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Dream Season - A Professor Joins...
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A rookie outsider chases his sports-obsessed dream to relive his football glory days in “the ultimate fan book” (The New York Times). Bob Cowser, Jr. is a happy husband, father, and English professor in upstate New York. Only one thing is missing: the exhilaration he felt as a young man in sports-crazy Tennessee when he took the field for high school football games. In what is every Monday morning quarterback’s fantasy, Bob joins the Watertown Red & Black, the country’s oldest semi-professional football team, hungry to win its first championship in two decades. Over the next five months, and with the hesitant blessing of his wife, Candace, Cowser drives the lonely sixty miles for try-outs in a former mill town of soldiers, corrections officers, and blue-collar workers. A far cry from his leafy campus, the “Professor,” as his teammates call him, must work hard to earn the respect of these hard-edged men—some of them local celebrities—and the confidence of his coach, a former mill worker who has never used a playbook. Balancing the demands of family and academe with the rigors of practice and game play, Cowser must find a way to fit his childhood dream into his real life as an adult. “Deserv[ing] to join the ranks of great football books like George Plimpton’s Paper Lion, Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes, and William Morris’s The Courting of Marcus Dupree” (Publishers Weekly), Dream Season invites us onto the line of scrimmage for each heartbreaking loss and breathtaking win, into the locker room of a fabled team challenged by a roller-coaster season, and ultimately into the heart of a man with a persevering thirst for glory. “Real, vivid, sensitive, accessible, warm, brutal, and wholly consuming,” this remarkable story reminds us why we love the games we play (Lee Gutkind, author of Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather).
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Graham Ibbeson The People's...
John Trelkeld, Graham Ibbeson
Just William. The name conjures memories of Richmal Cromptons favourite character. No childhood was complete without the outrageous exploits of William and his constant companions, The Outlaws. Sculptor Graham Ibbeson was beguiled by the words in the bestselling books and by the portrait of William on the front covers, a cheeky boy with tousled hair and a catapult sticking out of a pocket. Decades later Graham produced his own version of William, immortalized in fibre glass for the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, to mark the centenary of Cromptons birth. The Daily Mirror was so impressed by this tribute to one of fictions wonderful characters that one of its staff men photographed Graham walking with the statue up one of the last remaining cobbled streets in Barnsley. Much of Grahams work has revolved around childhood. His early years figure in much of his amusing fibre glass work and characters such as George and Eric are based on Graham and his cousin, Paul. His own humour responds to the distant sounds of boyhood and in a way this book is a celebration of childhood and laughter. It also traces the setbacks and triumphs of an artist who was born in a mining village and who produced a national icon, the Eric Morecambe statue, which helped to turn the economic tide in the Lancashire resort of Morecambe. The book outlines the stories behind other notable public statues, including Laurel and Hardy, Les Dawson, Dickie Bird and Cary Grant. It is both an informative and entertaining book about the life and times of the peoples sculptor, a man whose craftsmanship has left an elegant and permanent mark on more than 30 of the countrys townscapes
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The Road to Moresco
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Those Who Saw Her - Apparitions...
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For almost the entire history of the Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary has been returning to the world she left nearly two millennia ago.In this revised and expanded fourth edition, Those Who Saw Her shares the latest developments, updates, and Church teachings on the apparitions of Mary. This book details the most famous approved apparitions at Guadalupe, Rue de Bac, La Salette, Lourdes, Pontmain, Knock, and Fatima, as well as the fascinating but lesser-known appearances at Akita, Japan; Kibeho, Rwanda; San Nicolas, Argentina; Betania, Venezuela; and Champion, Wisconsin.Let Mary's prophetic messages bring comfort and hope to your life in this thorough and compelling presentation of the extraordinary visits of the Blessed Mother to her children around the world.
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Reeve Lindbergh
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