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African Americans in Sports (Major Black Contributions from Emancipat)
by James NasiumThis book profiles some of the greatest African-American athletes of the past 150 years. They competed in sports ranging from boxing and horse racing to track and field, basketball, and baseball. As you'll discover, what these champions accomplished on the field of competition was often but a small part of their story. Read, for example, about how doctors thought Wilma Rudolph might never walk after a childhood bout of polio--but she went on to sprint her way to three Olympic gold medals. Or how the fiery Jackie Robinson silently endured a torrent of abuse in order to break baseball's "color barrier." Find out the connection between a stolen bike and Muhammad Ali's legendary boxing career. And learn how the African-American sports heroes of the past helped pave the way for superstars of the present, such as Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, and Candace Parker.
African Americans in Sports
by Gary A. SailesResearch on African American athletes generally fo-cuses on negative stereotypes of physical prowess, and socially controversial themes. Most studies in-vestigate racism, prejudice, discrimination, and ex-ploitation experienced by African American athletes. Many studies contrast African American and white athletes on a number of variables that support pre-vailing elitist stereotypes and denigrate African Ameri-can athletes. But few studies investigate the diverse and complex cultural dichotomies within the infrastruc-ture of sport in the African American community. Gary Sailes maintains that it is crucial to develop a more eclectic and immersed cultural approach when investigating African American involvement in com-petitive sports. The contributors to 'African Americans in Sports' show that there are also intrinsic cultural paradigms that are evident, presenting an informa-tive and interesting narrative regarding African American athletes. The chapters that make up this volume were written by noted scholars who were selected based on their expertise in their specific academic areas. They write about different components of the experience of African American male athletes. Chapters and contributors include: "Race and Athletic Performance: A Physiological Review" by David W. Hunter; "The Athletic Dominance of African Americans--Is There a Genetic Basis?" by Vinay Harpalani; "African American Player Codes on Celebration, Taunting, and Sportsmanlike Conduct" by Vernon L. Andrews; and "Stacking in Major League Baseball" by Earl Smith and C. Keith Harrison. Many chapters were originally published as a special issue of the 'Journal of African American Men.' This volume should be read by all those involved in athletics, as well as by sports sociologists and African American studies scholars.
African Americans in Sports: African Americans In Sports
by David K. WigginsThis two-volume set features 400 articles on African-Americans in sports, including biographical entries as well as entries on events, tournaments, leagues, clubs, films, and associations. The entries cover all professional, amateur, and college sports such as baseball, tennis, and golf.
African Football, Identity Politics and Global Media Narratives
by Tendai Chari Nhamo A. MhiripiriThis edited volume addresses key debates around African football, identity construction, fan cultures, and both African and global media narratives. Using the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa as a lens, it explores how football in Africa is intimately bound up with deeper social, cultural and political currents.
African Footballers in Europe: Migration, Community, and Give Back Behaviours (Critical Research in Football)
by Ernest Yeboah Acheampong Malek Bouhaouala Michel RaspaudAfrican Footballers in Europe traces the social and economic evolution of African football and examines the strategies and resources that players mobilise in their migrations, with a particular focus on ‘Give Back Behaviours’ (how players contribute to their countries or communities of origin). It shines new light on contemporary migrations, labour markets in sport, and processes of development in Africa. Using a multidisciplinary approach and Weberian methodology to analyse players’ 'Give Back' behaviour, the book highlights the complex rationale behind this behaviour, based on a combination of social, cultural, and economic elements. It features interviews with former and current African professional players, providing a vivid picture of the role of communities in players’ migration projects, the allure of the European football market, and investment initiatives that can contribute to local and regional development. This is a vital read for academics, researchers, and students of sport sciences, sociology of sport, sport management, sociology, geography, political sciences, management, sociology of Africa, migration studies, sociology of the labour market, and economic sociology. It is also an important resource for professional organisations, NGOs, football agents, football administrators, federations, confederations, and governments.
