Outros livros que poderiam interessá-lo

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  Hidden History of Horse Racing...

  Foster Ockerman

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  A behind-the-scenes history of the Bluegrass State’s iconic sport. Horse racing and the Commonwealth of Kentucky are synonymous. The equine industry in the state dates as far back as the eighteenth century, and some of that history remains untold. The Seventeenth Earl of Derby made the trip from England to Louisville for the famed Kentucky Derby. Many famous African American jockeys grew up in the area but fled to Europe during the Jim Crow era. Gambling on races is a popular pastime, but betting in the early days caused significant changes in the sport. Hidden History of Horse Racing in Kentucky details the rich and the lesser-known history at the tracks in the Bluegrass State.

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  Halfway to Heaven - My...

  Mark Obmascik

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  Fat, forty-four, father of three sons, and facing a vasectomy, Mark Obmascik would never have guessed that his next move would be up a 14,000-foot mountain. But when his twelve-year-old son gets bitten by the climbing bug at summer camp, Obmascik can't resist the opportunity for some high-altitude father-son bonding by hiking a peak together. After their first joint climb, addled by the thin air, Obmascik decides to keep his head in the clouds and try scaling all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains, known as the Fourteeners -- and to do them in less than one year. The result is Halfway to Heaven, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Obmascik's rollicking, witty, sometimes harrowing, often poignant chronicle of an outrageous midlife adventure that is no walk in the park, although sometimes it's A Walk in the Woods -- but with more sweat and less oxygen. Half a million people try climbing a Colorado Fourteener every year, but only twelve hundred have reported summiting them all. Can an overweight, stay-at-home dad become No. 1,201?  With his ebullient personality and sparkling prose, Obmascik brings us inside the quirky, colorful subculture of mountaineering obsessives who summit these mountains year after year. Honoring his concerned wife's orders not to climb alone, Obmascik drags old friends up the slopes, some of them lifelong flatlanders tasting thin air for the first time, and lures seasoned Rockies junkies into taking on a huffing, puffing newbie by bribing them with free beer, lunches, and car washes. Among the new friends he makes are an ex-drag racer trying to perform a headstand on every summit, the lead oboe player in a Hebrew salsa band, and a climber with the counterproductive pre-climb ritual of gulping down four beers and a burrito. Along the way, Obmascik experiences the raw, rowdy, and rarely seen intimacy of male friendship, braced by the double intoxicants of adrenaline and altitude.  Though danger is always present -- the Colorado Fourteeners have killed more climbers than Mount Everest -- Mark knows his aging scalp can't afford the hair-raising adventures of Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and his quest becomes a story of family, friendship, and fraternity. In Obmascik's summer of climbing, he loses fifteen pounds, finds a few dozen man-dates, and gains respect for the history of these storied mountains (home to cannibalism, gold rushes, shoot-outs, and one of the nation's most famed religious shrines). As much about midlife and male bonding as it is about mountains, Halfway to Heaven tells how weekend warriors can survive them all as they reach for those most distant things -- the summits of mountains and a teenage son. And as one man exceeds the physical achievements of his youth, he discovers that age -- like summit height -- is just a number.

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  Fishing from the Rock of the Bay...

  James Batty

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  I hardly remember life without a rod in my hand, writes James Batty in the opening sentence of his autobiography in fishing. When his American wife moved with him to Cornwall, she saw his family photo album and commented that there was hardly a single picture of him in which he wasn't fishing.
  
  This witty, wacky account is James' tale of his obsession with his hobby of fishing, wherever his work took him around the world, seeking out lemon sharks in the Gambia, Striped Bass in New York and salmon in British Columbia. James' genre of writing is a mixture of John Gierach and Bill Bryson: his style is wry, witty and incisive.
  The end result is an entertaining insight into the mind of a dedicated angler, full of fishing anecdotes, tips and thought-provoking ideas.
  Extracts from the book
  
  - The great thing about anglers – especially when we meet fellow anglers – is that we don't try to hide our nuttiness. Pointless, I'm holding a rod, so are you, game over. We both know we're talking to a person who's a few bananas short of a bunch.
  
  - When you reckon you're going to catch something, you make more effort. If you think the session's a lost cause, 'one last cast' translates into, well, one last cast. Unthinkable. If you feel you're in with a chance it reverts to its normal meaning: half a dozen chucks with the diving plug, then a few with the slider just in case, and ten minutes on the sandeel shad because you really never know.
  
