It's a sport that shows us what a human being might be capable of, with extreme dedication--whether we're eating hot dogs in the stands, waiting out a rain delay in our living rooms, or practising the lost art of catching a stray radio signal from an out-of-market broadcast.From learning about America through ball diamond visits to the most famous triple play that never happened on Canadian soil, Forbes invites us to witness the adult conversing with the O Pee-Chee baseball cards of his youth. Tender, insightful, and with the slow heartbreak familiar to anyone who's cheered on a losing team, The Utility of Boredom tells us a thing or two about the sport, and how a seemingly trivial game might help us make sense of our messy lives.

    While no two are identical, Brandel Chamblee, the highly regarded television analyst and former PGA Tour professional, once noticed that the best players of all time have shared similar positions in each part of the swing, from the grip and setup to the footwork, backswing, and follow-through. Since then, Chamblee, a student of the game’s history, has used scientific precision and thoroughness to make a study of the common swing positions of the greats. Now, in The Anatomy of Greatness, he shares what he has learned, offering hundreds of photographs as proof, to show us how we can easily incorporate his findings into our own swings to hit the ball farther, straighter, and more consistently. What does it tell us that the majority of the greats—from Jack Nicklaus and Byron Nelson to modern masters like Tiger Woods—employ a “strong” grip on the club? How did legends like Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Mickey Wright, and Gary Player unlock hidden power and control by turning in the right knee at address? Why are some modern teachers preaching quiet footwork when forty-eight of the top fifty golfers of all time lifted their left heels on the backswing, allowing them to build power? At the same time that Chamblee is encouraging certain swing virtues, he also debunks a number of popular—but misguided—swing philosophies that have been hindering golfers for years. The result is perhaps the best and clearest explanation of how to hit a golf ball ever published. Golfers can take The Anatomy of Greatness to the driving range and use Chamblee’s clear explanations to build better swings—and get more speed and consistency into their swings—immediately. This book is like having a series of private lessons from the best golfers of all time, and it will help golfers build swings that make the game easier and more fun.

    And yet, when golf historians write about the legends of the game, with special attention paid to the above-listed "Big Three," his name is often left out of the discussion, or is at best an afterthought. In this fascinating autobiography, Casper tells his life story, shining candid insight into the man who quietly collected fifty-one PGA Tour victories, the seventh highest total in history.

    No Jobs. No friends. Just buckets of our own ignorance. Follow along in horror and hilarity as the family acclimates to the new small town way of life and the author bounces from jobs working in a school cafeteria to selling women’s clothing in a call center to opening a barbecue restaurant. Written in a smart, self-deprecating, salty style, Small Town Ho is all at once poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, full of the struggle of an ordinary family consisting of three boys, one big black lab, one assassin of a cat, and two very tired parents.

    To save her from living alone with a difficult father, her older sister sends her a one-way plane ticket to leave New Jersey. Landing in San Francisco, she is thrust into a lifestyle way beyond what she is ready for, and that challenges all previous notions of how one behaves. It is 1963, and we are brought along as Ilene becomes immersed in the unfolding of the sixties during the earliest days of sexual freedom, psychedelic drugs, the jazz scene, and rock ’n’ roll. This is a deeply personal story of how one young woman manages to survive and even to thrive in the face of the whirlwind of experiences coming at her. It is filled with a rich tapestry of moments that run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous, and everything in between.

    Summary; The true-life American epic of five men who meet as fraternity brothers in the early 1960s and live out the dreams, failures, loves, and betrayals of their tumultuous generation. Subjects; Colton, Larry. United States -- Biography. Journalists -- United States -- Biography. Genre; Biography.

    The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth's intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they've been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line - conveniently labeled "crazy" so their voices are ignored.No one is willing to fight for their freedom and, disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness, they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose...

