The world of junior and professional hockey will never be the same since Sheldon Kennedy of the Boston Bruins revealed that, while a junior player with the Swift Current Broncos, he was molested more than 300 times by his coach, Graham James. This revelation, and James's subsequent conviction, has thrown a spotlight on the other "Hockey Night in Canada," where abuse of and by young players is appallingly common. In Crossing the Line, Laura Robinson takes an unflinching look at abuse in junior hockey, the breeding ground for the NHL. She explains how this great sport has gone so bad, and challenges those who are a part of the world of hockey to rethink the game and consider ways to fix it. The abuse takes many forms. It may be overtly sexual. It may be an overwhelming pressure on players—removed from the support of their families and often living far from home—to perform and to fit in. It often takes the form of degrading hazing rituals, many of which have violent sexual overtones, designed to take the players beyond their inhibitions and the normal limits of their aggression. Robinson shows how the institutionalized abuse in hockey turns the players themselves into abusers. Yet when accusations are levelled against the players, team managers and owners rally around to protect them, applying pressure to have the charges dropped or the accuser discredited. Junior hockey and the NHL are arenas for the display of what we consider to be ideal manhood. In Crossing the Line, Laura Robinson shows how damaging it can be when the participants in this often violent spectacle are unleashed on the real world.

In 1996, Sheldon Kennedy rocked the insular world of Canadian hockey by announcing that his former minor-league coach, Graham James-the Hockey News 1989 Man of the Year-had sexually abused him more than 300 times. The media portrayed Kennedy as a hero for breaking the code of silence in professional hockey and bringing James to justice. The heroic myth intensified in 1998 when Kennedy announced that he was going to in-line skate from Newfoundland to British Columbia to raise awareness of sexual abuse. The skate raised over $1 million for Canadian Red Cross sexual abuse programs, and Kennedy settled in Calgary with his wife and young daughter. Anyone who has followed hockey is familiar with the story of ex-NHL player Sheldon Kennedy. As one of the most promising hockey talents to emerge from the Canadian minor leagues in the last two decades, Kennedy was destined for hockey greatness. But after he was drafted by the Detroit Red Wings in 1988, he attracted more attention for his off-ice antics than for his contributions to the score sheet. Plagued by rumours of drug and alcohol abuse and a string of injuries, Kennedy drifted from team to team. The happy ending promised by the headlines never materialized. Still haunted by the demons of sexual abuse, Kennedy's life spiralled out of control. He has come forward to tell his story, and the story of coach Graham James, who eventually was released from prison and coached hockey in Europe.

"Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence, and Crime" is a searing indictment of professional basketball players who live in a world where criminal laws and social norms don't exist, a world where they are given license to act above the law. On the court, they dazzle us with their spectacular physical feats. They generate millions of dollars of revenue for the NBA and their teams. They inspire adulation. But underneath all the glitz, the money, and alley-oops is a seamy underbelly, a rash of lawlessness that is gripping the NBA. Based on a first-of-its-kind investigation into the criminal histories of 177 NBA players from the 2001-2002 season, Out of Bounds shows that an alarming four out of every ten NBA players have a police record involving a serious crime. They are All-Stars and they are journeymen, involved in crimes ranging from armed robbery to domestic violence to gun possession to rape. "Out of Bounds" takes a hard look at shocking cases, with graphic accounts of physical and sexual violence and other outrageous conduct by players. In all, more than 250 people are named, including many prominent NBA players. It exposes the environment and culture that encourages such criminal behavior. It also explains the unique challenges these cases pose for law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors. And "Out of Bounds" takes readers inside the hidden yet critically vital role that lawyers, agents, and fame play in insulating criminally accused players from accountability. Author Jeff Benedict, an expert on athletes and crime, draws his conclusions from exhaustive research. In addition to his criminal-background checks, the author retrieved documents from law-enforcement agencies, courts, and private attorneys. He conducted more than 400 interviews with police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, players, agents, victims, witnesses, and coaches. What emerges is a disturbing and appalling picture of men who live above the law. A seminal and important work, "Out of Bounds" will forever change how we look at the NBA and its stars' lives of excess and privilege.

  Mike Jefferson started out as a suburban kid who dreamed of making it to the NHL, with parents determined to do anything and everything to make their son’s dream come true. So how did this promising young man’s hockey career turn into a harrowing crime story played out in sensational news reports? Coach and agent David Frost fast-tracked Jefferson’s route to the NHL, but at a staggering cost. Along the way, the affable young man turned against his parents, changed his name to Danton, and descended into a spiral of paranoia and violence that finally cut short the career he had sacrificed everything for when he was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. In this fast-paced and gripping story, veteran hockey journalist Steve Simmons digs beneath the surface to answer questions that have left Canadians shocked and fascinated. How did Frost get such a grip on Danton and his family? How did Frost work himself into such a position of trust in the world of minor hockey? What exactly was Danton’s relationship with Frost? And who was it that Danton hired a hitman to kill—his father or his agent? Full of the insights from one of Canada’s most-trusted hockey columnists, who is intimately familiar with both minor hockey and the big leagues, The Lost Dream is the story of the dark side of our fascination with a game Canadians love.

