Combat Memoirs

In Killing the Legends, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard explore the lives, legacies, and tragic deaths of three of the most famous people of the 20th century. Each experienced immense success, then failures that forced them to change; each faced the challenge of growing old in fields that privilege youth; and finally, each became isolated, cocooned by wealth but vulnerable to the demands of those in their innermost circles.

In this inspiring and moving book, Ronda Rousey, Olympic medalist in judo, reigning UFC women's bantamweight champion, and Hollywood star, describes her difficult path to glory. Marked by her signature charm, barbed wit, and undeniable power, Rousey's account of the toughest fights of her life - in and outside the Octagon - reveals the painful loss of her father when she was eight years old, the intensity of her judo training, her battles with love, her meteoric rise to fame, and the secret behind her undefeated UFC record.

Four days before Christmas in 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly a sleek, dark shape pulled up on the bomber’s tail - a German Messerschmitt fighter. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber with the squeeze of a trigger.

Anthony Robles is a three-time all-American wrestler, the 2011 NCAA National Wrestling Champion, and a Nike-sponsored athlete. He was also born without his right leg. Doctors could not explain to his mother, Judy, what led to the birth defect, but at the age of five, the one-legged toddler scaled a fifty-foot pole unassisted. From that moment on, Judy knew without a doubt that her son would be unstoppable.

U.S. soldiers who served in overseas conflicts—from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan—share true stories of the actions that earned them some of America’s most distinguished military medals, up to and including the Medal of Honor. They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism, and for the good of our beloved country. There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American hero.

For world-renowned professional fighter Georges St-Pierre, the greatest asset is not physical strength or athleticism - it’s a sense of purpose. From his beginnings as a small, mercilessly bullied child first discovering karate to his years as a struggling garbage collector who spent all his free time in the gym, his hard-fought rise in the sport of mixed martial arts, and his long, painful recovery from a career-threatening injury, Georges never lost sight of his ambition to become the greatest martial artist of all time.

From the best-selling author of The Prince of Providence comes a revelatory biography of Rocky Marciano, the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.The son of poor Italian immigrants, with short arms and stubby legs, Rocky Marciano accomplished a feat that eluded legendary heavyweight champions like Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Muhammad Ali, and Mike Tyson: He never lost a professional fight. His record was a perfect 49-0.

Raised in Dublin, Ireland, in a devoutly Catholic family, Rebecca Quin constantly invented new ways to make her mother worry—roughhousing with the neighborhood kids, hosting secret parties while her parents were away, enrolling in a warehouse wrestling school, nearly breaking her neck and almost kneecapping a WWE star before her own wrestling career even began—and she was always in search of a thrilling escape from the ordinary.

Want to become elite? Get ready for Chosen Suffering. Real champions aren’t born - they’re built. It’s true in life, business, athletics, and faith. We must transcend physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual limits if we want to achieve ultimate victory. Author Tom Ryan calls this “chosen suffering”. He knows that success comes with a price, paid for by the daily choices we make. He also believes every person encounters “unchosen suffering”, the type that brings us to our knees. In Coach Ryan’s darkest hour, he and his wife discovered joy, peace, and hope.

At the end of the 1976 football season, more than forty Harvard athletes went to Boston's Combat Zone to celebrate. In the city's adult entertainment district, drugs and prostitution ran rampant, violent crime was commonplace, and corrupt police turned the other way. At the end of the night, Italian American star athlete Andy Puopolo, raised in the city's North End, was murdered in a stabbing. Three African American men were accused of the crime. His murder made national news and led to the eventual demise of the city's red-light district.

The first authoritative biography of film legend Bruce Lee, who made martial arts a global phenomenon, bridged the divide between Eastern and Western cultures, and smashed long-held stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans. Forty-five years after Bruce Lee’s sudden death at age 32, journalist and best-selling author Matthew Polly has written the definitive account of Lee’s life. It’s also one of the only accounts; incredibly, there has never been an authoritative biography of Lee.

A journalist who many iconic athletes have trusted to tell their stories (of both triumph and disgrace), Jim has had unprecedented access to the people, places, and extraordinary events in the world of sports. Asking tough but fair questions, he has broken numerous stories, and landed squarely in the middle of others, from the Ben Johnson and Barry Bonds steroid scandals, to Michael Jordan’s surprise retirement, to the off-the-court Kobe/Shaq feud which led to their on-the-court break up, to being part of the live broadcast for 22 Super Bowls.

There are few people who have been in the wrestling business longer than Jim Ross. Slobberknocker is the story of how an Oklahoman farm kid with a vivid imagination and seemingly unattainable dreams became "The Voice of Wrestling" to record TV audiences and millions of fans around the world. Jim opens up about his life as an only child on a working farm, who became obsessed with professional wrestling having first seen it on his grandparents' TV.

In 2005, Brad Balukjian left his position as a magazine fact-checker to pursue a dream job: partner with his childhood hero, The Iron Sheik (whose real name was Khosrow Vaziri), to write his biography. Things quickly went south, culminating in the Sheik threatening Balukjian’s life. Now seventeen years later, Balukjian returns to the road in search of not only a reunion with the Sheik, but something much bigger: truth in a world built on illusion.

Throughout the history of the WWF, there have been times of prosperity and times of hardship, cycles that shape the ethos of the company by forcing changes to its infrastructure and on-screen direction. The one constant throughout three decades of change is Vincent Kennedy McMahon, the stalwart puppet-master who captains the ship. Unflinching, thick-skinned, and domineering, McMahon has ultimately outlasted all of his competition and come out on top of every wrestling war he has waged. In 1995, he very nearly lost.

Lost in the annals of boxing is the sport's true Cinderella story. James J. Braddock, dubbed "Cinderella Man" by Damon Runyon, was a once promising light heavyweight for whom a string of losses in the ring and a broken right hand happened to coincide with the Great Crash of 1929.

The Best in the World chronicles some of the incredible and often preposterous highlights of Jericho's recent career, including how Mickey Rourke challenged Jericho to a match then backed out; his escape from the 2010 Icelandic volcanoes in a broken-down, European rental-car shuttle; his encounters with Bob Barker, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Al Sharpton, and Mike Tyson; and his on-again, off-again relationship with WWE chief Vince McMahon.

Telling the remarkable tale of a man who is still remembered on the streets of New Orleans and in the hearts of professional-wrestling fans, this book aims to restore the overlooked Junkyard Dog to his proper place in the history books. In 1979, Sylvester Ritter, also known as the Junkyard Dog, managed to break one of the final color barriers in the sport by becoming the first Black wrestler named undisputed top star of his promotion, and this biography reveals all the famous feuds and business back stories that made him a wrestling legend.

Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the 20th century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of 11 to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African-American fighter pilot in history. After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun.

One of WWE's most unlikely champions of all time and also one of its most popular, Bryan has proved to the world and to all of WWE that looks can be deceiving. Just ask anyone who's ever underestimated him . . . right before he went out and whipped the WWE universe into a frenzy. This is Bryan's behind-the-scenes story told for the first time ever by the "YES!" Man himself---from his beginnings as a child wanting to wrestle to his ten years circling the globe on the independent circuit and his remarkable climb to the upper ranks of WWE.