Women's sports books to add to a summer reading list

From sports in and out of the spotlight, stories show success and challenges for many female athletes

Jul 11, 2025

Summer is a time for reading, or so I’ve heard. But over the years, I’ve come to realize that’s kind of wishful thinking. In fact, summer is a time to get distracted by a million things, and fortunately most of them are good.

Summer is also a time for dreaming. So I do dream that I will get through the books on my list, which includes, like last summer, a lot of books about women’s sports.

The list for 2025 isn’t maybe as varied as it would be in an Olympic year, but it does have some depth. As women’s sports have gained interest and their popularity has grown, so has the market for books about them.

Yet we still live in a world where there are far more books about vampires than there are about female athletes, and that rather sucks. But in the meantime, here’s a list with some articles thrown in if you don’t want to quite commit to a book right now. Because you have other things to do, of course.

The Caitlin Clark collection

Since we’re a year or two removed from the former Iowa and current Indiana Fever player’s explosion onto the scene, there’s been enough time now for the market to be flooded with books about her. I had a great conversation a few weeks ago with author Howard Megdal, whose book, “Becoming Caitlin Clark,” connects the dots of how girls’ and women’s basketball in Iowa helped create the phenomenon of No. 22.

Megdal will be at Prairie Lights in Iowa City at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 25, in conversation with current Iowa women’s basketball Coach Jan Jensen and former Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder. The event is free.

Coming up right on the heels of that is a new book by USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, “On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports.” Brennan dives in to Clark’s first season with Indiana and also the impact that it has had on the cultural landscape, as well as background on Iowa’s history, too.

Brennan spoke with Julie Gammack of the Iowa Writers Collaborative earlier this week, and you can watch the recording of the Zoom call here. Next week, Brennan’s book tour brings her to three Iowa locations: Alluvial Brewing in Ames on July 14 (free, but tickets are required) Beaverdale Books in Des Moines on July 15 (tickets are required, $35 including a book) and July 16 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena’s Feller Club, where she’ll be joined by coaches Jensen and Bluder (tickets are $60, including a book, appetizers and dessert).

For a broader picture of the phenomenon that Clark and her fans find themselves in the midst of, Jane McManus does a deep dive of the women’s sports landscape and how it built up to current events (after many starts, stops and intentional roadblocks). “The Fast Track: Inside the Surging Business of Women’s Sports” is the former sportswriter and current academic’s second book project within a year. Late last year I spoke with her about the collection of excellent sportswriting that she edited, “The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024” (which also had Clark on the cover).

And if it’s the kids you’re shopping for, a quick Amazon search gave me 14 books about Clark, including one that was clearly written by AI because it is called “Caitlin Clark: The Girl Who Strive for the Best and Never Gives Up” and the cover illustration of Clark pictures her as a young Black woman. (I’m not going to link to that; you can look that up yourself.)

But the book world goes well beyond Clark.

One for the kids, and dog lovers

Besides being a pretty darn good basketball player, former Iowa star Megan Gustafson has something new to add to her resume: author and publisher. Gustafson’s basketball career has taken her all over the world, a challenge made easier by the company of her Corgi, Pancake.

Gustafson’s book, “Pancake’s Passport,” is a 120-page picture book and also a Bible guide. Gustafson launched her own publishing company, The Inspired Bookshelf, which she describes as a hybrid of traditional publishing and self-publishing.

Angie Holmes, who covers the Big Ten and other conferences for The Next, spoke with Gustafson about her book and its inspiration.

Celebrated, then mocked, then banned, then forgotten

The handy thing about soccer not really catching on with American culture for a long time is that when the U.S. women’s team rose to glory in the late 1990s, they weren’t stepping on the dudes’ turf.

Female players in soccer-mad nations didn’t have that luxury, though. Though England went crazy for its women’s team when it hosted, and won, the European Cup in 2022, a team that made it to an all-but-forgotten women’s World Cup in 1971 more or less got kicked in the teeth for being … good.

