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  Fields of Battle - Pearl Harbor...

  Brian Curtis

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  In the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the 1942 Rose Bowl was moved from Pasadena to Durham, North Carolina, out of fear of Japanese attacks on the West Coast. It remains the only Rose Bowl game to ever be played outside of Pasadena. Duke University, led by legendary coach Wallace Wade, Sr., faced off against underdog Oregon State College, with both teams preparing for a grueling fight on the football field while their thoughts wandered to the battlefields they would soon be on. 
  As the players and coaches prepared for the game, America was preparing for war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss the Allied strategy in Europe; a discussion that would change the lives of the boys and men on the field in Durham. 
  Finally, on New Year's Day 1942, under dark gray skies and occasional rain, the two teams clashed on the gridiron in front of a crowd of 56,000, playing one of the most unforgettable games in history. Shortly afterward, many of the players and coaches entered the military and would quickly become brothers on the battlefield. Scattered around the globe, the lives of Rose Bowl participants would intersect in surprising ways, as they served in Iwo Jima and Normandy, Guadalcanal and the Battle of the Bulge.

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  A Countryman's Creel - The...

  Conor Farrington

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  A guest at a Scottish country estate is not all he seems; a solicitor with an addiction to point-to-point racing encounters a run of disastrous luck – but why is his close friend so pleased? A flyfisherman meets the disoriented Lady Anstey in a downpour and is drawn into a threatened world; and keen wildfowler Hugh McParland is enjoying his sport on the Norfolk coast when he joins a stranger on a pleasure boat and is embroiled in a game of high stakes. 
  
  Here is a collection of 12 wonderful country-sports bedside stories by a talented new writer.
  
  Recalling the spirit of the great ripping yarns of such writers as John Buchan and Rider Haggard, this book is designed to entertain all those interested in the great outdoors and in reading stirring and entertaining short stories. 
  
  A Countryman's Creel explores the British countryside in settings ranging from the Edwardian to the present day, exploring themes of enduring relevance for today. 
   

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  Body of Water - A Sage a Seeker...

  Chris Dombrowski

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  Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions-poetry and fly-fishing; two children, one of them in utero; and an income hovering perilously close to zero. Enter, at this particularly challenging moment, a miraculous email: can't go, it's all paid for, just book a flight to Miami.Thus began a journey that would lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide. Bonefish are prized for their elusiveness and their tenacity. And no one was better at hunting them than Pinder, a Bahamian whose accuracy and patience were virtuosic. He knows what the fish think, said one fisherman, before they think it.By the time Dombrowski meets Pinder, however, he has been abandoned by the industry he helped build. With cataracts from a lifetime of staring at the water and a tiny severance package after forty years of service, he watches as the world of his beloved bonefish is degraded by tourists he himself did so much to attract. But as Pinder's stories unfold, Dombrowski discovers a profound integrity and wisdom in the guide's life.

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  Get Into Sport: Beat any Hill -...

  Multiple Authors

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  Going Up? We talk hill climbing  training and technique with four national champions.

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  Conquistadors of the Useless -...

  Lionel Terray

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  'I have given my whole life to the mountains. Born at the foot of the Alps, I have been a ski champion, a professional guide, an amateur of the greatest climbs in the Alps and a member of eight expeditions to the Andes and the Himalayas. If the word has any meaning at all, I am a mountaineer.' So Terray begins Conquistadors of the Useless- not with arrogance, but with typical commitment. One of the most colourful characters of the mountaineering world, his writing is true to his uncompromising and jubilant love for the mountains. Terray was one of the greatest alpinists of his time, and his autobiography is one of the finest and most important mountaineering books ever written. Climbing with legends Gaston Rébuffat, Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, Terray made first ascents in the Alps, Alaska, the Andes, and the Himalaya. He was at the centre of global mountaineering at a time when Europe was emerging from the shadow of World War II, and he came out a hero. Conquistadors tells of his war-time escapades, of life as an Alpine mountain guide, and of his climbs - including the second ascent of the Eiger North Face and his involvement in the first ever ascent of an 8,000-metre peak, Annapurna. His tales capture the energy of French post-war optimism, a time when France needed to re-assert herself and when climbing triumphs were more valued than at any other time in history. Terray's death, in the Vercors, robbed mountaineering of one of its most passionate and far-sighted figures. His energy, so obvious in Conquistadors of the Useless, will inspire for generations to come. A mountaineering classic.

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  A Few Seconds of Panic - A...

  Stefan Fatsis

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  In 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 the number 9. He was expected to perform all the drills and regimens required of other kickers. He ws unlike his teammates in some ways-most notably, his livelihood was not on the line as theirs was. But he became remarkably like them in many ways: he risked crippling injury just as they did, endured the hazing that befalls all rookies, daily gorged on 4,000 calories, and slogged through two-a-day practices in blistering heat. Not since George Plimpton's stint as a Detroit Lion more than forty years ago has a writer tunneled so deeply into the NFL.At first, the players tolerated Fatsis or treated him like a mascot, but over time they began to think of him as one of them. And he began to think like one of them. Like the other Broncos-like all elite athletes-he learned to perfect a motion through thousands of repetitions, to play through pain, to silence the crowd's roar, and to banish self-doubt.While Fatsis honed his mind and drove his body past exhaustion, he communed with every classic athletic type-the afable alpha male, the overpaid brat, the youthful phenom, the savvy veteran-and a welter of bracingly atypical players as well: a fullback who invokes Aristotle, a quarterback who embraces yoga, and a tight end who takes creative writing classes in the off-season. Fatsis also witnessed the hidden machinery of a top-flight football franchise, from the God-is-in-the-details strategizing of legendary coach Mike Shanahan to the icy calculation with which the front office makes or breaks careers.With wry candor and hard-won empathy, A Few Seconds of Panic unveils the mind of the modern pro athlete and the workings of a storied sports franchise as no book ever has before.

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