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The Abide Guide: Living Like Lebowski
by Oliver Benjamin Dwayne EutseyThe Dude abides . . . and you can too, with the Seven Spiritual Laws of Taking it Easy and other Lebowski-level wisdom. When you seek salvation from this stressed out, uptight world, there’s only one man to go to for guidance—the Dude. At once helpful, funny and profound (like The Big Lebowski itself), this survival guide from the founders of the Church of the Latter-Day Dude and their top disciples shows how to be as Dude-like as the Dude (well, almost):•Secrets of sacred Dudeist practices•The Seven Spiritual Laws of Taking it Easy•Great Dudes who changed the world (without really trying)•New feminist philosophy for special ladies•The Way of the Dude applied to politics, ethics, and finances•A twelve-step program for personal dudevolution•The science of really tying your room togetherAll this and a lot more what-have-you. So the next time life throws you a gutterball, just pick up this book and ask, “What Would the Dude Do?” It’s your answer for everything.
Abidjan USA: Music, Dance, and Mobility in the Lives of Four Ivorian Immigrants (African Expressive Cultures)
by Daniel B. ReedDaniel B. Reed integrates individual stories with the study of performance to understand the forces of diaspora and mobility in the lives of musicians, dancers, and mask performers originally from Côte d'Ivoire who now live in the United States. Through the lives of four Ivorian performers, Reed finds that dance and music, being transportable media, serve as effective ways to understand individual migrants in the world today. As members of an immigrant community who are geographically dispersed, these performers are unmoored from their place of origin and yet deeply engaged in presenting their symbolic roots to North American audiences. By looking at performance, Reed shows how translocation has led to transformations on stage, but he is also sensitive to how performance acts as a way to reinforce and maintain community. Abidjan USA provides a multifaceted view of community that is at once local, national, and international, and where identity is central, but transportable, fluid, and adaptable.
Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence
by Maggie Hennefeld Nicholas SammondFrom the films of Larry Clark to the feminist comedy of Amy Schumer to the fall of Louis C. K., comedic, graphic, and violent moments of abjection have permeated twentieth- and twenty-first-century social and political discourse. The contributors to Abjection Incorporated move beyond simple critiques of abjection as a punitive form of social death, illustrating how it has become a contested mode of political and cultural capital—empowering for some but oppressive for others. Escaping abjection's usual confines of psychoanalysis and aesthetic modernism, core to theories of abjection by thinkers such as Kristeva and Bataille, the contributors examine a range of media, including literature, photography, film, television, talking dolls, comics, and manga. Whether analyzing how comedic abjection can help mobilize feminist politics or how expressions of abjection inflect class, race, and gender hierarchies, the contributors demonstrate the importance of competing uses of abjection to contemporary society and politics. They emphasize abjection's role in circumscribing the boundaries of the human and how the threats abjection poses to the self and other, far from simply negative, open up possibilities for radically new politics.Contributors. Meredith Bak, Eugenie Brinkema, James Leo Cahill, Michelle Cho, Maggie Hennefeld, Rob King, Thomas Lamarre, Sylvère Lotringer, Rijuta Mehta, Mark Mulroney, Nicholas Sammond, Yiman Wang, Rebecca Wanzo
About Raymond Williams
by Monika Seidl Roman Horak Lawrence GrossbergAbout Raymond Williams represents the overdue critical acclaim of Williams’ lasting influence and unbroken repercussions in critical thought. His writings have effectively shaped the ways in which people understand the complexity of the notion of 'culture' and many of the ways it has been taken up in scholarly practice.
Above and Beyond: NASA's Journey to Tomorrow
by Discovery Olugbemisola Rhuday-PerkovichSince NASA was established in 1958, it has landed rovers on distant planets and launched telescopes deep into space—all so that we can look back to the beginning of time. <P><P> Through stunning images provided by NASA and fascinating profiles and sidebars of lesser known contributors to the NASA program, young space fans will learn how NASA started, how it faced challenges along the way, how much it has achieved, and how it will continue to move forward in the future. <P> NASA’s boundless curiosity and urge to explore lies at the heart of the human adventure. NASA rises to the urgent challenges we face, using its massive reach and expertise to find answers to vital questions like: How can we learn to live in a more extreme natural environment? <P> Inspired by Rory Kennedy’s documentary of the same name (airing 10/2018), Above and Beyond aims to leave audiences hopeful and inspired about the future of our planet—and convinced that NASA is essential to our continued survival as we mark its important anniversaries and dream of new discoveries to come.
