Published annually since 1868, this compendium of information is the authoritative source for all your entertainment, reference, and learning needs. The 2015 edition of The World Almanac reviews the events of 2014 and will be your go-to source for any questions on any topic in the upcoming year. Praised as a ''treasure trove of political, economic, scientific and educational statistics and information'' by The Wall Street Journal, The World Almanac® contains thousands of facts that are unavailable publicly elsewhere. The World Almanac® and Book of Facts will answer all of your trivia needs—from history and sports to geography, pop culture, and much more. Features include:• The Year in Review: The World Almanac® takes a look back at 2014 while providing all the information you'll need in 2015. • 2014—Top 10 News Topics: The editors of The World Almanac® list the top stories that held their attention in 2014. • 2014—Election Results: Complete state-by-state results from 2014 midterm elections. • 2014—Year in Sports: Hundreds of pages of trivia and statistics that are essential for any sports fan, featuring complete coverage of the Men's World Cup in Brazil, 2014 World Series, Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, and much more. • 2014—Year in Pictures: Striking full-color images from around the world in 2014, covering news, entertainment, science, and sports. • World Almanac Editors' Picks: Time Capsule: The World Almanac® lists the items that most came to symbolize the year 2014, from news and sports to pop culture. • Offbeat News Stories: The World Almanac® editors found some of the strangest news stories of the year. • The World at a Glance: This annual feature of The World Almanac® provides a quick look at the surprising stats and curious facts that define the changing world today. • American Veterans: A Statistical Feature: After a year in which the performance of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs came under scrutiny, this statistical feature reveals important information on the health, employment, education, and future prospects of American veterans. • Health Care Statistics: Details about U.S. health care policy, including ongoing implementation of health care reform and the first statistics on federal and state health insurance marketplace enrollment, consumer costs, and much more. • World Almanac® Editors' Picks: Most Controversial Sports Team Owners: From Walter O’Malley to George Steinbrenner to Donald Sterling, the owners of sports teams have the power to change the game. The editors of The World Almanac® choose the most controversial franchise owners of past and present pro sports. • and much more.

    This book revisits the main performers of this illustrious team and weaves their stories into a cohesive narrative that captures all the drama and color of Detroit's 1968 season.

    In this hilarious, irreverent and frequently controversial book she explains the real joy of hill-walking and climbing the Munros.

    Sunday lunchtime kick-offs. Absurd ticket prices. Non-black boots. Football's menu of ills is long. Where has the joy gone? Why do we bother? Saturday, 3pm offers a glorious antidote. It is here to remind you that football can still sing to your heart.Warm, heartfelt and witty, here are fifty short essays of prose poetry dedicated to what is good in the game. These are not wallowing nostalgia; they are things that remain sweet and right: seeing a ground from the train, brackets on vidiprinters, ball hitting bar, Jimmy Armfield's voice, listening to the results in a traffic jam, football towns and autograph-hunters. This is fan culture at its finest, words to transport you somewhere else and identify with, words to hide away in a pub and luxuriate in.Saturday, 3pm is a book of love letters to football and a clarion call, helping us find the romance in the game all over again.

    How and why is precisely what Larry Matysik examines in his third book, Drawing Heat the Hard Way: How Wrestling Really Works. Wrestlers have their own private language, and in the unique world of wrestling “drawing heat” is a very good thing: the successful generation of crowd reaction and fan excitement. The Hard Way? That’s both exactly what it sounds like and something no one in the industry plans for: a legitimate and unintentional wound suffered because something’s gone awry. In Drawing Heat the Hard Way, Matysik explains what it takes to win the hearts and minds of wrestling fans, and how, at times, mistakes, controversy and unexpected turns of events have damaged the reputation or forever changed the business he loves. If anyone understands wrestling, the problem-child offspring of whatever “real” sport is, it’s Matysik. Drawing Heat the Hard Way takes on the way wrestling is booked or planned; analyzes the roles of wrestlers and announcers, and explores steroids as an industry and fan issue. It also considers wrestling’s power-brokers, from those who influence the business by reporting on it, like Dave Meltzer, to those who make the final decisions on what gets broadcast every week, like the omnipresent Vince McMahon, and even to those who influence the sport with their pocketbooks — the fans themselves. At times humorous, occasionally heartbreaking, always insightful, Drawing Heat the Hard Way is ultimately an objective take on what it means to be a wrestling fan, from someone who knows the business inside and out.

    Prepared to be awed and inspired by Chris Froome riding on at the Tour de France with a broken wrist or Geraint Thomas finishing it with a broken pelvis.In The Hardmen the writers behind cycling superblog Velominati.com and The Rules will tell the stories and illuminate the myths of not just the greatest cyclists ever, but the toughest. From Eddy Merckx to Beryl Burton, and from Marianne Vos to Edwig Van Hooydonk, the book will lay bare the secrets of their extraordinary and inspirational endurance in the face of pain, danger and disaster. After all, suffering is one of the joys of being a cyclist. Embrace climbs, relish the descents, and get ready to harden up. . .

