Featuring brilliant reportage and analysis, profound profiles of pros, and tributes to the amateur in all of us, The Only Game in Town is a classic collection from a magazine with a deep bench. Including such authors as Roger Angell and John Updike, both of them synonymous with" New Yorker" sportswriting, The Only Game in Town also features greats like John McPhee and Don DeLillo. Hall of Famer Ring Lardner is here, bemoaning the lowering of standards for baseball achievement--in 1930. A. J. Liebling inimitably portrays the 1955 Rocky Marciano-Archie Moore bout as "Ahab and Nemesis . . . man against history," and John Cheever pens a story about a boy's troubled relationship with his father and "The National Pastime." From Tiger Woods to bullfighter Sidney Franklin, from the Chinese Olympics to the U.S. Open, the greatest plays and players, past and present, are all covered in The Only Game in Town. At "The New Yorker," it's not whether you win or lose--it's how you write about the game.

    The Liverpool fans had grown used to French manager Gerard Houllier but he had been a fan of the club himself since his days as a teacher on Merseyside. A Spaniard with admittedly a wonderful record at Valencia was going to take over management of Liverpool's famous Boot Room and try and win over a disillusioned Kop. But in one season, Benitez's importation of Spanish players, coaching methods and diet has led to a revolution, even usurping Jose Mourinho's Chelsea, whereby the team has ended the season winning the ultimate trophy for any European club - the European Champions League. No fan will ever forget the comeback from a 3-0 deficit to a 3-3 scoreline, then dramatic success in the penalty shoot-out.This is the story of Rafa's remarkable success.

    It is both a story of a changing era and of an extraordinary team on a championship quest. Very few institutions in American sports can match the enduring excellence of the University of Alabama football program. Across a wide swath of the last century, the tradition-rich Crimson Tide has claimed twelve national championships, captured twenty-five conference titles, finished thirty-four times among the country's top ten, and played in fifty-three bowl games.Especially dominant during the era of the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, the larger-than-life figure who towered over the landscape like no man before or since, Alabama entered the 1966 season with the chance to become the first college football team to win three consecutive national championships. Every aspect of Bryant's grueling system was geared around competing for the big prize each and every year, and in 1966 the idea of the threepeat tantalized the players, pushing them toward greatness. Driven by Bryant's enthusiasm, dedication, and perseverance, players were made to believe in their team and themselves. Led by the electrifying force of quarterback Kenny "Snake" Stabler and one of the most punishing defenses in the storied annals of the Southeastern Conference, the Crimson Tide cruised to a magical season, finishing as the nation's only undefeated, untied team. But something happened on the way to the history books.The Missing Ring is the story of the one that got away, the one that haunts Alabama fans still, and native Alabamian Keith Dunnavant takes readers deep inside the Crimson Tide program during a more innocent time, before widespread telecasting, before scholarship limitations, before end-zone dances. Meticulously revealing the strategies, tactics, and personal dramas that bring the overachieving boys of 1966 to life, Dunnavant's insightful, anecdotally rich narrative shows how Bryant molded a diverse group of young men into a powerful force that overcame various obstacles to achieve perfection in an imperfect world.Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the still-escalating Vietnam War, and a world and a sport teetering on the brink of change in a variety of ways, The Missing Ring tells an important story about the collision between football and culture. Ultimately, it is this clash that produces the Crimson Tide's most implacable foe, enabling the greatest injustice in college football history. "Keith Dunnavant has written yet another fabulous book about the fabled Alabama football program. You will be amazed at how one of the great injustices in the history of college football cost them their rightful place in history. And you just thought the system was screwed up now." ---Jim Dent, author of The Junction Boys "Keith Dunnavant nails it: all the sacrifices the 1966 Alabama team made to win three national championships in a row, and how we were robbed at the ballot box."---Jerry Duncan, one of the boys of 1966 "Dunnavant infuses reportage and passion into a tale that every Alabamian of a certain age knows: For all the crying about Penn State in 1969, Penn State in 1994, or Auburn in 2004, no team ever got shafted the way the 1966 Crimson Tide did. It's all here: the churning legs, the churning stomachs, and the dreaded gym classes where Bear Bryant's boys made the sacrifices he demanded in order to become champions. They conquered their opponents on the field, but proved to be no match for the politics of the day off the field. The '66 Tide is still waiting for the Missing Ring. Thanks to Dunnavant, we don't have to." ---Ivan Maisel, senior writer, ESPN.com, and co-author of A War in Dixie "Absolutely stunning. The Missing Ring left me breathless. Keith Dunnavant has proven again why he is one of America's greatest sports authors and historians. With so much having been written about Bryant and Alabama, I had my doubts going into this book that there was something I didn't know or hadn't read. Yet Dunnavant has managed to strike gold with The Missing Ring in every way and shape imaginable. His quiet prose goes down as effortlessly as bourbon and branch water. Fans of college football will marvel at his painstaking research. Dunnavant turned the clock back forty years and it was 1966 all over again. The pain and the glory, the pride and the prejudice, all brought to life in the pages of this extraordinary book." ---Paul Finebaum, Paul Finebaum Radio Network