Above the Line: My Wild Oats Adventure
by Shirley MacLaineA funny, fierce, imaginative memoir chronicling New York Times bestselling author and Academy Award winner Shirley MacLaine’s remarkable experiences filming Wild Oats in the Canary Islands and the extraordinary memories her time there brought forth of a past life on the lost continent of Atlantis.Her agent advised her not to get on the plane. The male leads weren’t even cast. The financing was shaky at best. The script had been rewritten countless times. And yet something about Wild Oats lured Shirley MacLaine to the film’s location shoot in the far-off Canary Islands—and straight to the center of one of the most thrilling and paradigm-shifting adventures of her life. The making of the film reads like a screwball comedy, as the cast and crew face unpredictable daily obstacles with ingenuity, grit, and personal sacrifice. Yet the chaos leads Shirley to a revelatory new understanding of the demise of one of history’s most elusive yet endlessly intriguing places. Scholars have long theorized that Spain’s Canary Islands are the remnants of the mighty lost continent of Atlantis. As the movie set descends into pandemonium, Shirley finds fascinating corollaries between the island’s cataclysmic fate and our own dangerous trajectory. Can we learn the lessons the citizens of Atlantis failed to comprehend? The answer is borne out of recovered memories from Shirley’s past life on Atlantis and through a series of meditations that reveal the necessity of unfettered imagination when looking for bold new truths, rendering this evocative, irreverent, and honest memoir essential reading for anyone seeking a broader understanding of what it means to be human—both where we came from and where we are going.
Abracadabra!: Fun Magic Tricks for Kids - 30 tricks to make and perform (includes video links)
by Kristen Kelly Ken Kelly Colette Kelly100% 5-star reviews don’t lie: this is the "best choice": "a lot of pictures", "links to videos", "we can do ALL tricks with stuff we already have", 30 "awesome tricks" that will get grown ups "stumped", "PERFECT" to "not only learn" but also "put on their own show"! Ages 7 and up, and co-written by child-magician Kristen Kelly!
Abracadabra: The Story of Magic Through the Ages
by HP NewquistA magician never reveals his secrets . . . but HP Newquist does, in this illustrated history of magic and famous magicians!Magic is a word we use to describe something amazing, awe-inspiring, or spectacular. Truly great magic makes us believe in things we know can't be real. In the hands of the greatest magicians, even a simple card trick can become truly wondrous.Now, in this nonfiction narrative of magic through the ages, HP Newquist explains how the world's most famous tricks were created. From the oracles of ancient Egypt and the wizards of medieval Europe on to the exploits of Houdini and modern practitioners like Criss Angel, this book unlocks the secrets behind centuries of magic and illusion.Fully illustrated and including step-by-step instructions for eight classic magic tricks, this book will have middle-grade readers spellbound.
Abraham Lincoln and Women in Film: One Hundred Years of Hollywood Mythmaking (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)
by Frank J. Wetta Martin A. NovelliFrank J. Wetta and Martin A. Novelli’s Abraham Lincoln and Women in Film investigates how depictions of women in Hollywood motion pictures helped forge the myth of Lincoln. Exploring female characters’ backstories, the political and cultural climate in which the films appeared, and the contest between the moviemakers’ imaginations and the varieties of historical truth, Wetta and Novelli place the women in Lincoln’s life at the center of the study, including his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln; his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln; his lost loves, Ann Rutledge and Mary Owens; and his wife and widow, Mary Todd Lincoln. Later, while inspecting Lincoln’s legacy, they focus on the 1930s child actor Shirley Temple and the 1950s movie star Marilyn Monroe, who had a well-publicized fascination with the sixteenth president. Wetta and Novelli’s work is the first to deal extensively with the women in Lincoln’s life, both those who interacted with him personally and those appearing on screen. It is also among the first works to examine how scholarly and popular biography influenced depictions of Lincoln, especially in film.
