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Unbroken (2014) by Laura Hillenbrand tells the remarkable story of Olympic runner Louis Zamperini.  Louis was made to run by his brother Pete, who saw the boy had talent but realized that it would also keep him out of trouble.  He eventually went on to compete in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where he shook Hitler's hand.

Mara Deebly, in need of a team sport to prove she can be a team player, joins the football team and unintentionally starts a feminist movement in her highschool. Much to her and the boys' disgust, several other girls feel inspired by her decision and follow her onto the football team, where Mara get's lumped in with girls she feels are frilly, weak, and won't take the game seriously. As she tries to set herself apart from her new teammates, she and the other girls experience bullying and unfairness by even people on the team she had thought were her friends.

Michael Lewis’ classic sports book holds up almost twenty years later. Scott Brick does a fantastic job narrating Moneyball (2003), keeping the pace moving and the subject engaging.

Co-written by a sportswriter and an economist, Scorecasting uses statistics to examine and debunk popularly held ideas about sports. Focusing primarily on baseball, basketball, and football, it explores such topics as home-field advantage, referee bias, hot streaks, and why certain types of players are overvalued.

In the final years of the Cold War, the struggling Detroit Red Wings hockey team was desperate to find players that could help them turn their franchise around. At the time, some of the best players in the world were playing for a state-controlled team in the Soviet Union. Because these players could not leave their current team without facing prison time or other serious consequences, most NHL teams were not interested in them. The Red Wings, however, were determined to get Russian players for their team by whatever means necessary.