    A frigid winter ascent of Mount McKinley; the vastness of Arabia's Empty Quarter; the impossibly thin air at Everest's summit; the deadly black pressure of an underwater cave; a desperate escape through a Norwegian winter—these and thirty-six other stories recount the minutes, hours, and days of lives pushed to the brink. But there is more to adventure than hair's-breadth escapes. By turns charming and tragic, whimsical and nerve-racking, this extraordinary collection gets to the heart of why adventure stories enthrall us. Includes works by Sebastian Junger, Jon Krakauer, Edward Abbey, Tim Cahill, Edward Hoagland, Ernest Shackleton, Freya Stark, and Wilfred Thesiger.

    Science is about flawed and complicated human beings trying to use whatever tools they've got, along with their minds, to see something strange and new. In that sense, writing about science is just another way of writing about the human condition." -- from the introduction by Richard PrestonThe twenty-eight pieces in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 span a wide range of topics, from the farthest reaches of space to the everyday world around us to the secrets hiddin in our own bodies. Michael Lemonick travels to an extinct volcano in Hawaii, where telescopes at the summit are providing researchers with a glimpse of the most distant galaxy ever seen -- and profound new insights into the creation of the universe. Neil deGrasse Tyson takes a sharp, witty look at Americans' delirium over space travel. And with surgical precision Michael Perry describes how a medical autopsy is performed. Dead men can tell tales.Here we also see examinations of the sometimes harmful impact of science on the natural world. Susan Casey gives an alarming portrait of plastic waste pollution in the world's oceans, including a dead zone in the mid-Pacific that's twice the size of Texas. Michael Shnayerson heads to West Virginia, where the Appalachians are being blasted at the rate of several ridgetops a week, all in the pursuit of ever-elusive coal. And Paul Bennett goes deep beneath Rome's streets, where cutting-edge excavation techniques are revealing newfound treasures in one of the world's oldest cities.A profile of a late, distinguished British ornithologist by John Seabrook reveals that the man's personal collection of bird skins, now in the British Natural History Museum, was largely stolen or bought and intentionally mislabeled. Richard Conniff visits a former Brooklyn social worker turned primatologist who has become a fierce advocate of the lemur. And Patricia Gadsby takes us into the kitchens of Europe's finest chefs to explain how the new field of molecular gastronomy is revolutionizing fine cuisine.

    Whether you want to bend it like Beckham or dribble like Ronaldinho, The Soccer Book is the ultimate visual guide to soccer skills, rules, tactics, and coaching, illustrating every aspect of every variant of the sport more clearly, and in more detail, than any other book has done before.

