Books, Sports, Miscellaneous, Essays

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Editors of Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated: The College Football Book
by Sports Illustrated (Hardcover)

Continuing its series of spectacular coffee-table books for the holiday season, Sports Illustrated presents The College Football Book, the ultimate gift for America's most passionate fans. SI launched this series in 2005 with The Football Book, devoted to the professional game. A New York Times best-seller that year, the book has taken root as a perennial, selling more than 200,000 copies to date. Now the editors of Sports Illustrated return to the gridiron, this time to serve the most avid football fans of all. With the best words and pictures SI has to offer, The College Football Book, brings to life the game's unparalleled excitement and pageantry, its legendary players, historic teams and epic rivalries. In 288 pages of the greatest photography and writing available anywhere, The College Football Book spans the sport's history, from its infancy in the 1800s right up to the postseason showdowns of 2008. The book is packed with stunning pictures, award-winning stories, ...

Laurence Gonzales
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
by W. W. Norton & Company (Paperback)

"Unique among survival books...stunning...enthralling. Deep Survival makes compelling, and chilling, reading."—Penelope Purdy, Denver Post After her plane crashes, a seventeen-year-old girl spends eleven days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better-equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference? Examining such stories of miraculous endurance and tragic death—how people get into trouble and how they get out again (or not)—Deep Survival takes us from the tops of snowy mountains and the depths of oceans to the workings of the brain that control our behavior. Through close analysis of case studies, Laurence Gonzales describes the "stages of survival" and reveals the essence of a survivor—truths that apply not only to surviving in the wild but also to surviving life-threatening illness, relationships, the death of a loved one, running a business ...

The Best American Sports Writing 2008 (The Best American Series)
by Houghton Mifflin (Paperback)

In this exciting new collection, William Nack, veteran sportswriter and author of the classic Secretariat, honors the year's finest sports journalism and thus upholds the tradition that began seventeen years ago, with David Halberstam at the helm. In these pages, you will find the most provocative, compelling, tragic, and triumphant moments in sports from 2007, captured by the knights of the keyboard who make sports come alive for us day after day, week after week, year after year. Here you'll find Paul Solotaroff's excellent and uncompromising take on the neglect that a growing number of crippled NFL players continually face from the NFL players' union. Jeanne Marie Laskas's "G-L-O-R-Y!" offers a rousing inside look at the pregame rituals of the Cincinnati Bengals cheerleaders. A riveting online diary by Wright Thompson reveals a bleak and merciless landscape in China, which that country's government would rather not have the world see during preparations for the Olympics. Nack ...

Stefan Fatsis
A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL
by Penguin Press HC, The (Hardcover)

Drawing on rare access to an NFL team’s players, coaches and facilities, the author of The New York Times bestseller Word Freak trains to become a professional-caliber placekicker. As he sharpens his skills, he gains surprising insight into the daunting challenges—physical, psychological, and intellectual—that pro athletes must masterIn Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis infiltrated the insular world of competitive Scrabble® players, ultimately achieving “expert” status (comparable to a grandmaster ranking in chess). Now he infiltrates a strikingly different subculture—pro football. After more than a year spent working out with a strength coach and polishing his craft with a gurulike kicking coach, Fatsis molded his fortyish body into one that could stand up—barely—to the rigors of NFL training. And over three months in 2006, he became a Denver Bronco. He trained with the team and lived with the players. He was given a locker and uniforms emblazoned with #9. He was ...

Chuck Culpepper
Bloody Confused!: A Clueless American Sportswriter Seeks Solace in English Soccer
by Broadway (Paperback) (Release Date: 2008-08-05)

Chuck Culpepper was a veteran sports journalist edging toward burnout . . . then he went to London and discovered the high-octane, fanatical (and bloody confusing!) world of English soccer.After covering the American sports scene for fifteen years, Chuck Culpepper suffered from a profound case of Common Sportswriter Malaise. He was fed up with self-righteous proclamations, steroid scandals, and the deluge of in-your-face PR that saturated the NFL, the NBA, and MLB. Then in 2006, he moved to London and discovered a new and baffling world—the renowned Premiership soccer league. Culpepper pledged his loyalty to Portsmouth, a gutsy, small-market team at the bottom of the standings. As he puts it, “It was like childhood, with beer.”Writing in the vein of perennial bestsellers such as Fever Pitch and Among the Thugs, Chuck Culpepper brings penetrating insight to the vibrant landscape of English soccer—visiting such storied franchises as Manchester United, Chelsea, and Liverpool ...

Harvey Penick
Harvey Penick's Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf
by Simon & Schuster (Paperback)

Kenny Mayne
An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport: . . . and Other Random Thoughts from Childhood to Fatherhood
by Crown (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-04-22)

Painstakingly faithful to its title, Kenny Mayne’s book is neither complete nor is it particularly accurate. Ostensibly an A-to-Z encyclopedia of all known sports, many sports are never mentioned. There’s not a word about rugby, volleyball, Roller Derby, swimming, or (shockingly) Basque pelota or shinty. There is a chapter about sliding, but none about skiing. Competitive eating and rhythmic gymnastics will have to wait for another book. However, there are roughly eight chapters about tackle football–“the greatest sport in the world, and everyone knows it”–and a good four or five about horse racing, so quit complaining before you’ve even read the book. There will be plenty of time for complaining after you’ve finished it (about an hour from now–tops).Those sports that are covered in the book are examined with exhaustive inattention to unretained detail. Many chapters have nothing to do with sport. For instance, the chapter on hunting is about hunting for a ...

Michael Lewis
Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life
by W. W. Norton (Paperback)

"[Lewis] has such a gift for storytelling."—New York TimesThere was a turning point in Michael Lewis's life, in a baseball game when he was fourteen years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis's ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn't have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do."The coach's message was not simply about winning, but about self-respect, sacrifice, courage, and endurance. In some ways, and even now, thirty years later, Lewis still finds himself trying to measure up to what Coach Fitz expected of him.

Editors of Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated: Almanac 2009 (Sports Illustrated Sports Almanac)
by Sports Illustrated (Paperback)

Editors of Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit: The Complete Portfolio
by Sports Illustrated (Hardcover)

With "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit: The Complete Portfolio", the editors of the magazine revisit the destinations of their recent travels to bring together a lavish, large-format collection in what is sure to be the first in a series of annual swimsuit yearbooks. Get an all-access pass to the beaches of Israel and the Cayman Islands with hometown girls Bar Refaeli and Selita Ebanks. Discover the lush gardens of Maui alongside Tori Praver and Jessica White. Witness the old world palatial feel of St Petersburg with Anne V. Wade to the clear waters of Caneel Bay in St John with Marisa Miller. It's a full-scale travelogue of 10 handpicked hot spots through the eyes of 19 exquisite hosts.With a gallery of model self-portraits and dozens of previously unpublished on-location shots taken by some of the best-known fashion photographers on the planet, "The Complete Portfolio" rounds out the SI swimsuit experience.

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