An African Rebound: A Novel
by Dan Doyle“A deeply touching and fascinating novel. This is a must-read for anyone familiar with the game of basketball.” (Julius Erving) It is 1989, and Jim Keating has hit absolute rock bottom. He’s lost his wife to cancer, his house to bankruptcy, and his job as a college basketball coach to what many outsiders believed to be a racially insensitive, career-ending decision. Attempting to pick up the pieces and start life over, Jim returns home to Worcester and rents a small apartment. Word gets out that the legendary Jim Keating has returned home, and everyone is eager to see him, despite what they’ve read in the news. Recognizing his unflagging passion for basketball and commitment to the players he coached, an old friend makes Jim an offer designed to help him restart his career. Soon, Jim finds himself in Burundi, Africa, where he is to create a basketball league that will bring two warring tribes—the Hutus and the Tutsis—together peacefully. These tribes have been in a civil war for years, and government officials believe one of the ways to guide them to peace is through sports. In Burundi, Jim has the chance to recommit himself to basketball, rediscover his true self, and bring peace to a nation in turmoil.
Africa’s Elite Football: Structure, Politics, and Everyday Challenges (Routledge Contemporary Africa)
by Chuka OnwumechiliThis book explores various aspects of intranational elite football in Africa, drawing on the expertise of notable scholars from across the world. Africa’s Elite Football focuses on an area largely ignored by current scholarship on African football, where interest has focused on international migration. In exploring the intranational, the book is written in two parts. The first is a general focus on the continent, and the second is an examination of country cases. The general focus of the book is on the nature of elite tier leagues, the relationship between politics and football, the media, youth academies, intranational migration and fans. Notably, chapters on topics such as intranational migration present groundbreaking scholarship in this area. Currently, football discourses on migration focus on international migration of footballers, yet the majority of migration in African football is intranational. Thus, by addressing the intranational, this book brings attention to an area that is underrepresented in the current academic discourse. The second part of the book, which focuses on country cases, covers Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The topics explored in those cases include religiosity, health, women’s football, media and management. The coverage of health-related issues is particularly important given that several books on African football rarely broach such a topic. With its unique approach to African football, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of sports history, African studies, politics in sports and African sports.
Africa's World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space
by Alegi Peter Bolsmann ChrisAfrica s World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space focuses on a remarkable month in the modern history of Africa and in the global history of football. Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann are well-known experts on South African football, and they have assembled an impressive team of local and international journalists, academics, and football experts to reflect on the 2010 World Cup and its broader significance, its meanings, complexities, and contradictions. The World Cup s sounds, sights, and aesthetics are explored, along with questions of patriotism, nationalism, and spectatorship in Africa and around the world. Experts on urban design and communities write on how the presence of the World Cup worked to refashion urban spaces and negotiate the local struggles in the hosting cities. The volume is richly illustrated by authors photographs, and the essays in this volume feature chronicles of match day experiences; travelogues; ethnographies of fan cultures; analyses of print, broadcast, and electronic media coverage of the tournament; reflections on the World Cup s private and public spaces; football exhibits in South African museums; and critiques of the World Cup s processes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as its political and economic legacies. The volume concludes with a forum on the World Cup, including Thabo Dladla, Director of Soccer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Mohlomi Kekeletso Maubane, a well-known Soweto-based writer and a soccer researcher, and Rodney Reiners, former professional footballer and current chief soccer writer for the Cape Argus newspaper in Cape Town. This collection will appeal to students, scholars, journalists, and fans. Cover illustration: South African fan blowing his vuvuzela at South Africa vs. France, Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, June 22, 2010. Photo by Chris Bolsmann. "
AFROSURF
by Mami WataDiscover the untold story of African surf culture in this glorious and colorful collection of profiles, essays, photographs, and illustrations. AFROSURF is the first book to capture and celebrate the surfing culture of Africa. This unprecedented collection is compiled by Mami Wata, a Cape Town surf company that fiercely believes in the power of African surf. Mami Wata brings together its co-founder Selema Masekela and some of Africa's finest photographers, thinkers, writers, and surfers to explore the unique culture of eighteen coastal countries, from Morocco to Somalia, Mozambique, South Africa, and beyond. Packed with over fifty essays, AFROSURF features surfer and skater profiles, thought pieces, poems, photos, illustrations, ephemera, recipes, and a mini comic, all wrapped in an astounding design that captures the diversity and character of Africa.A creative force of good in their continent, Mami Wata sources and manufactures all their wares in Africa and works with communities to strengthen local economies through surf tourism. With this mission in mind, Mami Wata is donating 100% of their proceeds to support two African surf therapy organizations, Waves for Change and Surfers Not Street Children.