Abraham Polonsky: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
by Andrew DickosAbraham Polonsky (1910–1999), screenwriter and filmmaker of the mid-twentieth-century Left, recognized his writerly mission to reveal the aspirations of his characters in a material society structured to undermine their hopes. In the process, he ennobled their struggle. His auspicious beginning in Hollywood reached a zenith with his Oscar-nominated screenplay for Robert Rossen's boxing noir film, Body and Soul (1947), and his inaugural film as writer and director, Force of Evil (1948), before he was blacklisted during the McCarthy witch hunt. Polonsky envisioned cinema as a modern artist. His aesthetic appreciation for each technical component of the screen aroused him to create voiceovers of urban cadences—poetic monologues spoken by the city's everyman, embodied by the actor who played his heroes best, John Garfield. His use of David Raksin's score in Force of Evil, against the backdrop of the grandeur of New York City's landscape and the conflict between the brothers Joe and Leo Morse, elevated film noir into classical family tragedy. Like Garfield, Polonsky faced persecution and an aborted career during the blacklist. But unlike Garfield, Polonsky survived to resume his career in Hollywood during the ferment of the late sixties. Then his vision of a changing society found allegorical expression in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, his impressive anti-Western showing the destruction of the Paiute rebel outsider, Willie Boy, and cementing Polonsky as a moral voice in cinema.
Absence in Cinema: The Art of Showing Nothing (Film And Culture Ser.)
by Justin RemesAbsence has played a crucial role in the history of avant-garde aesthetics, from the blank canvases of Robert Rauschenberg to Yves Klein’s invisible paintings, from the “silent” music of John Cage to Samuel Beckett’s minimalist theater. Yet little attention has been given to the important role of absence in cinema. In the first book to focus on cinematic absence, Justin Remes demonstrates how omissions of expected elements can spur viewers to interpret and understand the nature of film in new ways.While most film criticism focuses on what is present, such as images on the screen and music and dialogue on the soundtrack, Remes contends that what is missing is an essential part of the cinematic experience. He examines films without images—such as Walter Ruttmann’s Weekend (1930), a montage of sounds recorded in Berlin—and films without sound—such as Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving (1959), which documents the birth of the filmmaker’s first child. He also examines found footage films that erase elements from preexisting films such as Naomi Uman’s removed (1999), which uses nail polish and bleach to blot out all the women from a pornographic film, and Martin Arnold’s Deanimated (2002), which digitally eliminates images and sounds from a Bela Lugosi B movie. Remes maps out the effects and significations of filmic voids while grappling with their implications for film theory. Through a careful analysis of a broad array of avant-garde works, Absence in Cinema reveals that films must be understood not only in terms of what they show but also what they withhold.
The Absolute and Star Trek
by George A. GonzalezThis volume explains how Star Trek allows viewers to comprehend significant aspects of Georg Hegel's concept the absolute, the driving force behind history. Gonzalez, with wit and wisdom, explains how Star Trek exhibits central elements of the absolute. He describes how themes and ethos central to the show display the concept beautifully. For instance, the show posits that people must possess the correct attitudes in order to bring about an ideal society: a commitment to social justice; an unyielding commitment to the truth; and a similar commitment to scientific, intellectual discovery. These characteristics serve as perfect embodiments of Hegel's conceptualization, and Gonzalez's analysis is sharp and exacting.
An Absolute Casserole: The Taskmaster Compendium
by Alex HorneHow many eggs have been broken in the making of this programme? What is the worst thing Alex has eaten? Are you more likely to win Taskmaster if you wear a hat? Why is the Taskmaster always right?This hilarious compendium celebrates a decade of Taskmaster's inspired chaos. Relive the most outrageous tasks, iconic meltdowns, and ingenious victories from your favourite contestants.Inside you'll find: - Unforgettable challenges: From the brilliantly bizarre to the wonderfully pointless, revisit the tasks that left us howling with laughter. - Comedy gold moments: Contestant blunders, inspired madness and Greg Davies' withering put-downs - Behind the scenes: Get the inside scoop on the show's creation, meet the show's creators and find out which tasks nearly set the Taskmaster house on fire. - Statistical analysis: 17 series, 85 contestants and thousands of smashed eggs - what's the best star sign to be if you want to win? This is the ultimate gift for any Taskmaster fanatic. So grab a cup of 'warm milk' (or something stronger) and relive ten years of comedic chaos!
Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction
by Arved AshbyIn this book, the author sees recordings as socially progressive and instruments of a musical vernacular, and argues that, just as photography redefined visual art, recording technology has transformed our understanding of art music.