  - Guiding is not a job I'd do again, not as long as there's alternative employment cleaning out the grease traps at fast food restaurants or hand sorting the output of sewage farms.
  
  - They'll take jelly-fry under an inch long when the water's full of plump sandeels, and I don't know why. But it's the mysteries that keep us fishing.
  - The fish can't see my modest reel or my battered rod until it's too late to say, 'I have my pride, I refuse to be landed on that old shite'.
  
  - My financial situation was as tight as a toreador's Y-fronts.
  
  - Wave and weather are a mystery, like who's going to win next year's Grand National, where the stock market's going, or why people watch television shows about forgotten minor celebrities eating baboons' foreskins. Long range forecasts are as reliable as horoscopes, just less entertaining. Maybe the Met Office should juice them up, 'The month will be marked by deep Atlantic lows, even deeper discounts at your local supermarket. Don't be too proud to pick up some sausages.' Or they could tell the truth: 'Expect a combination of sunshine, rain, freezing fog, calm days, violent storms, blizzards, and perhaps a plague of frogs. Dress warmly but don't forget to pack a swimsuit.'

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  Chasing the Dream - Life in the...

  Ted Starkey

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  Go on the road with the best hockey players not in the NHL
   
  What is life really like in North American hockey’s top minor league? As told by dozens of the players, coaches, broadcasters, personnel, and owners who work a grinding schedule every winter, Chasing the Dream goes behind the scenes with seven AHL teams. Find out how players’ dreams of lacing up their skates in the NHL motivate them through long bus rides and games where they’re constantly gunning for a precious spot in the majors.
   
  From young prospects to veterans whose own hopes have faded, hear from AHL players on why today’s minor league is no longer like Slap Shot, what playing three games in under 48 hours can do to a player, and why fighting — once a staple of the minors — is on the decline. Learn about the game from coaches, alumni, and broadcasters, as well as AHL president Dave Andrews, who reveals how the AHL is becoming an even more important tool for NHL teams in the salary-cap era.
   
  Load your gear on the bus and take a tour around the many venues, personalities, pranks, and memories of the once-small AHL — an organization that now crosses the continent and is big business for players and owners.

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  The Leicester City Story - Five...

  Rob Tanner

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  **A REVISED AND SIGNIFICANTLY UPDATED EDITION OF ROB TANNER'S 5000-1- NOW COVERING THE FIVE YEARS SINCE LEICESTER CITY'S INCREDIBLE PREMIER LEAGUE TITLE WIN.**
  On 2 May 2016, English football was spectacularly altered as 5000-1 longshots Leicester City were crowned Premier League champions. Their victory broke a long-standing monopoly at the top of the table, and propelled the club into the Champions League for the first time.
  In The Leicester City Story: Five Years On, acclaimed Athletic Leicester City correspondent Rob Tanner relives City's title win, their summer of celebration and the highs and lows of the next five years that led to their first FA Cup win in 2021.
  Detailing the dramatic changes in the club's management since 2016, and reflecting on the great legacy of the club's much-loved owner, Khun Vichai, Tanner tells the inside story of a remarkable team still on the rise.

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  Peaks and Bandits - The classic...

  Alf Bonnevie Bryn

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  In 1909, while dreaming of the Himalaya, Norwegian mountaineer Alf Bonnevie Bryn and a fellow young climber, the Australian George Ingle Finch, set their sights on Corsica to build their experience. The events of this memorable trip form the basis of Bryn's acclaimed book Tinder og banditter – 'Peaks and Bandits', with their boisterous exploits delighting Norwegian readers for generations. Newly translated by Bibbi Lee, this classic of Norwegian literature is available for the first time in English.
  Although Bryn would go on to become a respected mountaineer and author, and Finch would become regarded as one of the greatest mountaineers of all time – a legend of the 1922 Everest expedition – Peaks and Bandits captures them on the cusp of these achievements: simply two students taking advantage of their Easter holidays, their escapades driven by their passion for climbing. As they find themselves in unexpected and often strange places, Bryn's sharp and jubilant narrative epitomises travel writing at its best.
  Balancing its wit with fascinating insight into life in early twentieth-century Corsica, the infectious enthusiasm of Bryn's narrative has cemented it as one of Norway's most treasured adventure books. Peaks and Bandits embodies the timeless joy of adventure.

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