After Hours with Her Ex
by Maureen ChildThe prodigal ex-husband returns-as the boss-in this novel by USA TODAY bestselling author Maureen Child After two long years, Sam Wyatt is home. He has big plans for his family's ski resort. But first he must face those he left behind-including the ex-wife he has never forgotten. Lacy Sills Wyatt has barely recovered from Sam's desertion. Now he's her boss! How can she work with him every day? And how can she keep from falling for him all over again? The answer is: she can't. But when Lacy learns Sam has ulterior motives for rekindling their romance, she's not sure she can forgive him...not even with an unexpected pregnancy to consider!
After Many a Summer: The Passing of the Giants and Dodgers and a Golden Age in New York Baseball
by Robert E. MurphyBy the mid-1950s, New York had been the unrivaled capital of America’s national pastime for a century, a place where baseball was followed with truly fanatical fervor. The city’s three teams—the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers—had over the previous decade rewarded their fans’ devotion with stellar performances: from 1947 to 1957, one or more of these teams had played in the World Series every year but one. Yet on opening day 1958, the Giants and the Dodgers were gone. Their owners, Walter O’Malley and Horace Stoneham, had ripped them away from their longtime home and from the hearts of millions of devoted and passionate fans and taken the teams to California. How did it happen? Who was to blame? The relocation of the Giants and the Dodgers, an event that transcended sports and altered the landscape of New York City, has never been addressed with the depth, detail, and insight offered here by Robert E. Murphy. As informed as it is entertaining, After Many a Summer is rich in baseball lore, civic history, and the wheeling and dealing, alliances and betrayals, and sharp-elbowed machinations of big-city business and politics.
After the Cheering Stops: An NFL Wife’s Story of Concussions, Loss, and the Faith that Saw Her Through
by Mike Yorkey Cyndy FeaselFormer NFL wife Cyndy Feasel tells the tragic story of her family's journey into chaos and darkness resulting from the damage her husband suffered due to football-related concussions and head trauma--and the faith that saved her. "If I'd only known what I loved the most would end up killing me and taking away everything I loved, I would have never done it." - Grant Feasel Grant Feasel spent ten years in the NFL, playing 117 games as a center and a long snapper mostly for the Seattle Seahawks. The skull-battering, jaw-shaking collisions he absorbed during those years ultimately destroyed his marriage and fractured his family. Grant died on July 15, 2012, at the age of 52, the victim of alcohol abuse and a degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Cyndy Feasel watched their life together become a living hell as alcohol became Grant's medication for a disease rooted in the scores of concussions he suffered on the football field. Helmet-to-helmet collisions opened the door to CTE and transformed him from a sunny, strong, and loving man into a dark shadow of his former self. In this raw and emotional memoir that takes a closer look at the destruction wrought by a game millions love, Cyndy describes in painful and excruciating detail what can happen to an NFL player and his family when the stadium empties and the lights go down. A powerful tale of warning for football moms and NFL wives everywhere, After the Cheering Stops is also a story of the hard-won hope found in God's presence when everything else falls apart.
After the Game: Bridging the Gap from Winning Athlete to Thriving Entrepreneur
by Jay DixonWhat if you could harness the many invaluable lessons you learned as a college or professional athlete and apply them to your professional and personal life? In After the Game, former D1 college football player turned successful business leader Jay Dixon shows you how.Crafted in the tradition of wisdom-rich business fables, After the Game combines a page-turning fictional narrative with a wealth of real-life lessons and insights designed to inform, advise, and inspire budding entrepreneurs and future CEOs. You&’ll discover: research that proves athletes are perfectly suited to own and lead businesses ten mindset elements that are crucial to your success at work and in life seven hands-on lessons that will accelerate your journey from idea to ownership a proven playbook to become a CEO eleven years faster than typical routes how self-awareness and emotional intelligence are vital on your path to CEO how to build a successful independent enterprise and achieve substantial personal growth . . . and much more. With billions of dollars&’ worth of small businesses set to be sold or passed down as baby boomers move into their retirement years, opportunities abound for savvy entrepreneurs to learn to acquire, lead, and sell those businesses—and no demographic is more poised and prepared to do so than former athletes. This is your time. Don&’t stand on the sidelines another minute. Get up, get ready, and get back in the action. A glorious new future awaits.