    From its earliest origins in the sixteenth century (or an early version played by shepherds called creag in the 1300s), through the formation of the MCC and the opening of Lord's cricket ground in 1787, to the spread of county cricket in the next century, when the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack was first published and the Ashes series was born, this simple sport of bat and ball has captured the imagination of the masses.Throughout its 500-year history, cricket has been a mirror for society as a whole, reflecting the changes that have brought us from the quintessential village green to Freddie Flintoff's pedalo, from W G Grace to Monty Panesar, via a fair number of eccentrics, heroes and downright villains.William Hill Award-winning writer Simon Hughes, no mean player himself, has lived and breathed cricket his whole life and now takes his analytical skills and typically irreverent eye to charting the history of English cricket. But this is no dry, dusty tome. It is the story of the mad characters who inhabit the game, the extraordinary lengths people will go to to watch and play it, the tale of a national obsession. It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship, showing the origins of sledging and match-fixing in centuries of subterfuge, corruption and violence. And it takes us beyond sport, to the heart of what it really means to be English.

    Many readers will jump straight to Ron Rosenbaum's "Sex Week at Yale," an entertaining exposé of how academics can give their audience a headache when they yammer on about sex. Even the most science-wary readers will enjoy Peggy Orenstein's "Where Have All the Lisas Gone?" about trends in naming babies. Bird lovers (and cat haters) will laugh out loud at the Letters to the Bird Brain collected in Michael O'Connor's "Bird Watcher's General Store." And ailurophiles will be stunned by Robert Sapolsky's report ("Bugs in the Brain") on how the pathogen that causes toxoplasmosis alters its carriers' (rodents) brains so they no longer fear their number one predator (cats). Medical buffs will look for Atul Gawande's extended profile of the amazing Francis Moore, a pioneer in treatment of burns, nuclear medicine, hormone replacement therapies and organ transplants. Both Pinker's choice of subjects (linguistics, psychology) as well as sources (The American Conservative, The Cape Codder) range happily beyond the usual suspects; everyone will find something they haven't already read. The collection is recommended for intellectually omnivorous readers in this and all other universes.Introduction / Steven Pinker --Genesis of suicide terrorism / Scott Atran --The battle for your brain / Ronald Bailey --Fearing the worst should anyone produce a cloned baby / Philip M. Boffey --The bittersweet science / Austin Bunn --The new celebrity / Jennet Conant --The mythical threat of genetic determinism / Daniel C. Dennett --We're all gonna die! / Gregg Easterbrook --Far-out television / Garrett G. Fagan --A war on obesity, not the obese / Jeffrey M. Friedman --Desperate measures / Atul Gawande --The stuff of genes / Horace Freeland Judson --The bloody crossroads of grammar and politics / Geoffrey Nunberg --Ask the bird folks / Mike O'Connor --Where have all the lisas gone? / Peggy Orenstein --The design of your life / Virginia Postrel --Caring for your introvert / Jonathan Rauch --All the old sciences have starring roles / Chet Raymo --Sex week at Yale / Ron Rosenbaum --The cousin marriage conundrum / Steve Sailer --Bugs in the brain / Robert Sapolsky --Through the eye of an octopus / Eric Scigliano --Captivated / Meredith F. Small --Parallel universes / Max Tegmark --In click languages, an echo of the tongues of the ancients / Nicholas Wade --A prolific Genghis Khan, it seems, helped people the world / Nicholas Wade

