Most Popular Books by Sports Illustrated

Starting with his jump from the Oshawa Generals to the NHL''s Boston Bruins, Sports Illustrated began in-depth coverage of the career of Bobby Orr, a player who remains, over thirty years after his retirement, one of the greatest hockey players of all time. Orr completely changed the way hockey was played, taking it from a game of grinding defence to a rushing, high-scoring affair. Along the way, Orr set scoring records, won individual awards, and led his Bruins to two Stanley Cups before a bad knee began costing him games. He tried two major comebacks in the late seventies, showing a perseverance and dedication unmatched in the game, but ultimately was forced into an early retirement at the age of thirty. Number Four, Bobby Orr brings together the stories and photographs behind the career. The media-shy Orr rarely opened up to reporters, hiding his charitable works and his loyalty to his friends and teammates and letting his play speak for itself. This anthology brings together all SI''s reporting on Orr, from the 1960s to his new career as a player agent in the 2000s, to form a comprehensive biography of one of the greats of the game.

With more than 250 photographs and behind-the-scenes images, Swimsuit Portfolio: The Explorers Edition offers an exclusive tour with models and photographers seeking adventure in the world''s most luscious locales.

Big Book of WHO is a book your young sports fans will return to again and again! From the editors of Sports Illustrated Kids comes The Big Book of Who: Basketball, a collection of basketball''s brightest stars, past and present. Profiles, facts and stats will bring the best players in basketball history to life with all of the classic touches that Sports Illustrated Kids is famous for— terrific, age-appropriate writing and exciting sports photography. Court greats from LeBron James to Michael Jordan, Candace Parker to Ja Morant, Shaq to Elena Delle Donne, will be profiled. Written in a fun question and answer format, kids will be able to stump their friends. The Big Book of Who: Basketball is a book young sports fans will return to again and again as a lively, exciting resource.Completely redesigned to match the modern look of Sports Illustrated Kids, this fun collection of questions and answers will have kids stumping their friends and adult sports fans with their expert knowledge of basketball''s brightest stars.

Star athletes who shine off the field tell you, in their own words, about their outside interests.

The hisory of sports is full af bizarre stories. Games sometimes have totally unexpected finishes. Athletes occasionally get into oddball situations on-and off-the field. Even fanatical fans have joined in the action, with very peculiar results.

It''s the ultimate supermodel yearbook. Join the four photographers whose work was featured in the 2011 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue on a behind-the-scenes account of their travels, revisiting their experiences through never-before-seen images and exclusive commentary. In this large-format, 176-page collection, Swimsuit Portfolio: Fantasy Islands showcases 17 of the world''s most exquisite bodies at four exotic beach locations-Turtle Island in Fiji, Sentosa Island in Singapore, Peter Island in the British Virgin Islands and Boracay Island in the Philippines. Grab your passport and take the tour with Brooklyn Decker, Irina Shayk, Hilary Rhoda, Esti Ginzburg and Christine Teigen (among others) as your guides. With dozens of previously unpublished swimsuit shots, it''s an expanded look at the making of the magazine''s best-selling issue.

Includes information on athletes considered to be outstanding in their respective sports.

They''re the most beautiful women ever to have graced the Sports Illustrated pages. Need we say more? Kim Alexis, Christie Brinkley, Rachel Hunter, Stephanie Seymour, Kathy Ireland, Elle Macpherson, Paulina Porizkova, Cheryl Tiegs, and Vendela.

Hockey: Then to WOW! shows readers how the cool sport has evolved from the early days of its 19th century origins to the game as it is today. Using NHL action photographs, illustrations, stories, and trivia, the book is a journey through time both for hockey fans and those new to the game. Kids will learn how basic equipment has changed from a ball to a puck and how the evolution of game strategy has transformed the sport, players, and equipment. Players throughout history are stacked up against each other in every position so fans can dream up the perfect fantasy team with Wayne Gretzky playing alongside Patrick Roy and Stan Mikita. A fun-filled section of the book explores everything fan culture-from the best ice rinks, to the iconic hockey sweater and the hockey haircut along with key aspects of the toughest sport around.