After the Game: A Field Party Novel (Field Party #3)
by Abbi GlinesThe third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Field Party series—a southern soap opera with football, cute boys, and pick-up trucks—from USA TODAY bestselling author Abbi Glines.Two years ago, Riley Young fled from Lawton, Alabama. After accusing the oldest Lawton son, Rhett, of rape, everyone called her a liar and she had no option but to leave. Now she’s back, but she’s not at Lawton High finishing up her senior year. She’s at home raising the little girl that no one believed was Rhett’s. Rhett is off at college living the life he was afraid he’d lose with Riley’s accusation, so Riley agrees to move back to Lawton so she and her parents could take care of her grandmother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. But the town still hasn’t forgotten their hate for her, and she hasn’t forgotten the way they turned on her when she needed them most. When town golden boy Brady Higgens finds Riley and her daughter, Bryony, stranded on the side of the road in a storm, he pulls over and gives them a ride. Not because he cares about Riley, of course, but because of the kid. But after the simple car ride, he begins to question everything he thought he knew. Could Brady believe Riley and risk losing everything?
After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC
by Steven MithenArchaeology says present day humans have been on the planet for eighty thousand years. The first writing has been dated to 3,500 BC. This is what humanity may have been during from 20,000 to 5,000 BC, during the period of global warming which followed the last great ice age. The author uses archaeology to talk about humans at various times during this period of time and at various places on the planet. This book is about what life may have been like day to day over a fifteen thousand year period before we learned to write and live in cities.
After the Lights Go Out
by John VercherA harrowing and spellbinding story about family, the complications of mixed-race relationships, misplaced loyalties, and the price athletes pay to entertain—from the critically acclaimed author of Three-Fifths Xavier &“Scarecrow&” Wallace, a mixed-race MMA fighter on the wrong side of thirty, is facing the fight of his life. Xavier can no longer deny he is losing his battle with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), or pugilistic dementia. Through the fog of memory loss, migraines, and paranoia, Xavier does his best to stay in shape by training at the Philadelphia gym owned by his cousin-cum-manager, Shot, a retired champion boxer to whom Xavier owes an unpayable debt.Xavier makes ends meet while he waits for the call that will reinstate him after a year-long suspension by teaching youth classes at Shot&’s gym and by living rent-free in the house of his white father, whom Xavier was forced to commit to a nursing home. The progress of Sam Wallace&’s end-stage Alzheimer&’s has revealed his latent racism, and Xavier finally gains insight into why his Black mother left the family years ago. Then Xavier is offered a chance at redemption: a last-minute high-profile comeback fight. If he can get himself back in the game, he&’ll be able to clear his name and begin to pay off Shot. With his memory in shreds and his life crumbling around him, can Xavier hold on to the focus he needs to survive? John Vercher, author of the Edgar and Anthony Award–nominated Three-Fifths, offers a gripping, psychologically astute, and explosive tour de force about race, entertainment, and healthcare in America, and about one man&’s battle against himself.
After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the '69 Mets
by Erik Sherman Art ShamskyThe inside account of an iconic team in baseball history: the 1969 New York Mets—a consistently last-place team that turned it all around in just one season—told by ’69 Mets outfielder Art Shamsky, Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver, and other teammates as they reminisce about what happened then and where they are today. <P><P>The New York Mets franchise began in 1962 and the team finished in last place nearly every year. When the 1969 season began, fans weren’t expecting much from “the Lovable Losers.” But as the season progressed, the Mets inched closer to first place and then eventually clinched the National League pennant. <P><P>They were underdogs against the formidable Baltimore Orioles, but beat them in five games to become world champions. <P><P>No one had predicted it. In fact, fans could hardly believe it happened. <P><P>Suddenly they were “the Miracle Mets.” Playing right field for the ’69 Mets was Art Shamsky, who had stayed in touch with his former teammates over the years. He hoped to get together with star pitcher Tom Seaver (who would win the Cy Young award as the best pitcher in the league in 1969 and go on to become the first Met elected to the Hall of Fame) but Seaver was ailing and could not travel. So, Shamsky organized a visit to Tom Terrific in California, accompanied by the #2 pitcher, Jerry Koosman, outfielder Ron Swoboda, and shortstop Bud Harrelson. <P><P>Together they recalled the highlights of that amazing season as they reminisced about what changed the Mets’ fortunes in 1969. With the help of sportswriter Erik Sherman, Shamsky has written After the Miracle for the 1969 Mets. <P><P>This is a book that every Mets fan—and every baseball fan—must own.