    These were the decades when baseball expanded across the country and truly became the national pastime. The era opened, though, with the domination of the New York teams: the Yankees, Dodgers, or Giants were in every World Series of the 1950s -- but by the end of the decade the two National League teams had moved to California. Representing those great teams in this volume are Whitey Ford, Ralph Branca, Carl Erskine, Duke Snider, and Bill Rigney. They recall the great 1951 Dodgers-Giants playoff that ended with Bobby Thomson's famous home run (served up by Branca). They remember the mighty Yankees, defeated at last in 1955 by the Dodgers, only to recover the World Series crown from their Brooklyn rivals a year later. They talk about their most feared opponents and most valued teammates, from Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle to Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella to Willie Mays. But there were great teams and great ballplayers elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s. Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts recalls the famous Whiz Kids Phillies of 1950 and his epic duels with Don Newcombe and other leading National League pitchers. Lew Burdette remembers his years as one-half of the dominating pitching duo (with Warren Spahn) that propelled the Braves to the World Series in 1957 and 1958. Harmon Killebrew recalls belting home runs for the hapless Washington Senators, then discovering a new world of enthusiastic fans in Minnesota when the Senators joined the westward migration and became the Twins. Brooks Robinson, on the other hand, played his entire twenty-three-year career for the Baltimore Orioles, never moving anywhere except all around third base, where he earned a record sixteen consecutive Gold Gloves. When Frank Robinson left Cincinnati to join Brooks on the Orioles in 1966, that team became a powerhouse. Frank Robinson won the MVP award that year, the first player to do so in each league. He remembers taking the momentous step to become the first African-American manager in the big leagues, the final step that Jackie Robinson had wanted to take. Like Frank Robinson, Billy Williams was one of the first African-American stars not to come out of the old Negro Leagues. He spent his greatest years with the Chicago Cubs, playing alongside Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, and later Ron Santo, but here he recalls how he nearly gave up on the game in the minor leagues. We Would Have Played for Nothing is full of fascinating stories about how these great ballplayers broke into baseball, about the inevitable frustrations of trying to negotiate a contract with owners who always had the upper hand, and about great games and great stars-teammates and opponents-whose influence shaped these ballplayers' lives forever. Illustrated throughout, this book is a wonderful reminiscence of two great decades in the history of baseball.

    All the usual ingredients were there—well-worn gloves, freshly cut grass, and new uniforms. But the addition of a coach who was “new to the area” is what made this season truly unforgettable for young Andy.Baseball fans and both current and former Little Leaguers will love the funny story, the age-old baseball wisdom quoted from some of the game’s greatest players, and the vintage baseball photography.

    This record of World Wrestling Entertainment explores the inner workings of the WWE and the day-to-day lives of its stars.

    Offers an intimate look at the work of Hollywood director John Ford through the observant eyes of actor Harry Carey, Jr.

    Many of his fabulous escapes, indeed, now sound more like legend than history, yet they really happened. He permitted himself to be thrown, manacled, into the Hudson River; to be nailed into packing cases and lowered into the ocean; to be suspended by the ankles, strait-jacketed, hundreds of feet above the ground — and in every case escaped easily.This book is Houdini’s own account of these exploits, supplemented with rare photographs and posters, first-hand material from periodicals and pamphlets, and behind-the-scenes revelations of some of the master’s most prized secrets: how he picked locks, how he sawed a girl in half to become twins, how he walked through a brick wall, how a girl can vanish from a sheet of plate glass without trapdoors, hoists, mirrors, or other such apparatus.There are also instructions for performing 44 stage tricks, including the coin and glass, the Indian needle trick, and other standards. These are illustrated with diagram sequences that cover every step in performance. Finally, of special interest to many readers are Houdini’s accounts of great magicians of history and of Houdini’s own battles with spiritualists and fraudulent mediums.

    Author Mick Minas goes behind the scenes-- interviewing players, coaches, and front office personnel--to create the first in-depth look at the history of the Clippers.The Curse is filled with drama: the unauthorized relocation of the franchise that led to the NBA filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Clippers, the disruption of the team's first playoff appearance by the Los Angeles riots, the bold but unsuccessful attempt to sign Kobe Bryant at the peak of his career, and the scandal that ultimately resulted in owner Donald Sterling being banned from the NBA for life. Featuring some of basketball's biggest names, including World B. Free, Elgin Baylor, Danny Manning, Doc Rivers, Larry Brown, Dominique Wilkins, Elton Brand, Baron Davis, Blake Griffin, and Chris Paul, The Curse delves into the disasters of the past and the complications of the present. This is the definitive history of the NBA's most dysfunctional franchise.

    This volume reveals Weaver’s approach to the game, with a focus on how to manage a roster, a lineup, and a pitching staff. He defines the differences between running a team during a single game and managing it during an entire season. In his characteristically blunt style, Weaver explains everything from how to tell when a pitcher is tiring to how and when to argue with an umpire. Successful ball clubs still mimic his offensive strategies. Readers of this updated edition will learn new ways to think about the game as it’s played today.