Celebrate the championship heritage, great players and passionate fanbase that make Titletown, U.S.A. the most coveted address in football Green Bay has a history like no other city in the National Football League. Here the passion runs deep and true through generations of fans, and the success has been unparalleled: 13 championships, 22 Hall of Fame players, a past festooned with grand names such as Lambeau and Lombardi and Nitschke. Not surprisingly, the Packers have won the admiration of fans the world over, and Sports Illustrated celebrates the franchise with this collection of new and classic stories and photographs. The great players are all here, from Johnny Blood to Clay Matthews, and so is every title game, featuring moments such as Bart Starr''s sneak in the Ice Bowl and Desmond Howard''s kickoff return in Super Bowl XXXI. SI also salutes, in words and pictures, the most dedicated fans in sport. From cover to cover, this is a tribute any cheesehead would cherish.

Celebrate the championship glory and Hall of Fame personalities that make the Los Angeles Lakers one of the most iconic franchises in all of sports. Standard-bearers for basketball greatness, the Los Angeles Lakers have thrilled their loyal fans since the franchise moved west in 1960. Led by Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, they raced to the top of the league and refused to slow down, with superstars like Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O''Neal, and LeBron James carrying the torch on the way to 17 NBA championships. Sports Illustrated(tm) now celebrates the Lakers with an extraordinary collection of classic writing and photographs from the pages of SI. This commemorative book also spotlights the players, championships, and stats that have made the Lakers the greatest show on earth. Featuring a foreword by Howard Beck and stories by Frank DeFord, Jack McCallum, Chris Ballard, and more, this is an essential volume for Lakers fans.

Fans of Alabama football will treasure this compendium of Crimson Tide lore from the editors of Sports Illustrated. Featuring the brilliant photography and insightful writing that they are known for, Sports Illustrated Alabama Football allows fans to relive ''Bama''s glorious history on the gridiron, from the earliest years of the program through its first 12 national titles and all the way up to the 2009 national championship team. This book contains classic Sports Illustrated coverage of all the Crimson Tide greats, including stories featuring Bear Bryant and Nick Saban; rare photographs of Alabama football as seen through the lenses of SI photographers; a retrospective of the Iron Bowl, one of the greatest rivalries in college football; introduction by Eli Gold, the voice of Alabama football; and full coverage of this year''s title run. Plus, as a special bonus, this collector''s edition also boasts a sure-fire argument starter: Sports Illustrated''s selection of the All-time Alabama Team. If crimson is your favorite color, Sports Illustrated Alabama Football is for you.

If every picture tells a story, every slide tells an even deeper one. Tucked away in Sports Illustrated''s photo archive sits 50 years worth of film, a frame-by-frame depiction of the history of sports over the last half a century. The stickers and scribbles along a single slide''s border are like tags on a streamer trunk, telling the story of that photo''s journey from the playing field to the magazine. This book selects the most colorful of these slides and presents the mounts as objects of art in an oversized 176-page collection, complete with behind-the-scenes vignettes of how the shots came to be. Some slides capture classic SI cover images (Dwight Clark''s catch in the 1982 NFC Championship Game or Brandi Chastain ripping her shirt off at the 1999 World Cup) while others are simply great photos (Pete Rose running at full speed or Joe Namath lounging poolside before Super Bowl III). The images themselves are iconic, but by seeing them as slides you get that extra step back. You can see the history that has been made from these flashes of an instant.

