an equity stake in the companies he sponsors. He has forged a close friendship with President Barack Obama and clashed publicly with President Donald Trump. As a child, LeBron was a lost little boy living in a public housing project in Akron, Ohio. His mother, who had LeBron when she was just sixteen, would disappear for days at a time. Scared and alone, LeBron rarely attended school. He was dirt poor and fatherless. And he had never played organised basketball. Yet he would become the most successful and most popular athlete that the United States has produced this century, bringing success to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers. To tell this epic story, Benedict has done exhaustive research, digging through thousands of pages of primary source documents, articles, books and hundreds of hours of video footage. He’s also conducted hundreds of interviews with the people who were intimately involved with LeBron from the beginning of his life to the present. He shows the initial slow rise of a star that suddenly transformed into a speeding comet during his senior year of high school. It is a unique and unmissable insight into one of the world's greatest athletes.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/601088 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: LeBron

Author: Jeff Benedict

Narrator: Chris Jackson

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 17 hours 36 minutes

Release date: April 11, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.6 of Total 5

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the #1 bestselling author of The Dynasty and Tiger Woods—the “definitive…fantastic” (Sports Illustrated) biography of basketball superstar LeBron James, based on three years of exhaustive research and more than 250 interviews. LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of the twenty-first century, and he’s in the conversation with Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time. The reigning king of the game and the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, LeBron wears the crown like he was born with it. Yet his ascent has been anything but effortless and predetermined—the truth is vastly more interesting than that. What makes LeBron’s story so compelling is how he won his destiny despite overwhelmingly long odds, in a drama worthy of a Dickens novel. As a child, he was a scared and lonely little boy living a nomadic existence in Akron, Ohio. His mother, who had LeBron when she was sixteen, would sometimes leave him on his own. Destitute and fatherless, he missed close to one hundred days of school in the fourth grade. Desperate, his mother placed him with a family that gave him stability and put a basketball in his hands. “An absorbing chronicle of talent, character, pluck, and luck” (Wall Street Journal) LeBron tells the full, riveting saga of how a child adrift found the will to become a titan. Jeff Benedict, the most celebrated sports biographer of our time, paints a vivid picture of LeBron’s epic origin story, showing the gradual rise of a star who, surrounded by a tight-knit group of teenage friends and adult mentors, accelerated into a speeding comet during high school. Today LeBron produces Hollywood films and television shows, has a social media presence that includes more than one hundred million followers, engages in political activism, takes outspoken stances on racism and social injustice, and transforms lives through his visionary philanthropy. He went from a lost boy in Akron to a beloved hero who uses his fortune to educate underprivileged children and lift up needy families—and brought home Cleveland’s first NBA championship. But LeBron is more than just the origin story of a GOAT or a recap of his multi-championship, multi-MVP, gold medal–decorated career on the court. Benedict delves into LeBron’s relationship with fame and power: how he has cultivated it, harnessed it, suffered from it, and leveraged it. In these pages, we watch his evolution from a player who avoided politics and was widely criticized for not joining his teammates in protesting China’s role in the Darfur genocide to becoming an athlete who partnered with President Obama; campaigned for Hillary Clinton; became an advocate against gun violence, racism, and voter suppression; and openly clashed with President Trump, empowering other athletes to speak out against social injustice. To capture LeBron’s extraordinary life, Benedict conducted hundreds of interviews with the people who were involved with LeBron at different stages of his life. He also obtained thousands of pages of primary source documents and mined hundreds of hours of video footage. Destined to be the authoritative account of LeBron’s life, LeBron is a “masterful…propulsive” (Los Angeles Times) and unprecedented portrait of one of the world’s most captivating figures.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/617621 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Choosing to Run: A Memoir