“The Lost Lionesses,” written by the daughter of one of the 1971 team’s star players, builds on the story told in a documentary about that World Cup, “Copa ’71” (which I wrote about last year). England’s women horrified the status quo by organizing and participating in the tournament, and faced the consequences of that – and not glory – when they returned home.

The author, Gail Emms, is a well-known British athlete in her own right. She won an Olympic silver medal in badminton in 2004.

More soccer heartbreak

When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 2021, women of that nation saw their lives upended and faced danger because of restrictions now placed upon them. That included any sports, which meant the end of the Afghan women’s soccer team.

“My Beautiful Sisters” is the memoir of that team’s captain, Khalida Popal, that recounts not only her start and ascent in the sport but her harrowing work to help female soccer players get out of Kabul in order to escape potential execution for having played the sport.

Olympic drama, twice over

Jordan Chiles is only 24, but her gymnastics career has been full of enough dramatic moments to warrant a memoir. Add in the challenges in perception of and expectations for being a young Black girl competing in her sport, and “I’m That Girl: Living the Power of My Dreams” makes for an intriguing story.

Chiles made the Tokyo Olympic team for 2021 but wasn’t expected to compete in the all-around competition. But when superstar teammate Simone Biles got a case of the “twisties” and could not compete, Chiles stepped in and helped the U.S. to a silver medal.

Last summer in Paris, Chiles didn’t win a bronze medal in the floor exercise until she did, and then she didn’t. After an inquiry into her score following her fourth-place finish, it was raised and she was awarded the bronze. Then the Romanian federation appealed to the sport’s governing body, and two of its gymnasts were elevated to third and fourth, leaving Chiles in fifth.

“I’m surprised everyone couldn’t hear the sound of my heart breaking, because it absolutely did,” Chiles writes in the book about finding out the news, which she learned while riding in an Uber.

Two of the best to play the game

Back in the 1990s when I covered most of the Final Fours, a Virginia basketball player named Dawn Staley was so shy that it was almost like pulling teeth for reporters to get more than two words out of her in interviews. Fast forward a decade or so to when I talked to Staley, then the coach at Temple, for a freelance story and barely asked one question before she gave a long, enthusiastic, passionate answer to the topic at hand.

“Who is this?” I wanted to shout into the phone.

So to see Staley, one of the most decorated basketball players and coaches in U.S. history – men or women – evolve into an enthusiastic and often outspoken leader has been something to behold. And to see the player who was so reticent to speak once upon a time release a memoir – and one that includes her high school graduation picture, which you couldn’t pay me oodles of cash to do – is downright amazing.

But it’s great that she did; Staley has quite the story to tell. Particularly moving is how her mother escaped the South, South Carolina in particular, as a young girl because her own mother feared for her safety because of the racism. Staley’s mother spent 50 years living in Philadelphia. It was where Dawn was raised but then triumphed in her mother’s home state of South Carolina by building a women’s basketball dynasty.

Staley honors her mother with her memoir, “Uncommon Favor.”

Another former superstar, Candace Parker, shares her life story with “The Can-Do Mindset.” Parker, a former star at Tennessee and WNBA champion and MVP, weaves her own story with a guide to success.

Quick hits

For those who don’t want to commit to a book, maybe some feature stories can do the trick. Leading the way is a story from The Next about how, with the spotlight on the unexpected season of the Golden State Valkyries, members of the the Bay Area’s first women’s pro team – the San Francisco Pioneers of the Women’s Professional Basketball League – will be honored Monday at the WNBA’s newest team. When the Pioneers’ final season ended in 1980-81, it included former Iowa star Cindy Haugejorde, former Iowa Cornets legend Molly Bolin and Bolin’s Cornets teammate Doris Draving.

For the first time, WBL’s San Francisco Pioneers will reunite in the Bay Area (The Next)

The Crossover

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