•Always By My Side by Jim Nantz
From the same "tribute to my dad" genre that brought us Tim Russert's popular Big Russ and Me (Compare Prices) comes this book from CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz -- the voice of the Final Four and the Masters golf tournament. Sports fans will appreciate the inside details from backstage at March Madness, the Masters, and the Super Bowl -- Nantz was the first sportscaster to call all three. But there's a bittersweet edge, as Nantz' professional successes parallel his dad's battle with Alzheimer's disease.More »
•Summer Ball by Mike Lupica
You may know Mike Lupica from his column in the New York Daily News or his frequent appearances on ESPN and Don Imus' radio show. What you may not know is that he has a successful second career as a novelist, writing sports-themed stories that have one excessively rare quality: they encourage teenage boys to read books. Summer Ball, one of his basketball novels, is out in paperback now, and his latest, a baseball story called The Big Field (Compare Prices), was just released in hardcover.More »
•Living on the Black
John Feinstein's latest, Living on the Black (Compare Prices), follows the seasons of Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine -- two veteran pitchers at the tail end of their careers. Baseball not your thing? No problem. The prolific Feinstein has written several other sports books (Compare Prices) -- including the classic Bob Knight bio A Season on the Brink.More »
•Basketball Prospectus
For the stat geek -- and we all know 'em -- there's no better gift than the 2008-09 Basketball Prospectus (Compare Prices), a phone book-sized tome filled with numbers, analysis, more numbers, and the numbers behind the numbers. The Prospectus won't be published until October, but it's available now for pre-order via Amazon.com.More »