America''s Team? These days it''s the Pittsburgh Steelers. Want to argue? The six-time Super Bowl champions are the favorites of network television programmers, have the broadest and most impassioned fan base-the Steelers outsell all other NFL teams in merchandise, and at some stadiums Steel City fans outnumber the home team''s faithful-and embody a winning spirit that have made them the model franchise in the most popular sport in the U.S. Founded in 1933 by the beloved Rooney family in the gritty heartland of industrial America, the team suffered through nearly four decades of futility until the arrival of brilliant, laconic coach Chuck Noll in 1969, followed by a host of players who would etch their names in the history of the game. Behind future Hall of Famers Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert and Mel Blount, the Steelers teams of the ''70s won four Super Bowls in six years and captured the imagination of a nation with their style-dashing on offense, devastating on defense. The love affair has endured ever since, through the hard-nosed era of Bill Cowher and Jerome Bettis to today''s team, with crossover stars such as Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu. This book from SPORTS ILLUSTRATED tells the extraordinary story of the Steelers through the eyes of SI''s renowned writers and the world''s most accomplished sports photographers. As the Steelers embark on their 80th anniversary, there''s no better way to celebrate football''s best.

Sports Illustrated Kids reveals the coolest and most rarely seen parts of the sports world in ALL ACCESS. Kids get an inside look at state-of-the-art locker rooms, star athletes'' houses, and their amazing collections. Readers will be awed by how a stadium transforms from a baseball diamond to an ice rink, as well as how a football starts as a piece of hide to becoming game-ready. Sports fans of all ages will love the lift-and-look features that allow them to literally peel back the layers for behind-the-scenes access that only SI Kids can provide.

SI''s team of experts answer once again tackle the questions pro football fans have been debating since the pigskin started flying. Who''s the greatest quarterback of all time? The most dominant linebackers? In 2012, Sports Illustrated sought to answer this question in Football’s Greatest. In the past five years, new players have come on the scene, coaches have come and gone and great games have been played. Through it all, SI has been there, analyzing, tracking, photographing and reporting on every game as only SI can. Now, in Football’s Greatest: Revised and Updated, an all-new team of experts comes together to debate everything that makes football, football – whether it’s the best players, the best on the defensive line, the cheerleaders, or the stadiums, our team of experts have ranked them. Additionally, for this revised and updated edition, we’ve added a “Roundtable with the Stars” that includes some of the most legendary NFL Hall of Famers discussing whom they consider to the greatest. We’ve also added two new categories to the rankings: “Rivalries” and “Most Entertaining Players,” that makes Football’s Greatest: Revised and Updated an essential addition to any football fan’s library. Once again, this is the book that''s sure to end many arguments, and help start some new ones.

From cover to cover, the "Sports Almanac" is packed with facts, figures, and articles by "Sports Illustrated''s" peerless roster of sportswriters. of color photos.

Recounts the New York Giants Super Bowl XLII win, covering some of the games they played during the regular season and the major plays and highlights of the championship game.

The definitive tribute that celebrates the life and legacy of Muhammad Ali, an American original. From his unlikely transformation from Louisville Golden Gloves winner to Olympic gold medalist to three-time heavyweight champion, civil rights hero and at one point, the most famous person on earth, Muhammad Ali and his journey were always chronicled and celebrated by Sports Illustrated''s writers and photographers. Now, all of those moments and memories are collected in Muhammad Ali: The Tribute, a deluxe fully-illustrated gift book that celebrates the life and legacy of this iconic athlete and champion. He shook up the world and became the boxer who went from the sports page to the front page. As a young fighter he revolutionized boxing as the fleet-of-foot dancer who took the crown from Sonny Liston; his rivalry with Joe Frazier was legendary; he grew up into one of the toughest heavyweights of all time, winning The Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manilla. He was then able to parlay that fame into a role as elder statesman and inspiration to decades of athletes who would come behind him. All of those moments are captured here in distinct chapters that take you from Rise to Rumble, Exile to Return, Greatest, and Statesman. Written with the keen insight that only Sports Illustrated can bring, with a special gatefold that features stats and images from every one of this legendary bouts, and hundreds more black and white and full-color photographs that have become as iconic as the man himself, Muhammad Ali: The Tribute will stand as the companion piece to a legendary man and athlete.

