Field of Schemes


Neil deMause - 2008
    

Until It Hurts: America's Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids


Mark Hyman - 2009
    With each throw to home plate, he felt a twinge in his still maturing arm. Any doctor would have advised the young boy to take off the rest of the season. Author Mark Hyman sent his son out to pitch the next game. After all, it was play-off time. Stories like these are not uncommon. Over the last seventy-five years, adults have staged a hostile takeover of kids' sports. In 2003 alone, more than 3.5 million children under age fifteen required medical treatment for sports injuries, nearly half of which were the result of simple overuse. The quest to turn children into tomorrow's superstar athletes has often led adults to push them beyond physical and emotional limits.In Until It Hurts, journalist, coach, and sports dad Mark Hyman explores how youth sports reached this problematic state. His investigation takes him from the Little League World Series in Pennsylvania to a prestigious Chicago soccer club, from adolescent golf and tennis superstars in Atlanta to California volleyball players. He interviews dozens of children, parents, coaches, psychologists, surgeons, sports medicine specialists, and former professional athletes. He speaks at length with Whitney Phelps, Michael's older sister; retraces the story of A Very Young Gymnast, and its subject, Torrance York; and tells the saga of the Castle High School girls' basketball team of Evansville, Indiana, which in 2005 lost three-fifths of its lineup to ACL injuries. Along the way, Hyman hears numerous stories: about a mother who left her fifteen-year-old daughter at an interstate exit after a heated exchange over her performance during a soccer game, about a coach who ordered preteens to swim laps in three-hour shifts for twenty-four hours.Hyman's exploration leads him to examine the history of youth sports in our country and how it's evolved, particularly with the increasing involvement of girls and much more proactive participation of parents. With its unique multiple perspective-of history, of reporting, and of personal experience-this book delves deep into the complicated issue of sports for children, and opens up a much-needed discussion about the perils of youth sports culture today. Hyman focuses not only on the unfortunate cases of overzealous parents and overly ambitious kids, but also on how positive change can be made, and concludes by shining a spotlight on some inspirational parents and model sports programs, giving hope that the current destructive cycle can be broken.

The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook Collection


Paula H. Deen - 2004
    Together, the cookbooks contain over 550 of Paula’s classic, down home, Southern recipes and this boxed set makes a tempting addition to any cookbook collection, and a great gift for friends!

Superfans: Into the Heart of Obsessive Sports Fandom


George Dohrmann - 2018
    In this wondrously immersive look at American sports fandom, George Dohrmann travels the country to find out what distinguishes an ordinary, everyday enthusiast from that special breed of supporter known as the superfan. In Minnesota, Dohrmann meets newly minted generals of the Viking World Order, a Minnesota Vikings affinity group organized along military lines. In Oregon, he shares a few beers with a determined soccer fan who amassed--almost singlehandedly--a four-thousand-strong cheering section for the fledgling Portland Timbers. In Illinois, he talks with the parents of a five-year-old boy whose intense hatred of Tom Brady went viral on YouTube. Through these and other intimate profiles, Dohrmann shows us the human faces behind the colored face paint, the real people inside the elaborate costumes who prowl the stands and parking lots at stadiums from coast to coast.In addition to the fans themselves, Dohrmann also talks with the experts who study them. He uses the latest thinking in sports psychology--some of it learned during a spirited round of miniature golf with a group of professors at the annual Sports Psychology Forum--to unravel the answers to such burning questions as: How does fandom begin? What are its effects on everyday life? When does it go too far?For everyone who's ever body-painted their torso with the team colors of their alma mater before heading off to a sports bar--or even just screamed at their television during the NBA Finals--Superfans offers an entertaining and insightful exploration of the many ways human beings find meaning in something bigger than themselves.Featuring photos of the Rally Banana, Timber Jim, the officers of the Viking World Order, a pair of Kentucky Wildcats tattoos, a Kevin Durant jersey torched by a jilted fan, and more.Plus analysis of the . . . Arizona State Sun Devils - Chicago Bears - Dallas Cowboys - Green Bay Packers - Indianapolis Colts - Milwaukee Brewers - Nebraska Cornhuskers - New England Patriots - Oklahoma City Thunder - Philadelphia Eagles - San Diego State Aztecs - Seattle Seahawks"Well reported and meticulously researched . . . Dohrmann is a respected, diligent sportswriter and has been so for years--you don't get Pulitzers for message-board posts."--The Wall Street Journal

