The following titles are a collection of books and articles that have most significantly enriched my life or career. If you’re one of my students, you are welcome to borrow any of these titles from me, just send me a text and come pick it up from my office at SUU.
Professional Basketball
The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons
Sprawlball, Kirk Goldsberry
Dream team, Jack McCallum
Tip-Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever, Filip Bondy
Basketball: A Love Story, Jackie MacMullen
The Breaks of the Game, David Halberstam
When the Game was Ours, Bird & Johnson w/ Jackie MacMullen
Three-Ring Circus, Jeff Pearlman
The Punch, John Feinstein
Boys Among Men, Jonathan Abrams
Hoops Heist, Jon Finkel & Isaiah Thomas
Michael Jordan: The Life, Ronald Lazenby
The Jordan Rules, Sam Smith
The Gold Standard, Mike Krzyzewski
Shaq Uncut, O’Neal & MacMullen
Can I Keep My Jersey?, Paul Shirley
Total Basketball, Shouler et al.
College Basketball
Five-Point Play, Mike Krzyzewski
Four Corners, Joe Menzer
The Last Great Game, Gene Wojciechowski
The Legends Club, John Feinstein
The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino, Michael Sokolove
The Greatest Upset Never Seen, Jack Danilewicz
A Season on the Brink, John Feinstein
The Back Roads to March, John Feinstein
Raw Recruits, Alexander Wolff & Arem Keteyian
Glory Road, Don Haskins & Dan Wetzel
The Last Amateurs, John Feinstein
Wooden, John Wooden & Steve Jamison
Don’t Put Me In Coach, Mark Titus
Cheated, Jay Smith & Mary Willingham
Women’s Basketball
Shattering the Glass, Pamela Gruncy & Susan Shackelford
Dust Bowl Girls, Lydia Reeder
Football
The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football, Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian
Boys Will Be Boys, Jeff Pearlman
Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger
When Pride Still Mattered, Davis Maraniss
The Education of a Coach, David Halberstam
Paper Lion, George Plimpton
Football for a Buck, Jeff Pearlman
The Blind Side, Michael Lewis
Billion-Dollar Ball, Gilbert Gaul
Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, Rich Cohen
Dixieland Delight, Clay Travis
The Dynasty, Jeff Benedict
Baseball
Baseball’s Great Experiment, Jules Tygiel
The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn
Only the Ball was White, Robert Peterson
Summer of ’49, David Halberstam
Imperfect, Jim Abbot & Tim Brown
Eight Men Out, Eliot Asinof
Moneyball, Michael Lewis
Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, Charles Leerhsen
Now I Can Die in Peace, Bill Simmons
The Wax Pack, Brad Balukjian
The Glory of their Times, Lawrence Ritter
Soccer
Among the Thugs, Bill Buford
Under the Lights and in the Dark, Gwendolyn Oxenham
Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby
Soccernomics, Simon Kumper & Stefan Szymanski
Outcasts United, Warren St. John
Soccer Against the Enemy, Simon Kuper
The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro, Joe McGinniss
Other Sport
Everything They Had, David Halberstam
The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, David Halberstam & Glenn Stout
ESPN 25, Charles Hirshberg
The Life of Reilly, Rick Reilly
Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, Rick Reilly
Hey Tiger Meet My Sister, Rick Reilly
The Wages of Wins, David Berri
Brands Win Championships, Jeremy Darlow
The Boys of Winter, Wayne Coffey
Tiger Woods, Jeff Benedict & Armen Keteyian
Cinderella Man, Jeremy Schaap
The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
Non-Fiction
Ten Days in A Madhouse & Other Stories, Nellie Bly
Poisoned, Jeff Benedict
The Light of Truth, Ida B. Wells
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families, Philip Gourevitch
How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, Hunter S. Thompson
Shocking the Conscience, Simeon Booker
All the President’s Men, Carl Brenstein & Bob Woodward
The Final Days, Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
The Paper, Richard Kluger
Area 51, Annie Jacobsen
Super Mario Bros. 2, Jon Irwin
Supe Mario Bros. 3, Alyse Knorr
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Alex Kane
NBA Jam, Reyan Ali
The Glass Castle, Jeannette Wells
Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, Alexandra Robbins
Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, Jacobo Timerman
The Light of Truth, Ida B. Wells
Writing
On Writing Well, William Zinsser
The Elements of Style, William Strunk & E.B. White
If You Want To Write, Brenda Ueland
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
The New New Journalism, Robert Boynton
Sports Fiction
Tears of a Tiger, Susan Draper
The Natural, Bernard Malamud
Full Court Press, Mike Lupica
Rope Burns, F.X. Toole
Other Fiction
Fadeaway, Elaine Vickers
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Stuff White People Like, Christian Lander
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Sports Articles
Death of a Racehorse, W.C. Heinz
Losing Season Puts Wizards At Epicenter Of Player Development Debate, Kevin Broom
YouTube Hall of Fame: The Worst Toys of the ’80s, Grantland Staff
Tales from the NBA Draft Lottery, Zach Lowe
Who Killed Lorenzen Wright?, Jon Wertheim
Nick Saban: Sympathy for the Devil, Warren St. John
Black & Blue, Patirck O’Sullivan
The Malice at the Palace, Jonathan Abrams
Lost Soul, Chris Ballard
We are Grown Men Playing a Child’s Game, Gilbert Rogin
The No-Stats All-Star, Michael Lewis
Jordan’s Moment, David Halberstam
Ewing Theory 101, Bill Simmons
Behind the Scenes of the NBA Draft Lottery, Zach Lowe
Sis! Boom! Bah! Humbug!, Rick Reilly
Cliches Aren’t Everything…They’re the Only Thing, Steve Rushin
Anatomy of a Deal: Kawhi Leonard for George Hill, Zach Lowe
Roger Federer as Religious Experience, David Foster Wallace
The New Jersey Swamp Dragons? It Almost Happened, Zach Lowe
Student Journalism
“No” is a Complete Sentence, University Journal
Did This Man Ever Sleep?, Janzen Jorgensen
Out in the Open, Kelton Jacobsen
Not Just Any Old Horse, Mikyla Bagley
Fatherhood: How a Unique Bond has Taken SUU to New Heights, Connor Sanders
SUU’s All-American Boy, Connor Sanders
Taylor Whitson: Setting the Expectation at SUU, Connor Sanders
The Silent Resilience of Dr. Bryce Christensen, Liz Armstrong
Scotty Bauman 28 Years Later, Connor Sanders
One Needle at a Time, Easton Bowring
Parking Spots for Scholarships, Liz Armstrong
Hayden Coombs 