Small though that number is, it is inflated by dozens of skippers with only a few weeks or months at the helm of a club. If we were to define "real" managers as those who have managed a thousand games - not, after all, a terribly high bar to hurdle, fewer than seven full seasons - we would find that fewer than one hundred men qualify. Now Bill James, "the guru of baseball" (Newsweek), takes on the challenge of chronicling that history, including a decade-by-decade snapshot of baseball strategy from the 1870s through the 1990s.

    Our 8th edition gives you the tools you need to create your own adventure, whether you want to browse colorful handicrafts at Otavalo's Saturday market, climb active Volcan Cotopaxi, swim with the Galapagos penguins or relax in chilled-out Vilcabamba.Lonely Planet guides are written by experts who get to the heart of every destination they visit. This fully updated edition is packed with accurate, practical and honest advice, designed to give you the information you need to make the most of your trip.In This Guide:Dedicated Outdoors chapter: hiking, biking, surfing and kayakingInsightful, respectful coverage of Ecuador's rich indigenous culturesGreen Index identifies sustainable options

    Inside you'll find Steyn's take on Ronald Reagan, Idi Amin, the Princess of Wales, Bob Hope, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Artie Shaw and Pope John Paul II - plus Zimbabwe's Reverend Canaan Banana, Scotty from Star Trek, Nixon's secretary and Gershwin's girlfriend. It's the passing parade of our times, from presidents and prime ministers to the guy who invented Cool Whip.

    The crowning moment of Hogan’s comeback was his dramatic victory in the1950 U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club near Philadelphia, where his battered legs could barely carry him on the 36-hole final day.Miracle at Merion tells the stirring story of Hogan’s triumph over adversity—the rarely-performed surgery that saved his life, the months of rehabilitation when he couldn’t even hit a golf ball, his stunning return to competition at the Los Angeles Open, and,finally, the U.S. Open triumph that returned him to the pinnacle of the game.While Hogan was severely injured in the accident, fracturing his pelvis, collarbone, rib, and ankle, his life wasn’t in danger until two weeks later when blood clots developed in his leg, necessitating emergency surgery. Hogan didn’t leave the hospital until April and didn’t even touch a golf club until August. It wasn’t until November,more than nine months after the accident, that he was able to go to the range to hit balls. Hogan’s performance at the Los Angeles Open in early January convinced Hollywood to make a movie out of his life and comeback (Follow the Sun, starring Glenn Ford).Five months later, Hogan completed his miraculous comeback by winning the U.S. Open in a riveting 36-hole playoff against Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio, permanently cementing his legacy as one of the sport’s true legends.

    Michael Bamberger, who has covered the game for twenty years at Sports Illustrated, shows us the big names as we’ve never seen them before: Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Curtis Strange, Fred Couples—and the late Ken Venturi. But he also chronicles the legendary figures known only to insiders, who nevertheless have left an indelible mark on the sport. There’s a club pro, a teaching pro, an old black Southern caddie. There’s a tournament director in his seventies, a TV director in his eighties, and a USGA executive in his nineties. All these figures, from the marquee names to the unknowns, have changed the game. What they all share is a game that courses through their collective veins like a drug. Was golf better back in the day? Men in Green weaves a history of the modern game that is personal, touching, inviting, and new. This meditation on aging and a celebration of the game is “a nostalgic visit and reminiscence with those who fashioned golf history…and should be cherished” (Golf Digest).

    In Follow the Roar, Smiley reports from the gallery at every hole on every tournament course in a year that would turn out to be the most monumental so far in Tiger Wood’s already illustrious career. Including a new update on Tiger’s magnificent return to the game in 2009, Follow the Roar is exhilarating, funny, engaging, and inspiring—604 holes in the life of a golf legend.

    My list goes: The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Doors, and then I stall on the fifth. Creedence? The Band - although they're mostly Canadian. Simon and Garfunkel? Jefferson Airplane? The Lovin' Spoonful? But I plump for The Monkees."-Robert Forster In The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, Robert Forster takes readers on an exhilarating trip through the past and present of popular music - from Bob Dylan, AC/DC and Nana Mouskouri through to Cat Power, Franz Ferdinand and ... Delta Goodrem. To accompany Forster's acclaimed writing for The Monthly, there are some stunning new pieces - 'The 10 Rules' and 'The 10 Bands I Wish I'd Been In' and an appreciation of Guy Clark - as well as a reflection on The Velvet Underground, a short story about Normie Rowe and a moving tribute to fellow Go-Between Grant McLennan. Funny and illuminating, The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll shows a great critic at work.

    Edited by The New Yorker’s Bill Buford, the pieces collected here “prove that a restless, intrepid spirit isn’t unwelcome to American readers” (New York Times Book Review).