After the Romance Novel (Before… and After)
by Susan LaineA Before… and After StoryRomance novels always end with a happy ever after. Right? Evan and Adam are best friends, but they don’t know everything about each other. For one thing, Adam doesn’t know Evan writes and publishes gay romance novels until he discovers one while snooping on Evan’s laptop. This revelation changes their relationship in ways neither could’ve imagined. Adam’s reaction to reading Evan’s stories is not what he expected, nor is the new way he’s looking at his lifelong pal. After all, Adam is straight, or so he’s always thought, and that is what Evan believes about Adam as well. When Evan admits he might be bisexual, Adam suggests he try dating girls to find out for sure, but when Evan follows his advice, Adam is caught off guard by his feelings of jealousy. And when the date proves Evan isn’t bisexual, but gay, Evan’s request that Adam find him a guy might be the last straw. How can Adam admit he wants that guy to be him? His epiphany will either end their relationship—or change it into something wonderful in their very own friends-to-lovers romance.
After the Shot Drops
by Randy Ribay<P>A powerful novel about friendship, basketball, and one teen's mission to create a better life for his family. <P> Bunny and Nasir have been best friends forever, but when Bunny accepts an athletic scholarship across town, Nasir feels betrayed. <P>While Bunny tries to fit in with his new, privileged peers, Nasir spends more time with his cousin, Wallace, who is being evicted. <P>Nasir can't help but wonder why the neighborhood is falling over itself to help Bunny when Wallace is in trouble. <P>When Wallace makes a bet against Bunny, Nasir is faced with an impossible decision—maybe a dangerous one. <P>Told from alternating perspectives, After the Shot Drops is a heart-pounding story about the responsibilities of great talent and the importance of compassion.
The Aftermath (The Hurricane #2)
by R. J. PrescottThe second book in a New Adult fiction series from USA Today bestselling author R.J. Prescott.Cormac "The Hurricane" O'Connell's star is on the rise. Billed as the most promising young boxer of his generation, his new career is taking him to places he never dreamed. But O'Connell only needs one thing in life: his wife. In her final year of college, Em cannot follow him around the world but together they make it work. Just when everything they ever wanted is on the horizon, the past resurfaces to haunt them, and O'Connell realizes that justice might not be a part of his happy ever after. He couldn't protect Em once before, but in the aftermath of the hurricane, he will make sure that never happens again.
Afternoons with Mr. Hogan
by Jody VasquezBen Hogan's former ball shagger recounts firsthand stories of the golf legend—andreveals, for the first time, Hogan's Swing Secret, a source of mystery to golfers for more than fifty years. Ben Hogan's pro golf record is legendary. A four-time PGA Player of the Year, he celebrated sixty-three tournament wins and became known as a man of few words and fewer close friends. Most of what we know about Hogan has been based on myth and speculation. Until now. In the 1960s, though Hogan's competitive career was over, he kept the practice habits that made him famous and remade modern competitive golf. He hired seventeen-year-old Jody Vasquez to help. Each day, after driving to a remote part of the course at Shady Oaks Country Club, Hogan would spend hours hitting balls and Vasquez would retrieve them. There, and over the course of their twenty-year friendship, Hogan taught Jody the mechanics of his famous swing and shared his thoughts on playing, practicing, and course management—unknowingly revealing much about his character, values, and beliefs, and the events that shaped them. In Afternoons with Mr. Hogan, Jody Vasquez shares dozens of stories about Hogan, from the way he practiced, selected his clubs, and interacted with other star players to his little-known humor and generosity. Combining the gentle insight of Tom Kite's A Fairway to Heaven (which recalls Kite's golf education under Harvey Penick) with the sage perspective of Penick's own Little Red Book, Vasquez's tribute is funny, poignant, and full of advice for golfers of all levels. .
