The following booklist represents a portion of the books available in the Northglenn High School library. For additional books on this topic or related topics, please visit the library or use Destiny to search the collection.

The Barcelona Complex: Lionel Messi and the Making—and Unmaking—of the World's Greatest Soccer Club

796.334 KUP

FC Barcelona has evolved from a regional soccer club into one of the world’s most influential global brands, rivaling major corporations in reach and impact. Over the past thirty years, it became a model of excellence and attractive play, driven largely by the legacies of Johan Cruyff and longtime superstar Lionel Messi, who joined the club at thirteen and defined its modern success. As Messi’s era ends, so does Barcelona’s extraordinary golden period.

The Professional Wrestling Encyclopedia

796.812 GER

The Professional Wrestling Encyclopedia introduces readers to a variety of wrestling stars, exploring their gimmicks, storylines, and accomplishments. In addition, the book offers an in-depth introduction covering the origins and history of professional wrestling. Features include a glossary, additional resources, and an index.

The Striker and the Clock: On Being in the Game

796.334 CLO

Georgia Cloepfil played professional soccer for six years, on six teams, in six countries. In those years, the sport became more than a game—it was an immersive yet transient way of life. In South Korea, she lived and practiced in an isolated island compound next to an airport. In Australia, she coached youth teams on the side to pay her rent. In Lithuania, she played in the European Champions League, to empty stadiums and little fanfare. She lived out of a single suitcase, chasing better opportunities and the euphoria of playing well.

The Striker and the Clock is a beautiful examination of the joy and pain of serious athletics. It's also an eye-opening look at the still-developing world of professional women's soccer.

Baseball Heaven: Up Close and Personal, What It Was Really Like in the Major Leagues

920 GOL

For fifty years, bestselling author Peter Golenbock has been interviewing some of the most fascinating figures in baseball. In Baseball Heaven, Golenbock brings together for the first time the most historic and captivating of these conversations. The stories range from Elden Auker remembering the day Lou Gehrig told him he was sick to Albert Happy Chandler reflecting on his decision to allow Jackie Robinson into the big leagues, from Ralph Branca discussing the home run he gave up that cost the Dodgers the pennant to Del Webb talking about why he hired Casey Stengel and why he fired him.

The League: How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire

796.332 EIS

The epic tale of the five owners who shepherded the NFL through its tumultuous early decades and built the most popular sport in America. The National Football League is a towering, distinctly American colossus spewing out $14 billion in annual revenue. But it was not always a success. In The League, John Eisenberg focuses on the pioneering sportsmen who kept the league alive in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, when its challenges were many and its survival was not guaranteed.

True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson

796.357 KEN

True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson by Kostya Kennedy is an unconventional biography, focusing on four transformative years in Robinson's athletic and public life: 1946, his first year playing in the essentially all-white minor leagues for the Montreal Royals; 1949, when he won the Most Valuable Player Award in his third season as a Brooklyn Dodger; 1956, his final season in major league baseball, when he played valiantly despite his increasing health struggles; and 1972, the year of his untimely death. Through it all, Robinson remained true to the effort and the mission, true to his convictions and contradictions.

In a League of Her Own: Celebrating Female Firsts in the World of Sports

920 LAF

In a League of Her Own: Celebrating Female Firsts in Sports shares the stories of nineteen impactful women in sports, including Billie Jean King, Danica Patrick, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Laila Ali, Jeanie Buss, and Mary Lou Retton. These iconic women open up to Bonnie-Jill Laflin, herself a trailblazer as the first and only female NBA scout, about the sobering realities females face in the sports world and the many obstacles they had to overcome.

Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA

796.323 RUN

Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation's imagined descent into disorder. Weaving together a deep knowledge of the game with incisive social analysis, the author argues that this much-maligned period was pivotal to the rise of the modern-day NBA. Black players introduced an improvisational style derived from the playground courts of their neighborhoods. They also challenged the team owners' autocratic power, garnering higher salaries and increased agency. Their skills, style, and savvy laid the foundation for the global popularity and profitability of the league we know today.

Messenger: The Legend of Muhammad Ali

ALI (Graphic Novels)

Legendary icon Muhammad Ali, known worldwide as "The Greatest," immortalized those words by becoming one of the most significant and celebrated athletes of the 20th Century. Now, his epic story is retold for the next generation as a stunning graphic novel. Messenger: The Legend of Muhammad Ali chronicles Ali's journey from humble beginnings as Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, to his meteoric rise to Olympian and Heavyweight Champion of the world. Bringing readers through major moments of his life, this graphic biography pays reverent tribute to Ali the fighter, the poet, and the inspiration he quickly became.

The Stanley Cup Finals: Hockey's Greatest Tournament

796.962 SCH

Each season the two best teams in the National Hockey League battle for hockey's biggest prize: the Stanley Cup. Follow the epic upsets, game-winning goals, and most amazing games from the Stanley Cup Finals.

Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation

796.323 POW

Deep in the heart of northern Arizona, in a small and isolated patch of the vast 17.5-million-acre Navajo reservation, sits Chinle High School. Here, basketball is passion, passed from grandparent to parent to child. The town has 4,500 residents and the high school arena seats 7,000. Fans drive thirty, fifty, even eighty miles to see the fast-paced and highly competitive matchups that are more than just games to players and fans. Celebrated Times journalist Michael Powell brings us a moving story about a basketball team on a Navajo reservation that shows how important sports can be to youths in struggling communities, and the transcendent magic and painful realities that confront Native Americans living on reservations.

Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA

796.323 MEG

Rare Gems is the story of the pioneers who shaped so much of the modern infrastructure for women's basketball, whose histories intersect and wind their way through the state of Minnesota. It is the story of forcing open doors—to ensure teams even existed, to allow those teams to play in conditions resembling those men could take for granted, to ensure that the color of your skin or who you love would not be a barrier to building a life centered around basketball. To end the double-standard that treats every undeniable success by women as a one-off, but every setback as a referendum.

The Dynasty

796.332 BEN

It's easy to forget that the New England Patriots were once the laughingstock of the NFL, a nearly bankrupt team that had never won a championship and was on the brink of moving to St. Louis. Everything changed in 1994, when Robert Kraft acquired the franchise and soon brought on board head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. Since then, the Patriots have become a juggernaut, making ten trips to the Super Bowl, winning six of them, and emerging as one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world.

Talking to GOATs: The Moments You Remember and the Stories You Never Heard

796 GRA

In Talking to GOATs, award-winning broadcaster Jim Gray looks back at his four decades of sports reporting from the unparalleled perspective of one of the world's most respected and skilled interviewers. A journalist who many iconic athletes have trusted to tell their stories (of both triumph and disgrace), Jim has had unprecedented access to the people, places and extraordinary events in the world of sports. Asking tough but fair questions, he has broken numerous stories, and landed squarely in the middle of others.

Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe

92 THO

Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. He won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw's New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind. But despite his colossal skills, Thorpe's life was a struggle against the odds. His gold medals were unfairly rescinded because he had played minor league baseball. His later life was troubled by alcohol, broken marriages, and financial distress. He roamed from state to state and took bit parts in Hollywood, but even the film of his own life failed to improve his fortunes. But for all his travails, Thorpe did not succumb. The man survived, complications and all, and so did the myth.