Absolutely: A Memoir
by Joanna LumleyIllustrated memoir by the absolutely fabulous Joanna LumleyJoanna Lumley is one of Britain's undisputed national treasures, an English actress, voiceover artist and author, best known for her roles in the British television series ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS portraying Edina Monsoon's best friend, Patsy Stone, as well as parts in THE NEW AVENGERS and SAPPHIRE & STEEL. A former model and Bond girl, her distinctive voice has been supplied for animated characters, film narration and AOL's "You've got mail" notification in the UK. She has spoken out as a human rights activist for Survival International and the recent Gurkha Justice Campaign, and is now considered a 'national treasure' of Nepal as well as the UK because of her support. She is an advocate for a huge number of charities. She has won two BAFTA awards, but it is the sheer diversity of her life that has made her so compelling a personality - early years in Kashmir and Malaya, growing up in Kent, then a photographic model before becoming an actress, appearing in a huge range of roles, whether it is the Nimble bread TV ad, movies like ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, dramas like SENSITIVE SKIN and documentaries on the Northern Lights, Bhutan and the Nile, and of course as the unforgettable Patsy in ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS or as Purdy in THE NEW AVENGERS, where her plummy vowels and upper-class demeanour has made her one of our most recognisable actors.
Absolutely: The Bestselling Memoir
by Joanna Lumley'Mischievous and measured, Joanna Lumley gives us a remarkable portrait of a groovy life...a life astonishingly rich in experience' THE TIMES'Captures perfectly the mixture of poshness and larkiness that has captivated Joanna Lumley's audiences...Joanna writes beautifully, managing to be both thoughtful and amusing' DAILY MAIL'An actress with an extraordinarily varied life that has taken her from Kashmir to Kent, from Bond girl to Ab Fab. It's all here in this gloriously illustrated, entertaining memoir, that's packed with personal photos and reminiscences' WOMAN & HOMEJoanna Lumley is one of Britain's undisputed national treasures. A single mum, iconic actress, voiceover artist and author, best known for her roles in ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS and THE NEW AVENGERS, she is a former model and Bond girl, a human rights activist for Survival International and the Gurkha Justice Campaign, and is now considered a 'national treasure' of Nepal as well as the UK. She has won two BAFTA awards, but it is the sheer diversity of her life that has made her so compelling a personality - early years in Kashmir and Malaya, growing up in Kent, then a photographic model before becoming an actress, appearing in a huge range of roles, and many documentaries including those on on the Northern Lights, Bhutan and the Nile.'Lumley has done it all, from sex kitten and TV star to activist for the Gurkhas. Read about it here.' - No.2 of The Independent's 'Ten Best New Memoirs' INDEPENDENT
Abstinence Cinema: Virginity and the Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Contemporary Film
by Casey Ryan KellyFrom the perspective of cultural conservatives, Hollywood movies are cesspools of vice, exposing impressionable viewers to pernicious sexually-permissive messages. Offering a groundbreaking study of Hollywood films produced since 2000, Abstinence Cinema comes to a very different conclusion, finding echoes of the evangelical movement's abstinence-only rhetoric in everything from Easy A to Taken. Casey Ryan Kelly tracks the surprising sex-negative turn that Hollywood films have taken, associating premarital sex with shame and degradation, while romanticizing traditional nuclear families, courtship rituals, and gender roles. As he demonstrates, these movies are particularly disempowering for young women, concocting plots in which the decision to refrain from sex until marriage is the young woman's primary source of agency and arbiter of moral worth. Locating these regressive sexual politics not only in expected sites, like the Twilight films, but surprising ones, like the raunchy comedies of Judd Apatow, Kelly makes a compelling case that Hollywood films have taken a significant step backward in recent years. Abstinence Cinema offers close readings of movies from a wide spectrum of genres, and it puts these films into conversation with rhetoric that has emerged in other arenas of American culture. Challenging assumptions that we are living in a more liberated era, the book sounds a warning bell about the powerful cultural forces that seek to demonize sexuality and curtail female sexual agency.
Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art
by Gabrielle JenningsOffering historical and theoretical positions from a variety of art historians, artists, curators, and writers, this groundbreaking collection is the first substantive sourcebook on abstraction in moving-image media. With a particular focus on art since 2000, Abstract Video addresses a longer history of experimentation in video, net art, installation, new media, expanded cinema, visual music, and experimental film. Editor Gabrielle Jennings—a video artist herself—reveals as never before how works of abstract video are not merely, as the renowned curator Kirk Varnedoe once put it, "pictures of nothing," but rather amorphous, ungovernable spaces that encourage contemplation and innovation. In explorations of the work of celebrated artists such as Jeremy Blake, Mona Hatoum, Pierre Huyghe, Ryoji Ikeda, Takeshi Murata, Diana Thater, and Jennifer West, alongside emerging artists, this volume presents fresh and vigorous perspectives on a burgeoning and ever-changing arena of contemporary art.
The Abundant Life Journal: A 30-Week Devotional for Mindfulness and Restoration
by null Anh LinFrom popular mental health advocate and lifestyle creative Anh Lin, this thirty-week guided journal offers intentional practices and activities for you to pause and celebrate the abundant life you already haveIt's no secret that we are overworked, overstimulated, and stressed out. We long to fill our days with pursuits that bring us joy or peace, but too often, we barely scratch the surface on the tasks we have to do and miss out on doing the fun and life-giving things we want to do. But what if we could grasp that abundant life—right now?Drawing from her own experience of healing from depression and surrendering the chase for "the good life," popular DIYer, lifestyle influencer, and mental health advocate Anh Lin created the Abundant Life Journal, which repeatedly sold out on her online store The Hooga Shop. Now with a refreshed design and newly added features, the journal invites readers to build a flourishing life filled with purpose and emotional soundness right where they are. Each of the thirty weeks includes an encouraging devotion, a Scripture verse, and a prayer, followed by fun activities that include:coloring pagesorigamirecipesdesigned quotesguided reflectionsbullet journalingto-do listsWith a peace-filled and "girl, I'm with you" tone, this resource is a literary hug, an invitation for respite, and a chance to pause and celebrate the abundant life we already have.
Academia and Higher Learning in Popular Culture (Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture)
by Marcus K. Harmes Richard ScullyThis edited volume focuses on the cultural production of knowledge in the academy as mediated or presented through film and television. This focus invites scrutiny of how the academy itself is viewed in popular culture from The Chair to Terry Pratchett's ‘Unseen University’ and Doctor Who's Time Lord Academy among others. Spanning a number of genres and key film and television series, the volume is also inherently interdisciplinary with perspectives from History, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, STEM, and more. This collection brings together leading experts in different disciplines and from different national backgrounds. It emphasises that even at a point of mass, global participation in higher education, the academy is still largely mediated by popular culture and understood through the tropes perpetuated via a multimedia landscape.
Academic Literacy Development: Perspectives on Multilingual Scholars' Approaches to Writing
by Laura-Mihaela Muresan Concepción Orna-MontesinosThis edited book brings together an international cast of contributors to examine how academic literacy is learned and mastered in different tertiary education settings around the world. Bringing to the fore the value of qualitative enquiry through ethnographic methods, the authors illustrate in-depth descriptions of genre knowledge and academic literacy development in first and second language writing. All of the data presented in the chapters are original, as well as innovative in the field in terms of content and scope, and thought-provoking regarding theoretical, methodological and educational approaches. The contributions are also representative of both novice and advanced academic writing experiences, providing further insights into different stages of academic literacy development throughout the career-span of a researcher. Set against the backdrop of internationalisation trends in Higher Education and the pressure on multilingual academics to publish their research outcomes in English, this volume will be of use to academics and practitioners interested in the fields of Languages for Academic Purposes, Applied Linguistics, Literacy Skills, Genre Analysis and Acquisition and Language Education.
Access All Areas: A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music And Culture
by Barbara CharoneFirst as a journalist and then a publicist at Warner Brothers Records for nearly twenty years, Barbara Charone has experienced, first-hand, the changes in the cultural landscape. Access All Areas is a personal, insightful and humorous memoir packed with stories of being on the cultural frontline, from first writing press releases on a typewriter driven by Tip Ex, then as a press officer for heavy metal bands taking the bus up to Donnington Festival with coffee, croissants and the much more popular sulfate. To taking on Madonna, an unknown girl from Detroit, and telling Smash Hits 'you don't have to run the piece if the single doesn't chart', and becoming a true pioneer in music, Charone continues to work with the biggest names in music, including Depeche Mode, Robert Plant, Foo Fighters and Mark Ronson at her agency MBCPR.The story of how a music-loving, budding journalist from a Chicago suburb became the defining music publicist of her generation, Access All Areas is a time capsule of the last fifty years, told through the lens of music.
