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  Cycle of Lies - The Fall of...

  Juliet Macur

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  “The definitive . . . account of cycling champion and charlatan Lance Armstrong’s well-oiled career and its sordid collapse . . . solid sports journalism.” —Kirkus Reviews 
   
  In June 2013, when Lance Armstrong fled his palatial home in Texas, downsizing in the face of multimillion-dollar lawsuits, Juliet Macur was there—talking to his girlfriend and children and listening to Armstrong’s version of the truth. She was one of the few media members aside from Oprah Winfrey to be granted extended one-on-one access to the most famous pariah in sports. 
   
  At the center of Cycle of Lies is Armstrong himself, revealed through face-to-face interviews. 
   
  But this unfolding narrative is given depth and breadth by the firsthand accounts of more than one hundred witnesses, including family members whom Armstrong had long since turned his back on—the adoptive father who gave him the Armstrong name, a grandmother, an aunt. Perhaps most damning of all is the taped testimony of the late J. T. Neal, the most influential of Armstrong’s many father figures, recorded in the final years of Neal’s life as he lost his battle with cancer just as Armstrong gained fame for surviving the disease. 
   
  In the end, it was Armstrong’s former friends who dealt him his fatal blow by breaking the code of silence that shielded the public from the grim truth about the sport of cycling—and about its golden boy, Armstrong. 
   
  Threading together the vivid and disparate voices of those with intimate knowledge of the private and public Armstrong, Macur weaves a comprehensive and unforgettably rich tapestry of one man’s astonishing rise to global fame and fortune and his devastating fall from grace.

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  An Accidental Athlete - A Funny...

  John Bingham

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  Known by fans as "The Penguin" for his back-of-the-pack speed, John Bingham is the unlikely hero of the modern running boom. In his new book, the best-selling author and magazine columnist recalls his childhood dreams of athletic glory, sedentary years of unhealthy excess, and a life-changing transformation from couch potato to "adult-onset athlete." Overweight, uninspired, and saddled with a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoking habit, Bingham found himself firmly wedged into a middle-age slump. Then two frightening trips to the emergency room and a conversation with a happy piano tuner led him to discover running--and changed his life for the better. Inspiring, poignant, hilarious, and heartbreaking, An Accidental Athlete is a warm and engaging book for the everyday athlete. Bingham tells stories of the joys of running--the pride of the finisher's medal, a bureau-busting t-shirt collection, intense back-of-the-pack strategizing. An Accidental Athlete is about one man's discovery that middle age was not the finish line after all, but only the beginning.

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  Saving Lucy - A Girl A Bike A...

  Ishbel Rose Holmes

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  "This story grabs your heart and never lets go."Saving Lucy is the true and inspiring story of two creatures in need of healing and rescue—who find home in each other.Ishbel Rose Holmes was adrift and alone when she set out to bicycle across the world. She was pedalling across Turkey when a street dog, Lucy, crossed her path and changed her life forever.Ishbel did not want anything or anyone to slow her down, but when she witnessed Lucy attacked by other dogs, Ishbel rescued her—forming a deep bond between the pair. Ishbel recognized her own vulnerability in her new canine friend and launched a heartfelt mission to find Lucy a home and give her a happy life.Their adventures took them over 1,000 miles to the Syrian border and into the hearts of everyone who met them. People around the world who followed the story on Ishbel’s blog, World Bike Girl, watched as Lucy’s unconditional love broke down the wall around Ishbel’s heart.

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  Relentless Forward Progress - A...

  Bryon Powell

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  Marathons have become too easy for some runners. What was once the pinnacle of achievement in a runner's life is now a stepping stone for extraordinary adventure in ultramarathoning. The number of ultrarunners—those running distances of 50k (31 miles), 50 miles, 100k (62 miles), or 100 miles—is growing astronomically each year. 
  Dean Karnazes's Ultramarathon Man and Chris McDougall's Born to Run have inspired tens of thousands to try these seemingly superhuman distances. But to date, there has been no practical guide to ultramarathoning. Now, Bryon Powell has written Relentless Forward Progress, the first how-to manual for aspiring ultrarunners. Powell covers every aspect of training for and racing ultra distances. This encyclopedic volume prepares runners for going farther than they have ever gone before and, in the process, shows them that they are capable of the "impossible."

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  Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads...

  Irvin Muchnick

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  By now, football's concussion crisis is well known: every year brings headlines of our Hall of Fame heroes behaving erratically and dying young. But did you know that several kid players across the continent drop dead every year before a single ball is snapped—just from extreme conditioning drills directed by all-powerful coaches? Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads takes the conversation about football and public health to a new level with investigations of the sport's underreported worst tragedies and their cover-ups, at major universities, obscure junior colleges, and high schools. These add up to a kind of quiet pandemic—a socially induced one enabled by our thirst for spectacle and by a skewed vision of masculinity.Here are the shocking stories of young men who get struck down by exertional heatstroke and other causes sometimes not even acknowledged (such as the sickle cell trait syndrome that afflicts many African Americans). When the worst happens, the football world simply buries the evidence, pays off victims' families, and moves on.No matter how much we enjoy America's most popular sport at elite levels, this book makes the case that it belongs out of our public schools and off our public fields.

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  Mountains of the Mind

  Robert Macfarlane

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  The basis for the new documentary film, Mountain: A Breathtaking Voyage into the Extreme. 
  Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert Macfarlane reveals how the mystery of the world's highest places has come to grip the Western imagination—and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. 
  His story begins three centuries ago, when mountains were feared as the forbidding abodes of dragons and other mysterious beasts. In the mid-1700s the attentions of both science and poetry sparked a passion for mountains; Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lord Byron extolled the sublime experiences to be had on high; and by 1924 the death on Mount Everest of an Englishman named George Mallory came to symbolize the heroic ideals of his day. Macfarlane also reflects on fear, risk, and the shattering beauty of ice and snow, the competition and contemplation of the climb, and the strange alternate reality of high altitude, magically enveloping us in the allure of mountains at every level.

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