Each year since 1991, Glenn Stout, the series editor for Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Sports Writing, has read a lot of stories set in sports. And each year he has sent the best of them to the guest editor of the volume. This time around, that was author Leigh Montville, late of Sports Illustrated and, before that, The Boston Globe.

Professional football’s current success makes it hard to remember the game’s simpler days. Before the NFL was on television four nights a week, the tiny National Football League struggled to make a name for itself. Bill talks with author Robert S. Lyons about his new book, On Any Given Sunday, about NFL pioneer Bert Bell.

What happens when you give a passionate basketball fan keys to the NBA’s castles and tell him to go wild? Chris Ballard’s new book, The Art of a Beautiful Game. Bill talks with the Sports Illustrated basketball writer about the current state of the NBA.

Displays of religiosity are almost ubiquitous in the world of sports today. In his book, Onward Christian Athletes, author Tom Krattenmaker examines religion’s role in today’s sporting culture.

One of the most famous athletes of the 20th century, Sugar Ray Robinson is also one of the most complex. In his new book, Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson, author Wil Haygood contends that Robinson belongs with many of the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.

It’s safe to say that many ordinary Russians needed at least a figurative escape from the U.S.S.R. under Stalin’s oppressive regime. In his new book, Spartak Moscow, author Robert Edelman contends that for many, that escape was soccer.

Just like the wide receiver’s work on the field, Chad Ochocinco’s new autobiography is entertaining. But, Karen Given discovers, it’s certainly not teeming with literary merit.

Can you argue for days about the relative virtues of Bill Walton and Dave Cowens? Are you more interested in reforming the Basketball Hall of Fame than the country’s healthcare system? Then Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball might just be your bible.

Though many fans remember baseball in the early 20th-century as a different age in which players played “for the love of the game,” baseball players were no different then than they are now. In his book, The First Fall Classic, author Mike Vaccaro explores the making (or re-making) of baseball.

In The Opposite Field, author Jesse Katz writes about baseball, sure. But Katz’s extraordinarily candid memoir is really about fatherhood, community, and life’s bumps and road-blocks.