Access All Areas: A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music And Culture
by Barbara CharoneFirst as a journalist and then a publicist at Warner Brothers Records for nearly twenty years, Barbara Charone has experienced, first-hand, the changes in the cultural landscape. Access All Areas is a personal, insightful and humorous memoir packed with stories of being on the cultural frontline, from first writing press releases on a typewriter driven by Tip Ex, then as a press officer for heavy metal bands taking the bus up to Donnington Festival with coffee, croissants and the much more popular sulfate. To taking on Madonna, an unknown girl from Detroit, and telling Smash Hits 'you don't have to run the piece if the single doesn't chart', and becoming a true pioneer in music, Charone continues to work with the biggest names in music, including Depeche Mode, Robert Plant, Foo Fighters and Mark Ronson at her agency MBCPR.The story of how a music-loving, budding journalist from a Chicago suburb became the defining music publicist of her generation, Access All Areas is a time capsule of the last fifty years, told through the lens of music.
Access All Areas: A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music And Culture
by Barbara CharoneFirst as a journalist and then a publicist at Warner Brothers Records for nearly twenty years, Barbara Charone has experienced, first-hand, the changes in the cultural landscape. Access All Areas is a personal, insightful and humorous memoir packed with stories of being on the cultural frontline, from first writing press releases on a typewriter driven by Tip Ex, then as a press officer for heavy metal bands taking the bus up to Donnington Festival with coffee, croissants and the much more popular sulfate. To taking on Madonna, an unknown girl from Detroit, and telling Smash Hits 'you don't have to run the piece if the single doesn't chart', and becoming a true pioneer in music, Charone continues to work with the biggest names in music, including Depeche Mode, Robert Plant, Foo Fighters and Mark Ronson at her agency MBCPR.The story of how a music-loving, budding journalist from a Chicago suburb became the defining music publicist of her generation, Access All Areas is a time capsule of the last fifty years, told through the lens of music.
The Accidental Footballer
by Pat Nevin***THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A heroic outsider - a pleasure to read.' - The Guardian'A fulsome evocation of football before the Premier League.' - The i'Such a good storyteller...joyous.' - Financial Times'Honest, raw, revealing and very funny. How to live a life and career to the full. Insightful book about the most successful outsider inside football ever...' - Henry Winter, Chief Football Writer, The Times'Pat is a wonderful one-off...and this is the story of why that is.' - John Murray, Chief Sports Correspondent, BBC Radio 5 Live'Unusually vibrant and elegant with heroic doses of humour, insight and self-effacement, this is an absolute must-read for the football connoisseur.' - Omid Djalili 'The biggest influence of my professional career both on and off the pitch.' - Graeme Le Saux'I grew up captivated by Pat Nevin the player. As a man he taught me even more about the beauty of the game. One of football's great mavericks, and Chelsea's greatest players. And he can spin a mean tune too.' - Sam Matterface 'I used to walk miles to see Pat Nevin play football and I'd do the same now to read his thoughts. Always challenging, always entertaining.' - Lord Sebastian Coe'A refreshingly honest and thought-provoking autobiography. As deftly delivered as some of Pat's ball skills in his 1980's heyday.' - ToffeeWeb Pat Nevin never wanted to be a professional footballer.His future was clear, he'd become a teacher like his brothers. There was only one problem with this - Pat was far too good to avoid attention. Raised in Glasgow's East End, Pat loved the game, playing for hours and obsessively following Celtic. But as he grew up, he also loved Joy Division, wearing his Indie 'gloom boom' coat and going on marches - hardly typical footballer behaviour!Placed firmly in the 80s and 90s, before the advent of the Premier League, and often with racism and violence present, Pat Nevin writes with honesty, insight and wry humour. We are transported vividly to Chelsea and Everton, and colourfully diverted by John Peel, Morrissey and nights out at the Hacienda.The Accidental Footballer is a different kind of football memoir. Capturing all the joys of professional football as well as its contradictions and conflicts, it's about being defined by your actions, not your job, and is the perfect reminder of how life can throw you the most extraordinary surprises, when you least expect it.