In its annual Swimsuit Issue 10 years ago, " Sports Illustrated" first presented spectacular photographs of gorgeous models in swimsuits that consisted of nothing more than paint artistically and painstakingly applied to their bodies. These eye-popping optical illusions, created by make-up artist Joanne Gare and captured by the magazine''s world-class photographers, have become a favourite feature of this wildly popular magazine. Now the editors bring together not just a complete collection of astonishing painted-swimsuit photographs, but also a series of vastly entertaining essays, stories, and column, some commissioned especially for this book - that trace the history of body painting and take readers behind the scenes as the Swimsuit shoots that are the craft''s most modern and provocative application.

For more than half a century Sports Illustrated has put its best face forward every week with one iconic image-the cover. The work of some of the world''s greatest photographers and illustrators, there are now nearly 3,000 examples of this magazine art, all curated here in book form for the first time. The greatest moments in sports history are celebrated, as they happened: Ali''s defeat of Liston, the Miracle on Ice, Dwight Clark''s Catch, Doug Flutie''s Hail Mary, Mark Spitz''s golds and then Michael Phelps''s. Virtually every important athlete in the world-from Roger Bannister in 1955, to Roger Maris in ''61, to Roger Staubach in ''78 and Roger Federer in 2009-has appeared there, and those are just the Rogers. It''s the one arena in which Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and Jack Nicklaus have all competed together, for the distinction of having the most SI covers. These images are now unique cultural artifacts, and taken together they add up to a delightful and entertaining chronicle of the sporting scene like no other.

Covering individual teams (Hello, 1972 Miami Dolphins!) but also the best eras in famous teams’ history, such as the Patriots of the ’00s and the Steelers of the late 1970s, the editors at Sports Illustrated Kids dissect the best of the gridiron to show the whys and hows of team building, brilliant strategy, player combinations, and that special magic that the greatest teams have and which owners can’t buy—even if there weren’t a salary cap. Player profiles, stats and records, and thrilling narratives show the march to the Super Bowl and into history of America’s favorite spectator sport. Amazing photos, insider stories, and fun facts capture the cultural phenomenon that is football in the U.S.! The SI Kids editors won’t forget college ball! Picture the 2001 Miami Hurricanes cruising to the national title with a perfect season that was fun and full of swagger, displaying an absurd level of talent with six first-team All-Americans leading the way.

New for Fall 2008, the editors of Sports Illustrated Kids present In Your Face 3-D: The Coolest Sports Book Ever! Filled with exciting, state-of-the-art 3-D images taken by veteran Sports Illustrated photographer David E. Klutho, this 96- page, hardcover book will literally have kids ducking, jumping, and flying out of their chair with every turn of the page. Awesome 3-D images from just about every sport you can imagine will be featured. The book is packaged with a pair of high-grade 3-D glasses, which kids can re-use to see a special gallery of bonus 3-D images on SIKIDS.Com. Big stars, big sports, and the best 3-D sports photography in the world make this a must-have title for sports fans of all ages.

As Fenway Park gets set to mark its centennial anniversary in 2012, Sports Illustrated celebrates America''s oldest and perhaps most-storied ballpark on the occasion of its 100th birthday. In beautiful photography and stirring prose from SI''s finest writers, the book tells the story of Fenway from its birth on a winter''s day in Kenmore Square to its current handsome incarnation. Readers will travel from the early days of Babe Ruth, through the years of Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemskiand right up to the 2000s, when the hometown Red Sox won not one but two championships with stunning Fenway Park shining as it rarely has. The book explores the incomparable features that define Fenway: See Manny Ramirez peer out of the green door by the manual scoreboard and Dwight Evans reach to pluck a would-be home run out of Williamsburg. See a ball glance off Pesky''s Pole and members of Red Sox Nation seated atop the great Green Monster as dusk falls behind the Citgo Sign. In these dazzling oversized pages ballplayers like Williams and Johnny Pesky and Jim Rice will come alive, but the book''s exquisite images and fresh words go beyond the Red Sox to honor the park itself. Here, games of pro soccer and football have been played since the1930s. This was the sporting home of another Babe, quarterback Babe Parilli and his Boston Patriots in the 1960s. FDR spoke at Fenway. The Rolling Stones lit up a night. The NHL unveiled its 2010 Winter Classic before a soldout crowd. Soon Fenway Park will be officially designated a National Historic Landmark, but truly it has been that for decades-the baseball field that no fan should miss, a park that has been at the heart not only of a great American city but also of American sports and sports culture.

