Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

One of the best quarterbacks in the history of college football traces his path to success, discussing his childhood as the son of Christian missionaries and how his faith combined with his drive to succeed have made him the person he is today.

Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11, and he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in southeastern Afghanistan. Though...

"Simone takes you through the events, challenges, and trials that carried her from an early childhood in foster care to a coveted spot on the 2016 Olympic team" --

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared -- Lt. Louis Zamperini ... Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a floundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft and beyond, a trial even greater. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended...

"One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the National Football League. This is not a celebrity tell-all of professional sports. Slow Getting Up is a survivor's real-time account of playing six seasons (twice as long as the average NFL career) for the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos. As an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup, Nate Jackson is the talented embodiment of the everyday freak athlete...

"Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. He won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind. But despite his colossal...

"The extreme climber famed for his solo ascents without ropes, partners or gear describes his seven most significant achievements, including a free-solo climb up Mexico's Sendero Luminoso and the Fitz Traverse ascent in Patagonia,"--NoveList.

The Olympic gold medalist shares the story of her life and how her faith allowed her to persevere and reach her dreams.

Ted Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than five hundred home runs has a higher career batting average. Those totals would have been even higher if Williams had not left baseball for nearly five years in the prime of his career to serve as a Marine pilot in World War II and Korea. He hit home runs farther than any player before him, and traveled...

"Briana Scurry was a pioneer on the US Women's National Team. She won gold in Atlanta in 1996, the first time women's soccer was ever played in the Olympics. She was a key part of the fabled "99ers," making an epic save in the decisive penalty-kick shootout in the final. Scurry captured her second Olympic gold in 2004, cementing her status as one of the premier players in the world. She was the only Black player on the team, and she was also the first...