    As both a former player and now a professional observer and commentator on the game he knows all the key figures of the sport and has witnessed first-hand some of cricket's greatest moments. His book is a personal account of the game as he's seen and experienced it across the globe. From epic test matches to titans of the game like Lara, Warne and Tendulkar, to his own childhood love for the sport, Mark gives us his informed, personal and fascinating views on cricket - the world's other beautiful game.

    They were a ragtag team of girls who wanted to play soccer, and no one took them seriously. Their male coach expected little from his "ladies, " and their mediocre performance convinced them he was right.Then a kind of miracle happened. Emiria Salzmann, Thunder's new coach, a top player herself, knew what it took to win--discipline, relentless drills, thigh-burning sprints, and an inspired passing game. The girls hated it, but their coach never let up. Tough and determined, she showed them what it felt like to be winners--and they loved it. As the momentum grew with a string of victories, the girls thrived on the competition, believing they had the right stuff to become champions.They were right! With spirits soaring, Thunder won its league on the last day of the season and headed for the state cup, emerging not just as powerful athletes but as strong, confident, emotionally healthy human beings--champions in the game of soccer, and in the game of life.

    From their first ever FA Cup win in 1965 to the Champions League defeat in Athens in 2007, this overview takes on the extraordinary stories behind the 48 trophies Liverpool has won. Highlighting the memorable nights that propelled the club to five European Cups, three UEFA Cups, 12 titles, and countless domestic cup triumphs, this account also discusses their bitter failures, the tragic disasters in Sheffield and Brussels, and the barren years of the late 60s and the 90s.

    In his introduction to this year’s edition, Adam Gopnik finds that great essays have “text and inner text, personal story and larger point, the thing you’re supposed to be paying attention to and some other thing you’re really interested in.” David Sedaris’s quirky, hilarious account of a childhood spent yearning for a home where history was properly respected is also a poignant rumination on surviving the passage of time. In “The Ecstasy of Influence,” Jonathan Lethem ponders the intriguing phenomenon of cryptomnesia: a person believes herself to be creating something new but is really recalling similar, previously encountered work. Ariel Levy writes in “The Lesbian Bride’s Handbook” of her efforts to plan a party that accurately reflects her lifestyle (which she notes is “not black-tie!”) as she confronts head-on what it means to be married. And Lauren Slater is off to “Tripp Lake,” recounting the one summer she spent at camp—a summer of color wars, horseback riding, and the “wild sadness” that settled in her when she was away from home. In the end, Gopnik believes that the only real ambition of an essayist is to be a master of our common life. This latest installment of The Best American Essays is full of writing that reveals, in Gopnik’s words, “the breath of things as they are.”

    But soon he finds himself embroiled with an absurd yet irresistible cast of characters, including the team's owner, described by the New York Times as "straight out of a Mario Puzo novel," and coach Osvaldo Jaconi, whose only English word is the one he uses to describe himself: "bulldozer."  As the riotous, edge-of-your-seat season unfolds, McGinniss develops a deepening bond with the team, their village and its people, and their country. Traveling with the miracle team, from the isolated mountain region where Castel di Sangro is located to gritty towns as well as grand cities, McGinniss introduces us to an Italy that no tourist guidebook has ever described, and comes away with a "sad, funny, desolating, and inspiring story--everything, in fact, a story should be" (Los Angeles Times).

    For any golf fan, the words evoke the immortal greats of the game and their quest for the most prized trophy of all -- the green jacket of Augusta National Golf Club. But behind the legendary links and timeless traditions is one of the most overlooked and misunderstood figures in the history of the Masters and Augusta National: Clifford Roberts, the club's chairman from its founding in 1931 until shortly before his death in 1977. Roberts' meticulous attention to detail, his firm authoritarian hand, and his refusal to settle -- even for perfection -- helped build the Masters into the tournament it is today, and Augusta National into every golfer's idea of heaven on earth. David Owen was granted unprecedented access to the archives and records of Augusta National Golf Club. He has produced an honest and affectionate chronicle of the Masters, from its conception to its modern greatness, and a fascinating portrayal of Clifford Roberts -- whose perseverance and pride forged the Augusta National we know today.

    “Essays are restless literature, trying to find out how things fit together, how we can think about two things at once, how the personal and the public can inform each other, how two overtly dissimilar things share a secret kinship,” contends Rebecca Solnit in her introduction. From lost languages and extinct species to life-affirming cosmologies and literary myths that offer cold comfort, the personal and the public collide in The Best American Essays 2019. This searching, necessary collection grapples with what has preoccupied us in the past year—sexual politics, race, violence, invasive technologies—and yet, in reading for the book, Solnit also found “how discovery can be a deep pleasure.”  The Best American Essays 2019 includes Michelle Alexander, Jabari Asim, Alexander Chee, Masha Gessen, Jean Guerrero, Elizabeth Kolbert, Terese Marie Mailhot, Jia Tolentino, and others.