Wayne Bennett: Don't Die With The Music In You


Wayne Bennett
    

The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of Our National Pastime


Robert Whiting - 2004
    Nomo... Sasaki... Ichiro... the so-called American "National Pastime" has developed a decidedly Japanese flair. Indeed, in this year's All-Star game, two of the starting American League outfielders were from Japan. And for the third straight year, Ichiro - the fleet-footed Seattle Mariner - received more votes for the All-Star game than any other player in the game today. Some 15 years ago, in the bestseller You Gotta Have Wa, Robert Whiting examined how former American major league ballplayers tried to cope with a different culture while playing pro ball in Japan. Now, Whiting reverses his field and reveals how select Japanese stars have come across the Pacific to play in the big leagues. Not only have they had to deal with the American way of life, but they have individually changed the game in dramatic fashion.

The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay Talese


Gay Talese - 2010
    At age fifteen he became a sports reporter for his Ocean City High School newspaper; four years later, as sports editor of the University of Alabama's Crimson-White, he began to employ devices more common in fiction, such as establishing a scene with minute details-a technique that would later make him famous.Later, as a sports reporter for the New York Times, Talese was drawn to individuals at poignant and vulnerable moments rather than to the spectacle of sports. Boxing held special appeal, and his Esquire pieces on Joe Louis and Floyd Patterson in decline won praise, as would his later essay Ali in Havana, chronicling Muhammad Ali's visit to Fidel Castro. His profile of Joe DiMaggio, The Silent Season of a Hero, perfectly captured the great player in his remote retirement, and displayed Talese's journalistic brilliance, for it grew out of his on-the-ground observation of the Yankee Clipper rather than from any interview. More recently, Talese traveled to China to track down and chronicle the female soccer player who missed a penalty kick that would have won China the World Cup.Chronicling Talese's writing over more than six decades, from high school and college columns to his signature adult journalism- and including several never-before-published pieces (such as one on sports anthropology), a new introduction by the author, and notes on the background of each piece-The Silent Season of a Hero is a unique and indispensable collection for sports fans and those who enjoy the heights of journalism.

Shot and a Ghost: a year in the brutal world of professional squash


James Willstrop - 2012
    

Football Leaks: Uncovering the Dirty Deals Behind the Beautiful Game


Rafael Buschmann - 2018
    These documents reveal the clandestine dealings of clubs, players and agents at the highest echelons of international football. And the story they tell is astonishing.From the eye-popping details of player transfers including Neymar Jr, Pogba and Coutinho, to the loopholes and opaque tax structures that ensure maximum earnings for players and agents alike, this is a tale rife with rapacious greed and questionable deals. At the same time, it is the gripping story of a fan who wanted to free football from its corrupt overlords - and now finds himself on the run.

Following On: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession and Terrible Cricket


Emma John - 2016
    England fans heralded the dawn of a new era.Instead, it turned out to be the start of England's arguably worst streak in any sport--a decade of frustration, dismay, and comically bungling performances that no fan will ever forget. The English cricket team became infamous for their ineptitude and a byword for British failure. By 1999, the team had reached its nadir, losing at home to New Zealand to become, officially, the worst test team in the world, ranking below even Zimbabwe.With spectacularly poor timing, fourteen-year-old Emma John chose 1993 to fall in love with cricket and, mystifyingly, with that terrible English cricket team. One day, with nothing better to do, she asked her sports-fanatic mother to explain the rules of the game on TV. Within a fortnight, Emma was a full-fledged cricket geek.Nearly a quarter of a century later, she goes back to England to meet her teenage heroes and find out just what was going on in the Worst English Cricket Team of All Time. As she traipses back through her adolescence, Following On is also a personal memoir of what it was like to grow up following a team that always lost--and why on earth anyone would choose to do it.

Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston


Howard Bryant - 2002
    With a new introduction by celebrated baseball writer Roger Kahn and a new afterword by the author, updating John Henry's first year of ownership after nearly six decades of the Yawkey dynasty, the legacy of the late Will McDonough, and the author's return to his native Boston after a seventeen-year absence, Shut Out has reopened the discussion of baseball, race, and Boston with a new candor.

Stoked!: An inspiring story about courage, determination and the power of dreams


Chris Bertish - 2015
    That same year, he finished third on the Big Wave World Tour, despite only surfing three of the five events. Chris’s mantra is Dream it, See it, Believe it, Achieve it. With his infectious enthusiasm, Chris tells how he pulled off death-defying antics, time and again, overcame overwhelming obstacles and manoeuvred around the many random twists of fate to achieve his goals and fulfil his dreams.

Smokin' Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier


Mark Kram Jr. - 2019
    In this riveting and nuanced portrayal, acclaimed sports writer Mark Kram, Jr. unlinks Frazier from Ali and for the first time gives a full-bodied accounting of Frazier’s life, a journey that began as the youngest of thirteen children packed in small farm house, encountering the bigotry and oppression of the Jim Crow South, and continued with his voyage north at age fifteen to develop as a fighter in Philadelphia.Tracing Frazier’s life through his momentous bouts with the likes of Ali and George Foreman and the developing perception of him as the anti-Ali in the eyes of blue-collar America, Kram follows the boxer through his retirement in 1981, exploring his relationship with his son, the would-be heavyweight Marvis, and his fragmented home life as well as the uneasy place that Ali continued to occupy in his thoughts.A propulsive and richly textured narrative that is also a powerful story about race and class in America, Smokin' Joe is unparalleled in its scope, depth, and access and promises to be the definitive biography of a towering American figure whose life was galvanized by conflict and whose mark has proven lasting.

How NOT to be a Football Millionaire - Keith Gillespie My Autobiography


Keith Gillespie - 2013
    And lost a lot.One afternoon he added up how much he had squandered during the course of his professional career. It made for uncomfortable reading...Manchester United £60,000Newcastle United £1,102,000Blackburn Rovers £3,510,000Leicester City £1,050,000Sheffield United £670,000Bradford City £15,000 Glentoran £43,875Total (plus extras) £7,215,875That day seemed a world away from 1993 when he burst on to the scene as a fresh-faced young star with Manchester United. A dark-haired lad from the streets of Northern Ireland with a God-given talent, he was dubbed the new George Best.One of the famous Fergie fledglings, he made his debut aged just 17 before moving on to Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle where he came so close to landing a Premiership title winner’s medal. International caps piled up too. It was a thrilling adventure. Flying down the wing and sharing pitches and dressing rooms with legends, but behind the success and glamour, it was a different story.Like Best, Gillespie had a talent for self-destruction. He liked a drink and there were women but they weren’t causing a big problem – it was keeping hold of the millions he had earned from the game that ultimately proved his downfall.It wasn’t just about gambling. A nightmare ordeal during a training break in La Manga landed him in jail for a crime he did not commit. Then, in 2010, Gillespie became headline news again when a series of flawed business deals saw him declared bankrupt.How Not To Be A Football Millionaire is one of the most honest autobiographies you will read, about a player who lived the football life to the full.It tells a fascinating and moving human story of the darker side of the glory game. About winning and losing, fortune and fate, hope and heartache... About having the world at your feet and being left to ask yourself: ‘Where did it all go wrong?

As Many Reps as Possible


Jason Khalipa - 2019
    Jason lets his actions and accomplishments speak for themselves: devoted father, world champion, global businessman. After years of rigorous training, Jason earned the title of Fittest Man on Earth and finished first in the 2008 CrossFit Games. Hard work and insatiable drive paid off, and his company, NCFIT, grew to success.Jason thought he had overcome insurmountable obstacles throughout his career, but nothing prepared him for the moment when his daughter, Ava, was diagnosed with leukemia. For the first time, Jason was tasked with facing what felt like the unfaceable. He had two choices: succumb to overwhelming anger, or jump headfirst into the fight. He chose the latter.