    But whether you want to shoot squirrels, punch holes in paper targets, or defend your home, there is only one path to achieving consistent accuracy with a handgun: mastering the fundamentals of marksmanship. Written by a former U.S. Marine Corps firearms instructor who has taught more than a thousand law enforcement, military, and security personnel, The Perfect Pistol Shot uses succinct lessons, uncommon exercises, and real-world stories to provide a fresh look at a vital topic for all gunmen. It includes: The single most important "trick" to perfecting handgun marksmanship A simple concept for learning how to shoot a gun twice as fast A series of unique "Prove It" exercises that allow you to test the concepts offered without the pressure of actual shooting An entertaining chapter on guns, gun magazines, and gun gurus that will help you make wiser choices about your training Knowing how to engage targets is valuable for the defensive shooter, but if "engaging" doesn't translate into "hitting," what's the point? You must have a solid foundation on which to build tactical skills. Your reward will be conversion from just another hapless shooter into an independent marksman.

    

    James Montague travelled there for three years, observing the region's cultures and politics through the prism of football and interviewing all the major teams along the way. He soon realised that to understand the game there is to understand its people. For as much as football forms an unlikely common thread between different countries, the sport also reflects what is unique in the national characters of those who play, support and organise it.When Friday Comes is an insightful and humorous account of Montague's journey, during which he gets stoned with the Yemeni FA, harangues Iran's Deputy President at the World Cup, has a gun pulled on him by genocidal Lebanese football fans, encounters a rioting group of fanatical young Jews singing 'I'm West Ham 'til I Die' in mockney English and was made to strip and then dance for the Iraqi national team.This is a compelling travel memoir that will enlighten, surprise and entertain football fans everywhere.

    The resulting collision produced a dazzling explosion and a struggle of mythic magnitude. At stake was not just baseball dominance, but eternal glory and the very soul of a sport. For much of fourteen seasons, the Cobb-Ruth rivalry occupied both men and enthralled a generation of fans. Even their retirement from the ball diamond didn’t extinguish it.On the cusp of America’s entry into World War II, a quarter century after they first met at Navin Field, Cobb and Ruth rekindled their long-simmering feud—this time on the golf course. Ty and Babe battled on the fairways of Long Island, New York; Newton, Massachusetts; and Grosse Ile, Michigan; in a series of charity matches that spawned national headlines and catapulted them once more into the spotlight.Ty and The Babe is the story of their remarkable relationship. It is a tale of grand gestures and petty jealousies, superstition and egotism, spectacular feats and dirty tricks, mind games and athleticism, confrontations, conflagrations, good humor, growth, redemption, and, ultimately, friendship. Spanning several decades, Ty and The Babe conjures the rollicking cities of New York, Boston, and Detroit and the raucous world of baseball from 1915 to 1928, as it moved from the Deadball days of Cobb to the Lively Ball era of Ruth. It also visits the spring and summer of 1941, starting with the Masters Tournament at Augusta National, where Cobb formally challenged Ruth, and continuing with the golf showdown that saw both men employ secret weapons.On these pages, author Tom Stanton challenges the stereotypes that have cast Cobb forever as a Satan and Ruth as a Santa Claus. Along the way, he brings to life a parade of memorable characters: Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, Grantland Rice, Tris Speaker, Lou Gehrig, Will Rogers, Joe DiMaggio, a trick shot–shooting former fugitive, and a fifteen-year-old caddy with an impeccable golf lineage.No other ball players dominated their time as formidably as Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. Even today, many decades since either man walked this earth, they tower over the sport. Who was better? Who was the greatest? Those questions followed them throughout their baseball careers, into retirement, and onto the putting greens. That they linger yet is a testament to their talents and personalities. Praise for the Writing of Tom Stanton: "Ruth and Cobb come together as never before in this charming story of rivalry and friendship. Stanton, a keen storyteller, has written a book that surprises and delights."-Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig "The wardrobe mistress of baseball history seems to have assigned the white hat to Babe Ruth and the black hat to Ty Cobb for all time. The Babe, the legendary Sultan of Swat, has become the patron saint of the sport, flamboyant and loud, larger than life, hail fellow well met, a character who hit mammoth home runs and wiped the runny noses of neighborhood urchins. Cobb has become the villain, foul mouthed and cantankerous, unliked and unloved by even his teammates. . . . Now Tom Stanton comes along to rearrange the roles in his terrific new book, Ty and The Babe, which chronicles the relationship between the two baseball icons. He takes off the hats and tells us about the real people. And it all is great fun."-Leigh Montville, author of The Big Bam "Wonderful! Ty and The Babe is rich, elegant, and powerful. Tom Stanton vividly brings back to life two rival sports icons in a rollicking tale filled with tension, humor, and warmth. It's fantastic."-Ernie Harwell, Hall of Fame broadcaster "Frankly, Ty and The Babe had me hooked from the opening page, a thoroughly absorbing tale that has all the charm and elements of an unforgettable film-the two greatest players from baseball's Golden Era, blood feuds, dueling rivals, brawling fans, mythologizing sportswriters and the consequences of a rapidly changing game . . . all capped off by a poignant golf match between a pair of fading titans. Tom Stanton has beautifully re-created the most romantic period of American sports, provided new and powerful insights into a pair of greatly misunderstood figures in Cobb and Ruth, and given baseball and golf fans everywhere something to cheer lustily about."-James Dodson, author of Final Rounds and Ben Hogan: An American Life

