Sports Economics

The never-before-told inside story of how the Premier League became the wildest, richest, most popular entertainment business on the planet. How did English football - once known for its stale pies, bad bookkeeping and hooligans - become a commercial powerhouse and the world's premium popular entertainment? This was a business empire built in only 25 years on ambition, experimentation and gambler's luck.

Chris Von der Ahe knew next to nothing about baseball when he risked his life’s savings to found the St. Louis Browns, the franchise that would become the St. Louis Cardinals. Yet the German-born beer garden proprietor would become one of the most important - and funniest - figures in the game’s history.

The World Series is the most enduring showcase in American team sports. It’s the place where legends are made, where celebration and devastation can hinge on a fly ball off a foul pole or a grounder beneath a first baseman’s glove. And there’s no one better to bring this rich history to life than New York Times national baseball columnist Tyler Kepner, whose bestselling book about pitching, K, was lauded as “Michelangelo explaining the brush strokes on the Sistine Chapel” by Newsday.

Ahmed und Hussen Chaer sind Wrestling-Stars - und doch ganz anders als die meisten Erfolgssportler. Die Flucht des Vaters aus dem Libanon, eine Kindheit im Kreuzberger Hinterhaus, ihr Einsatz gegen Vorurteile und Ausgrenzung: All das hat die unzertrennlichen Brüder geprägt - und macht sie zu sympathischen Streitern für eine bessere Welt.

Bicycle/Race paints an unforgettable picture of Los Angeles—and the United States—from the perspective of two wheels. This is a book of borderlands and intersections, a cautionary tale about the dangers of putting infrastructure before culture, and a coming-of-age story about power and identity.

Why are we selling off the impressive public enterprises we often battled as a nation to create? In The Sport and Prey of Capitalists, Linda McQuaig challenges the dogma of privatization, which has defined our political era. She argues that now more than ever, as we grapple with climate change and income inequality, we need to expand, not shrink, our public sphere.

Funny, engaging, and sharply pointed in his appraisal of the sports complex bankrupting our cities, the celebrated author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States returns with a hard-hitting indictment of big business and the corrupt practices that are ruining the sports we love.When attending a baseball game becomes a luxury reserved for the wealthy few and cities build multi-million dollar stadiums while letting their bridges crumble, the price of sports in this country demands reassessment.

Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020—along with forty-one other minor league teams—the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players.

Butch S. Hardcastle is back; the author of Survive Doomsday - How to Become a Prepper and Survive After a Doomsday Event offers more great guidance on how to prepare for the events that will change the world as we know it. In this one hour-lunchtime listen series book, Butch looks at a range of specific doomsday events and how you would go about surviving each one.