Hockey wasn’t meant to include girls. Women attracted to the speed, finesse and physicality of the game had to overcome condescending attitudes, lack of resources, legal barriers and even sexual assault in their quest for legitimacy and ice time. For more than 150 years, their femininity was questioned, monitored, hidden, disparaged and trivialized. Even so, teams were formed and stars emerged. Early tournaments were catalysts, inspiring pioneers with visions of what could be. From “the miracle maid” of the early 20th century to members of today’s Professional Women’s Hockey League, these are the stories of women who truly had ice in their veins.

After everything that the citizens of Beartown have gone through, they are struck yet another blow when they hear that their beloved local hockey team will soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in Hed, take in that fact. Amidst the mounting tension between the two rivals, a surprising newcomer is handpicked to be Beartown’s new hockey coach.Soon a new team starts to take shape around Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker. But bringing this team together proves to be a challenge as old bonds are broken, new ones are formed, and the enmity with Hed grows more and more acute.As the big match approaches, the not-so-innocent pranks and incidents between the communities pile up and their mutual contempt grows deeper. By the time the last game is finally played, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after all they’ve been through, the game they love can ever return to something simple and innocent.

Bill Buford—author of the highly acclaimed best-selling Among the Thugs— had long thought of himself as a reasonably comfortable cook when in 2002 he finally decided to answer a question that had nagged him every time he prepared a meal: What kind of cook could he be if he worked in a professional kitchen? When the opportunity arose to train in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s three-star New York restaurant, Babbo, Buford grabbed it. Heat is the chronicle—sharp, funny, wonderfully exuberant—of his time spent as Batali’s “slave” and of his far-flung apprenticeships with culinary masters in Italy. In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes the frenetic experience of working in Babbo’s kitchen: the trials and errors (and more errors), humiliations and hopes, disappointments and triumphs as he worked his way up the ladder from slave to cook. He talks about his relationships with his kitchen colleagues and with the larger-than-life, hard-living Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters. Buford takes us to the restaurant in a remote Appennine village where Batali first apprenticed in Italy and where Buford learns the intricacies of handmade pasta . . . the hill town in Chianti where he is tutored in the art of butchery by Italy’s most famous butcher, a man who insists that his meat is an expression of the Italian soul . . . to London, where he is instructed in the preparation of game by Marco Pierre White, one of England’s most celebrated (or perhaps notorious) chefs. And throughout, we follow the thread of Buford’s fascinating reflections on food as a bearer of culture, on the history and development of a few special dishes (Is the shape of tortellini really based on a woman’s navel? And just what is a short rib?), and on the what and why of the foods we eat today. Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a richly evocative memoir of Buford’s kitchen adventure, the story of Batali’s amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in—and to savor.

A hard-hitting and powerful look at hockey's moment of reckoning in Canada, and the ways in which a game that is so universally loved has been rocked in recent years by court cases involving sexual assault and startling incidents of hazing and abuse throughout junior hockey.The allegations read like a scene out of a horror movie.Five National Hockey League players, all of them 18 to 20-year-old Canada World Juniors at the time, are alleged to have sexually assaulted a young woman in a London, Ontario hotel room in June 2018 over several hours. When the players learned that the alleged victim had reported the incident to the police, they allegedly coerced her to drop the complaint and colluded to make sure their stories lined up with each other. Hockey Canada kept the details of the case out of the spotlight and  came to a confidential financial settlement with the plaintiff, paid out of a secret slush fund worth millions of dollars that the organization kept on hand to settle such complaints quietly.On May 26, 2022, TSN investigative reporter Rick Westhead broke the story surrounding the Team Canada junior players and Hockey Canada's handling of the case, immediately sending shock waves throughout all levels of the hockey world. Charges of sexual assault were made against the players; all of whom denied any wrongdoing. Once the story went live on the TSN website, Westhead's inbox on X filled with messages from people who wanted to share their personal stories on how they had been impacted by hockey's toxic culture.In We Breed Lions, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Rick Westhead does a deep-dive into the state of hockey in Canada today. He gives voice to those who have been sexually assaulted by hockey players, revealing the struggles they've had with local police officials in their efforts to seek justice. He also goes inside the dressing room to find out how attitudes of misogyny and homophobia continue to flourish, and speaks to former players who were forced to perform degrading acts of initiation in order to “be one of the guys.”Looming large in Westhead's extraordinary reporting are the gatekeepers of the game—league officials, team owners and members of the sport's governing bodies—who are reluctant to impose change from the outside and willing to sacrifice the well-being of their players and the community for profit.Westhead offers hope for hockey's future, profiling those individuals and organizations who are committed to educating players around issues of consent, putting an end to hazing and redefining what it means to be a man on and off the ice. Featuring a Foreword by bestselling author Stephen Brunt, We Breed Lions will surely generate an enormous amount of debate and discussion among parents, players and all of those who love the game of hockey and want to see it get to a better place.