    In Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends, Neyer breathes new life into both classic and obscure stories throughout twentieth-century baseball—stories that, while engaging on their own, also tell us fascinating things about their main characters and about the sport's incredibly rich history. With his signature style, Rob gets to the heart of every anecdote, working through the particulars with careful research drawn from a variety of primary sources. For each story, he asks: Did this really happen? Did it happen, sort of? Or was the story simply the wild invention of someone's imagination? Among the scores of legends Neyer questions and investigates... -Did an errant Bob Feller pitch really destroy the career of a National League All-Star? -Did Greg Maddux mean to give up a long blast to Jeff Bagwell? -Was Fred Lynn the clutch player he thinks he was? -Did Tommy Lasorda have a direct line to God? -Did Negro Leaguer Gene Benson really knock Indians second baseman Johnny Berardino out of baseball and into General Hospital? -Did Billy Martin really outplay Jackie Robinson every time they met? -Oh, and what about Babe Ruth's “Called Shot”? Rob checks each story, separates the truths from the myths, and places their fascinating characters into the larger historical context. Filled with insider lore and Neyer's sharp wit and insights, this is an exciting addition to a superb series and an essential read for true fans of our national pastime.

    When he returns home from his demanding job, a man rightfully deserves a bit of pampering. A happy smile, a warm kiss, and a pair of cozy slippers are just the start. Here are all the secrets for helping him feel comfortable and content:  - Advice on cooking from scratch - The lowdown on why a clean home makes hubby feel better - Valuable hints on making yourself more attractive to him The Good Wife is a great and humorous gift for brides-to-be or happily married wives, for Valentine’s Day, and bridal showers and bachelorette parties.

    Giants of the game like Steph Curry, LeBron, and Michael Jordan have transcended the sport to become cultural icons and role models to young fans. From the cornfields of Indiana and the hills of North Carolina, to the urban sprawl of New York City, Chicago and L.A., love of the game stretches from coast to coast.Featuring Top Ten Lists to chew on and debate, and a Top 40-style Timeline of Key Moments in Basektball History, this comprehensive collection includes the greatest dynasties, from the Bill Russell-era Celtics, to the Magic Jonson-led Lakers, to the Jordan-led Bulls, right up to the Tim Duncan-led Spurs. All the greats take flight toward the hoop in this perfect book for young fans who dream about stepping on an NBA court.A trove of awesome athletic feats, game-changing stars of the past and present, and rich fodder for heated arguments.--Booklist Hoops fans will find a goldmine of information guaranteed to deepen their basketball knowledge and their understanding of the game.--VOYA An easy hook for serious sports fans.--School Library Journal

    In this behind-the-scenes account, readers join New York Times bestselling author Stephen Templin in his journey as a trainee in Class 144. Templin and his classmates endure Hell Week: five-and-a-half days of swimming, hallucinating, enduring frequent hypothermia, running more than two hundred miles, and doing over twenty hours per day of extreme physical training—having slept only four hours total for the week. After Hell Week, they face more challenges. These experiences, Steve’s insights into some of the psychology needed to overcome seemingly impossible challenges, teamwork, and an unexpected conclusion, make this a memorable adventure.