Billie Jean King

Christine Brennan

The tennis star recounts her life and athletic career, from childhood, through her athletic successes, to her life after professional tennis, and discusses the life lessons that she learned at every stage along the way.

Lessons I've Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes

Pressure is a Privilege

The author of Inside Edge updates the behind-the-scenes saga of professional figure skating to include the results of the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Beginning with the 1997 U.S. championships in Nashville, Brennan chronicles the ambitions, achievements, frustrations, and personal hurdles for the American skaters in a pivotal year that culminated with the Olympics. The year's drama is palpable, including highlights such as the competition between the two top-rated women, Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski, along with the ever-increasing athleticism of the men. Along the way Brennan makes detours to check up on recent favorites from the past such as Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Brian Boitano, and Scott Hamilton. And always rinkside are the stories of coaches, choreographers, parents, and fans who have transformed figure skating into one of the world's fastest-growing professional sports.

The Inside Story of the Quest for Figure Skating's Olympic Gold Medals

 Edge of Glory

Figure skating is the most beautiful and mysterious of all sports. When the skaters are on the ice, every twitch of a muscle and every slip of a skate blade is visible for the world to see. In Inside Edge, Christine Brennan chronicles—for the first time—a season on the skating circuit, intimately portraying the lives, on and off the ice, of the sport's current and upcoming stars. Woven into the narrative are stories of figure skating luminaries—including Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn, Katarina Witt, Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Michelle Kwan, Rudy Galindo, and Tara Lipinski. Revealing the backstage conflicts high-profile figure skaters face, and the ambition that drives them, Brennan also tells the stories of their families, of improbable rises to the top, and of wasted talents. If skaters are perfect, they can become international heroes. But if they fall, if they miss a three-revolution jump on a quarter-inch blade of steel, the despair is theirs alone. This is their life on the edge, where decades of training culminate in little more than four crucial minutes on the ice. There is no other sport like it. There is no other story like theirs.

Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey Into the Secret World of Figure Skating

Respected sports journalist Christine Brennan tells the riveting tales of the world's best figure skaters during the most intense year of their young lives. The story opens with the 1997 U.S. national championships, when Michelle Kwan, the overwhelming favorite for the 1998 Olympic gold medal, leaves the rink in tears. Enter Tara Lipinski, a seventy-five-pound jumping machine -- soon to become the youngest world skating champion.Chronicling the year leading up to and including the 1998 Olympic Games, Edge of Glory offers portraits of the famous and infamous, the hopefuls and has-beens -- Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Tonya Harding, Elvis Stojko, Todd Eldredge, Ilia Kulik, and many more. Edge of Glory also takes the reader behind the scenes of the sport: the aggressive sports agents, the career-fostering coaches, the eager reporters, the choreographers, and the attentive, stern judges. Ultimately, Edge of Glory is about the athletes themselves. What drives these skaters to a profession that promises retirement at such a young age? How do they survive in a sport where one fall decides it all? What do they fear? And, most importantly, who will win, and who will lose?

Edge of Glory

From the best-known and most widely read woman sports columnist in the United States comes a remarkable memoir of a father and a daughter, the story of a girl who would turn her love for sports into a trailblazing career. Christine Brennan grew up in Toledo, Ohio, spending her summers playing with the boys on her block, memorizing baseball statistics, accompanying her dad to countless baseball and football games, and falling in love with everything about sports. While other girls were playing with Barbie dolls, Chris was collecting baseball cards and listening to the radio for the play-by-play accounts of her favorite teams. The eldest of four children, Chris was her father's daughter from the beginning. For a girl growing up in the 1960s and '70s, in the days before Title IX changed the playing fields of America, there were few opportunities to play organized sports. But Jim Brennan encouraged his daughter to believe she could play anything she wanted to, and when she couldn't be on the field, he was by her side in the stands -- she always thought the seat next to her father was the best seat in the house -- usually cheering for the underdog, and making sure Chris knew there was a place for her in the world of sports. In her warm and inspiring memoir, the first of its kind by a female sports journalist, Brennan takes readers from her neighborhood ball fields to the press boxes and locker rooms of stadiums around the world. Guided by her father's unfailing sense of loyalty, honor, and fairness, at the age of twenty-two she became the first female sportswriter for The Miami Herald, and in 1985 was the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins as a staff writer for The Washington Post. Over the past quarter century, Brennan has reported on many of the biggest stories in sports, and led the coverage of both the 1994 Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan saga and the pairs figure-skating scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. Her USA Today column on Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, triggered a nationwide debate about the club's lack of female members. Told in the spirited, friendly voice that readers of her column have come to love, Best Seat in the House is the heartwarming chronicle of a girl who came of age as women's sports were coming of age, encouraged every step of the way by her beloved father.

Best Seat in the House: A Father, a Daughter, a Journey Through Sports

An award-winning sports journalist traces the origins of her love of sports in her relationship with her supportive father while describing her efforts to break barriers and stereotypes in a male-dominated industry and her reportage of such events as the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan scandal and the 1999 Women's World Cup Soccer victory. 40,000 first printing.

A Father, a Daughter, a Journey Through Sports

Best Seat in the House

Tracy Austin

The youngest U.S. Open singles champion in history tells about surviving the challenges that exist off the tennis court and shares how she was able to put her losses behind her and find new meaning and new rewards. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Christine Brennan

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