Author: Des Linden

Narrator: Des Linden

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 5 hours 31 minutes

Release date: April 4, 2023

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.29 of Total 14

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 4

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

Featuring both the story of an historic, unforgettable win and insight into the life of an indelible champion, Choosing to Run is a truly inspirational memoir from Boston Marathon winner and Olympian Des Linden, sharing her personal story and what motivates her to keep showing up. When Des woke up on April 16, 2018, the morning of the Boston Marathon, it was 39 degrees and raining, with high, gusty winds. The weather didn’t bother her. In fact, she thought it might be a blessing. She was far from peak form—recovering from illness and questioning her running future—and didn’t expect much of herself that day. But as she ticked off mile after mile in the brutal conditions, passing familiar landmarks on the course she knew by heart, something shifted. Opportunity unexpectedly presented itself. Des tapped into her inner strength and remembered all of the reasons she loved to race. Coming off Heartbreak Hill at Mile 22, Des took the lead and never relinquished it, becoming the 2018 Boston Marathon champion and the first American woman to win the race in thirty-three years.  Her career has always been defined by tenacity and an independent spirit, stretching back to her first competitive race in San Diego, when she beat better-outfitted, more experienced kids. Des was a two-time All-American at Arizona State University, and as her collegiate years wound down, she decided she wasn’t done with the sport. Des gambled on herself and moved to Michigan to give professional running a try. As she rose through the elite ranks, she became increasingly determined to do things her way in an industry often bound by the status quo. In her first book, readers will learn the story behind that resolve: the way Des trains, the way she thinks, her relationships with other great runners of her generation, and how much she values her family and friends. They’ll read about her deep connection to the most famous marathon in the world, her two very different Olympic experiences, and how she defined new goals and set a world record at the 50-kilometer distance.   Most of all, they’ll learn what makes her get up and run every day.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/601010 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Field of Dreams: 100 Years of Wembley in 100 Matches

Author: Nige Tassell

Narrator: Elliot Fitzpatrick

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 32 minutes

Release date: March 30, 2023

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

100 years of Wembley Stadium told through 100 matches.  The 1923 FA Cup final – aka the White Horse final – was the first football match played at the British Empire Exhibition Stadium. Although best-remembered for non-playing reasons – notably its vast, well-beyond-capacity crowd, which had to be marshalled by a policeman atop a white horse – that afternoon marked the historic opening chapter of the stadium’s long and eventful history, of the stadium soon to be known simply as Wembley.   Over the 100 years since that overcrowded day, Wembley has established itself as the home of the beautiful game and, almost certainly, the world’s most famous football stadium. Wembley occupies a special place in the hearts of players and punters alike. Watching your team at Wembley is the highlight of a fan’s lifetime of support; playing there the fulfilment of a childhood dream. Its sacred pitch has been the crucible of so many classic matches across the decades. World Cups have been won here, as have European Championships, FA Cups, European Cups, play-off finals, home internationals and more. Nige Tassell chooses 100 matches - from the well known to the unusual - that have shaped Wembley's legacy and tells a lively and original alternative history of the past 100 years of football, and of Britain. We hear a ball boy’s perspective on the FA Cup Final when Bert Trautmann broke his neck, and from the other commentator of the 1966 World Cup Final. Field of Dreams is the story of how football found its home.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/657801 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: On the Water: A Fishing Memoir

Author: Guy De La Valdene

Narrator: Jay Myers

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 6 hours 3 minutes

Release date: March 28, 2023

Genres: Sports

Publisher's Summary:

On the Water is a gorgeously written collection of essays that all take place on or near the water and pay tribute to the flora and fauna associated with those ecosystems. There are essays about the finer points of tickling rainbow trout in the streams of Normandy, and of eagles and ospreys fishing for bass while barely breaking the surface of the water. There are stories of droughts and floods, of dogs and boats, of worms and rattlesnakes, and even of catching and cooking soft-shell turtles that taste like osso-bucco. There is fishing and diving in the Bahamas, tarpon fishing in the Florida Keys, and fly fishing for sailfish in Central America. And there are larger-than-life personalities that are bigger than the fish tales they tell! On the Water is a finely honed and well crafted collection of tales for the true sportsman and makes for a perfect companion volume to la Valdene's celebrated collection of essays on hunting.