Again to Carthage: A Novel
by John L. Parker Jr.Again to Carthage is the "breathtaking, pulse-quickening, stunning" sequel to Once a Runner that "will have you standing up and cheering, and pulling on your running shoes" (Chicago Sun-Times). Originally self-published in 1978, Once a Runner became a cult classic, emerging after three decades to become a New York Times bestseller. Now, in Again to Carthage, hero Quenton Cassidy returns. The former Olympian has become a successful attorney in south Florida, where his life centers on work, friends, skin diving, and boating trips to the Bahamas. But when he loses his best friend to the Vietnam War and two relatives to life’s vicissitudes, Cassidy realizes that an important part of his life was left unfinished. After reconnecting with his friend and former coach Bruce Denton, Cassidy returns to the world of competitive running in a desperate, all-out attempt to make one last Olympic team. Perfectly capturing the intensity, relentlessness, and occasional lunacy of a serious runner’s life, Again to Carthage is a must-read for runners—and athletes—of all ages, and a novel that will thrill any lover of fiction.
Against All Odds: My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances
by Scott BrownThe extraordinary personal journey of a man who, against all odds, rose to become one of America's most surprising and promising new political figures. Scott Brown's greatest win did not occur on a cold January election night in 2010 when he came from behind to capture the U. S. Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for nearly fifty years; it began when he survived a savage beating at the drunken, dirty-fingernail hands of a stepfather when he was barely six years old, while trying to protect his mother. In this gripping memoir of resilience and redemption, Brown tells the story of his difficult, often nomadic childhood, shunted from house to apartment, and town to town, seventeen times over his first eighteen years. He somehow thrived despite a largely absent father, who married four separate times. So did his mother, in relationships frequently stained with alcohol, anger, and even violence. For nearly two decades' growing up, Brown endured innumerable hardships and challenges, even stealing food to eat. He was periodically sent off to live with relatives, his possessions wrapped in a few old blankets. Saved by basketball, he was the boy who shoveled snow from the public courts to shoot hoops alone in the frozen cold. With clear-eyed conviction and unflinching candor, Brown tells the story of his own bad-boy days, of the coaches who mentored him, and of how he found a way out of familial chaos through the swish of a ball in the net, winning a starting slot on the Tufts varsity basketball team as a freshman player and becoming the tenth-highest scorer to graduate in the school's history. His rise from there was even more improbable: a first-year law student and member of the Massachusetts National Guard, he was picked as Cosmopolitan magazine's "America's Sexiest Man" and was vaulted into the glamorous world of New York modeling at the height of the 1980s. But the man who was once ushered into the backrooms of Studio 54 returned to Massachusetts to continue with his military and legal training, settle down, raise a family, and soon found an unlikely path that would lead him to national political stardom. Here, too, are the secrets from the unprecedented Senate race that captured the country's imagination and how Scott Brown won his remarkable victory. Poignant, heartfelt, humorous, and profound, this is the story of one man's dream and his determination to fight for a better future.
Against All Odds: Never Give up (Good Sports Ser.)
by Glenn StoutTim Tebow and the Denver Broncos, Roy Reigels in the 1929 Rose Bowl, Frank Reich and the Buffalo Bills during the 1993 NFL playoffs, Tracy McGrady and the Houston Rockets in 2004, the entire St. Louis Cardinals team in the 2011 World Series . . . What do these players have in common? Every one of them was on the brink of a humiliating defeat. But at the moment when they could have called it quits, they didn’t. These five real-life stories, illustrated with black-and-white photographs, will inspire readers young and old.
Against Football
by Steve Almond"Powerful...an important read." --Publishers WeeklyNew York Times bestselling author Steve Almond takes on America's biggest sacred cow: footballIn Against Football, Steve Almond details why, after forty years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions:* Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia?* What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood--run, leap, throw, tackle--into a billion-dollar industry?* How did a sport that causes brain damage become such an important emblem for our institutions of higher learning?There has never been a book that exposes the dark underside of America's favorite game with such searing candor.From the Hardcover edition.n-dollar industry?* How did a sport that causes brain damage become the leading signifier of our institutions of higher learning?* Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia?There has never been a book that exposes the dark underside of America's favorite game with such searing candor.From the Hardcover edition.