    . .— explored the squalid world of medical marijuana; — made a mess of himself on the road to Pittsburgh; — got upstaged on live TV by comedy legend Martin Short; — rode a Street Dragon through the laneways of Sochi; — shared a drink with Jay-Z and was then asked to leave;And much, much more!

    After four previous defeats in Grand Slam finals, Murray had finally achieved what no British man had managed since the 1930s. But the story of how he got there was just as compelling as the final itself, with as many twists and turns along the way. Writer Mark Hodgkinson has been covering that story since the start - he was actually the first person to interview Murray for a national newspaper back in 2004, and has worked closely with Judy Murray in the past. In Andy Murray: Champion, Hodgkinson explains how Murray first emerged as a tennis player of true quality, and how his rivalry with his brother Jamie spurred him on. He looks at the close relationship Murray has with his mother, and the various coaches who haved worked with him to assess their influence on his game. In a hugely competitive era of tennis, with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic all counted to be among the greatest tennis players of all time, Murray has earned the right to be ranked alongside them all - and this book explains how and why he has done so, becoming a true national sporting icon in the process.

    She has been called the Zinedine Zidane of the women's game. She has scored more goals for England than any other player in history. Yet since she was old enough to kick a ball, Kelly Smith has had to battle every step of the way to play the game she loves. Girls were not welcome when Kelly first started out, practising for hours to hone her sublime skills, but after outshining all the boys in the teams she played in, she became a pioneer for English women's football. A teenage sensation and the nation's first professional footballer, Kelly was soon a star, a genius with the ball at her feet, but a series of injuries led to periods of depression and then alcoholism as she struggled to cope without the sport. As she nears the end of her glittering career, Kelly now tells the heartfelt story of her triumphs and tragedies, of how she beat her demons to put England on the world football map. It is a tale of overcoming prejudice to live your dream, and of how it feels and what it means to be a woman at the very top of her game.

    Now, with one small device, you can apply the latest technology, science, and research to take the guesswork out of training, monitor progress, and see results. Heart Rate Training will show you how!From functions, features, and operational advice for your device to interpreting and applying the results, Heart Rate Training is a step-by-step guide to optimizing performance. You’ll learn how, when, and why monitors can, and should, be incorporated into your workouts, training, and conditioning program to produce maximum results. In Heart Rate Training, authors Roy Benson and Declan Connolly show you how to determine deficiencies in training and performance, create targeted programs to increase endurance, raise lactate threshold, increase speed and power, and monitor your recovery between workouts. And the sample programs allow you to manipulate the training components to design a long-term training plan across eight endurance sports: walking, running, cycling, swimming, triathlon, rowing, cross-country skiing, and team sports.When you’re ready to take training and performance to the next level, turn to Heart Rate Training and achieve your personal best.

    . .'It is the final Test match of The Ashes. A nation expects, and the rest of the cricketing world is watching.Fast-paced, humorous and candid, The Test follows the battles on and off the field as stand-in England captain, James McCall, tries to get his exhausted team across the finish line. Along the way, his story becomes one of fatherhood, friendship and trusting yourself when no one else will.Nathan Leamon's love letter to Test cricket is that rare thing: a novel that captures the feel and flavour of professional sport from the inside - the good, the bad and the simply surreal.Not since J. L. Carr's classic A Season in Sinji has there been a novel that quite captures the spirit of the game.

    After my dad's major health scare, it was time for me to change everything. Little did I know how much I would learn after taking on some physical exercise. A radical diet change allowed me to lose a forth of my body weight and it gave me boundless energy to get outside and explore. It’s not clear to me why I chose running ultra marathons of all forms of exercise, since I was unable to run beyond 1 mile just a few years prior. But since that fateful day, I’ve never looked back. I was finding that sometimes the experiences of training for ultra could be just as rich and fulfilling as the ultra event itself.

    Gorn's The Manly Art tells the story of boxing's origins and the sport's place in American culture. When first published in 1986, the book helped shape the ways historians write about American sport and culture, expanding scholarly boundaries by exploring masculinity as an historical subject and by suggesting that social categories like gender, class, and ethnicity can be understood only in relation to each other.

    With the greatest single-season turnaround in NBA history, the Celtics went from the second-worst record last year to the best record this year. May charts the pivotal moments: from losing out on the Number 1 and Number 2 pick in last year's draft lottery to swinging trades for future Hall of Famers Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen; from winning Game 4 of the Finals with one of the greatest come-from-behind victories in NBA Finals history to capping off their remarkable season with another championship banner.

    There are 101 photo-illustrated workouts that allow enthusiasts the opportunity to glance at the photo during a workout to check their faithful following of the routine. Whether a novice or an experienced weight trainer, the chapters offer different programs for levels of progress as well as a guide to designing personalized workout systems. Moreover, fitness and well-being are considered with a presentation on cardio primer and a feature on basic fitness nutrition as well. 101 Workouts For Women provides a complete one-stop get-fit package for fitness enthusiasts.