America''s favorite sports almanac since its introduction 21 years ago, the Sports Illustrated Almanac now has 2011 covered, from football to fencing, hockey to handball, and everything in between. The Sports Illustrated Almanac features essays by top Sports Illustrated writers; all-time stats and records; and ticketing and venue information for pro baseball, basketball, football and hockey. It''s the ultimate argument-ender.

No sport has inspired better writing than baseball, and no one writes baseball better than Tom Verducci. As Sports Illustrated''s lead baseball writer since 1993, Verducci has witnessed the achievements of the games greatest heroes and told their inspiring stories with unmatched passion and sophistication. He has enriched SIs readers with an insiders perspective on the game, examining subtle shifts in the ever-changing balance between pitchers and hitters, between slumps and streaks, between sacred records and the athletes trying to break them. Despite his deep affection for baseball, however, Verducci has never shied away from the hard truth about the game: his landmark piece about steroids, for instance, changed the baseball landscape forever.These 25 pieces span the generations from Sandy Koufax to Roger Clemens, from Ted Williams to Barry Bonds.They chronicle the important trends in the game and celebrate baseballs brightest stars and most breathtaking performances.They are the best work of a writer at the top of his game.

Enjoy countless hours of fun as you learn all about the NFL and its and biggest stars while flexing your thinking muscles in Sports Illustrated Kids'' Football Playbook. This is the ultimate activity book for football fans of all ages. You''ll be challenged to conquer NFL trivia; solve football-themed puzzles, word searches and mazes; design your own logo, helmet and uniform - and much more! This 80-page book combines amazing Sports Illustrated photography with classic Sports Illustrated Kids games.

America''s best-selling sports almanac, now in its 23rd year, is as fact-filled and fun as ever. Packed with stats, standings and historical data from Sports Illustrated''s award-winning staff, this is the essential reference book for every fan. From pro and college football to Major League Baseball and the NBA to NASCAR, Sports Illustrated Almanac 2014 features all-time records and year-by-year statistics, including: The 2013 baseball playoffs and World Series An 88-page pro football section with year-by-year NFL standings and game recaps for Super Bowls I to XLVII Complete results from every major tournament in golf and tennis Year-by-year and 2013 statistics from NASCAR, IRL and Formula One Annual results from many professional and amateur sports, including Little League baseball, lacrosse and volleyball It''s the ultimate argument-ender.

See how all aspects of football have evolved in this highly visual book filled with history and trivia about the game. You''ll see a football transform before your eyes from a melon-like ball crudely stitched together to the aerodynamic pigskin it is today; or watch as a quarterback evolves from a scrawny helmetless player of the 1930s to a hulking play caller of the modern era. From rules to equipment to the all-time greats, this book is a journey through the game spanning the years

A must-have book for inquisitive young sports fans, this collection of sports trivia entertains as it informs, presenting insider knowledge from the world of sports in the distinct Sports Illustrated Kids style. More than simply a list of questions and answers, this full-color, interactive book details the answers to sports'' curious questions -- Why is the NHL''s trophy called the Stanley Cup? Who was baseball''s first designated hitter? When were the first Olympics held? Why is San Francisco''s football team called the 49ers? -- complete with photos and illustrations that entertain as they inform.Featuring hundreds of questions, young fans will be stumping the adult sports fans in their lives with their expert insider knowledge.