Over the course of his incredible career, Bryan Trottier set a new standard of hockey excellence. A seven-time Stanley Cup champion (four with the New York Islanders, two with the Pittsburgh Penguins, and one as an assistant coach with the Colorado Avalanche), Trottier won countless awards and is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. In 2017, he was named one of the NHL's Top 100 Players of All Time.

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?

In this sports memoir, Wayne Gretzky weaves memories of his legendary career with an inside look at professional hockey and the heroes and stories that inspired him. From minor-hockey phenomenon to Hall of Fame sensation, Wayne Gretzky rewrote the record books, his accomplishments becoming the stuff of legend. Dubbed “The Great One”, he is considered by many to be the greatest hockey player who ever lived. No one has seen more of the game than he has - but he has never discussed in depth just what it was he saw.

Anybody can get lucky. Nobody controls the odds like Billy Walters. Widely regarded as “the Michael Jordan of sports betting,” Walters is a living legend in Las Vegas and among sports bettors worldwide. With an unmatched winning streak of thirty-six consecutive years, Walters has become fabulously wealthy by placing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in gross wagers, including one Super Bowl bet of $3.5 million alone. Competitors desperate to crack his betting techniques have tried hacking his phones, cloning his beepers, rifling through his trash, and bribing his employees.

Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”

The visiting clubhouse in San Diego was soggy, sweaty and sticky after the 1998 Yankees swept the Padres in four games and celebrated winning their 24th World Series title. The players raised bottles of Champagne, sprayed the bubbly on each other and reveled in a baseball season that might have been more memorable than any in history. Jack Curry was part of that unforgettable scene as a reporter, navigating around the clubhouse to ask the same, pertinent question.

In December 2015, Zac Easter, a twenty-four-year-old from small-town Iowa, decided to take his own life rather than continue his losing battle against traumatic brain injuries he had sustained as a high school football player and which led him to develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). For this deeply reported and powerfully moving true story, award-winning writer Reid Forgrave was given access to Zac’s own diaries and was able to speak with Zac’s family, friends, and coaches.

Hockey culture: it’s a commonly used phrase inside the game, glorifying sacrifice, toughness, loyalty, and a sense of identity. Justin Davis viewed this culture as something he was lucky enough to experience. After all, he’d won a Memorial Cup after leading the tournament in scoring, and he’d been drafted by the Washington Capitals. “In my mind,” he says, “I was the normal one.” Unfortunately, after stepping outside the game, he began to recognize the racism, sexual abuse and bullying that was so deeply ingrained in the sport.

Sean McIndoe of Down Goes Brown, one of hockey's favorite and funniest writers, takes aim at the game's most memorable moments - especially if they're memorable for the wrong reasons - in this warts-and-all history of the NHL.

In 1958, Willie O'Ree was a lot like any other player toiling in the minors. He was good. Good enough to have been signed by the Boston Bruins. Just not quite good enough to play in the NHL. Until January 18 of that year. O'Ree was finally called up, and when he stepped out onto the ice against the Montreal Canadiens, not only did he fulfill the childhood dream he shared with so many other Canadian kids, he did something that had never been done before. He broke hockey's color barrier. Just as his hero, Jackie Robinson, had done for baseball.

By the time he was twenty-two years old, goaltender Corey Hirsch had realized his childhood dream of playing in the NHL, won an Olympic medal and drunk from the Stanley Cup. While he excelled on the ice, out of the net Hirsch was plagued by persistent dark thoughts and ceaseless anxiety. On days when he could barely get out of bed, he was able to push aside the endless loop of dark thoughts running inside his brain long enough to win a game. But as soon as he got back home, the agonizing cycle started all over again.

Case Keenum has traveled one of the most unique paths in the NFL. Recruited by just one college, undrafted, and released three times, Case has overcome every obstacle to become a successful starting quarterback. Keenum shares stories from every stage of his life, starting out as a ball boy for his father’s college team in West Texas, going on to win a state title in high school, and rewriting the NCAA record book at the University of Houston. A devastating knee injury almost derailed his football career, but helped him get closer to the woman who would soon become his wife.

When the Detroit Red Wings were rebooting their franchise after more than two decades of relative futility, they knew the best place to find world-class players who could turn things around more quickly were conscripted servants behind the Iron Curtain. All they had to do to get them was make history by drafting them and then figure out how to get them out of the Soviet Union.

On paper, Coach Rob Mendez sounds like any other football coach on any other field across America: passionate, authoritative, knowledgeable. But he’s unlike any other coach you know - in fact, he’s probably unlike any other person you know. Born with an extraordinarily rare condition called tetra-Amelia syndrome, Rob has no arms or legs. He moves with the assistance of a custom-made, motorized wheelchair that he operates with his back and shoulders.

You may know him as an NFL All-Pro or as an elite magician who made the finals of America’s Got Talent. But Jon Dorenbos says that what he does is not who he is. Who he is is someone forced, at the most tender of ages, to coach himself into turning tragedy to triumph. One morning in August 1992, when Jon was 12 years old and living a seemingly idyllic childhood in suburban Seattle, he woke up for baseball camp. His dad waved good-bye. Later that day, Jon heard the news: His father had murdered his mother in the family’s three-car garage.