Other books that might interest you

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  Breaking Through the Lines - The...

  David Lee Morgan Jr.

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  Marion Motley was recognized as one of the gridiron's most outstanding players when he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968. His legacy as one of four Black players to reintegrate pro football in 1946 helped blaze a path for Black athletes in the highest echelons of professional sports. Black players once thrived during the early days of the NFL. Then a "gentleman's agreement" among NFL owners in 1933 kept those players out of the highest level of the sport. That changed in 1946. Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown was putting together the inaugural Cleveland Browns roster and signed Black players Motley and Bill Willis to be a part of it. Years earlier, Brown had coached his high school team against Motley's. They formed a strong partnership first with a Navy team and then in Cleveland, where Motley twice led his league in rushing yards and helped the Browns win five championships. Motley's efforts to play a physically brutal game in the face of societal racism and state-sanctioned Jim Crow laws helped reintegrate American sports. Yet half a century after Motley's enshrinement to the Hall of Fame, the memory of Motley and his accomplishments on and off the field have begun to fade. This book tells Motley's story of adversity, personal tragedy, and triumphs using archival interviews and new interviews with historians, friends, and descendants.

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  Fresh Air At Any Age - Out Doors...

  Benny Johnson

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  "Fresh Air At Any Age: Outdoor Activities For Seniors" is a transformative guide inviting seniors to discover the joy of the great outdoors. It highlights the physical, mental, and emotional benefits of outdoor activities tailored for seniors, from local parks to gardening and nature photography. Practical tips ensure safety while exploring activities like bird watching, walking clubs, fishing, and outdoor sports suited for seniors. With a rich resource guide, this book is a compass guiding seniors towards an active, joyful, and nature-filled retirement. Embrace the outdoors, challenge yourself, and find peace in nature at any age.

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  The Driver - My Dangerous...

  Alexander Roy

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  The seven-time Road Rally champion delivers a riveting autobiography that’s “more than a testosterone cocktail of a memoir. It’s a joy ride” (Los Angeles Times). 
   
  Alex Roy’s father, while on his deathbed, hints about the notorious, utterly illegal cross-country drive from Los Angeles to New York of the 1970s, which then inspired his young son to enter the mysterious world of underground road rallies. Tantalized by the legend of the Driver—the anonymous, possibly nonexistent organizer of the world’s ultimate secret race—Roy set out to become a force to be reckoned with. At speeds approaching 200 mph, he sped from London to Morocco, from Budapest to Rome, from San Francisco to Miami, in his highly modified BMW M5, culminating in a new record for the infamous Los Angeles to New York run: 32:07. 
   
  Sexy, funny, and shocking, The Driver is a never-before-told, behind-the-wheel look at an unbelievably fast and dangerous society that has long been off-limits to ordinary mortals. 
   
  “[A] highly entertaining insider’s look at the world of high-stakes, high-octane, high-risk road rallies . . . Roy writes with enthusiasm and with a novelist’s sense of pacing and character. The book is so good, so filled with color and adrenaline, that it plays out like a movie in your mind.” —Booklist (starred review)

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  The Games Presidents Play -...

  John Sayle Watterson

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  This look at the connections between sportsmanship and statesmanship “introduces an intriguing way of evaluating presidential fitness for office” (Richmond Times-Dispatch). 
   
  Whether throwing out the first pitch of the baseball season, fishing for trout, or cheating at golf, American presidents through history have had connections to the world of sports in many ways. This book explores how various commanders-in-chief worked and played—and how their athletic activities reflected their political identities. 
   
  The author considers George Washington, whose athleticism contributed to his success on the battlefield and perhaps to the birth of the republic. He moves into the nineteenth century, when frontier sports were part of the formative years of Jackson, Lincoln, and Cleveland. With twentieth-century presidents—most notably the hyperactive, headline-grabbing Teddy Roosevelt—he shows how the growth of mass media and transportation transformed presidential sports into both a form of recreation and a means of establishing a positive image. Exploring everything from FDR’s fight to restore his polio-ravaged body to Eisenhower’s obsessive love affair with golf to Nixon’s enthusiasm for football, this book uses sports to open a window onto the presidency and the nation’s culture, as well as the strengths, weaknesses, and personalities of America’s leaders. 
   
  “Watterson’s history rises above trivia in its attention to the political ramifications of presidents’ sports while also being a consistently entertaining trove of lore and, as the author puts it, ‘just weird stuff,’ such as John Q. Adams granting an interview while skinny-dipping. A wry and perceptive work.” —Booklist  
   
   “An enjoyable study of politics and culture.” —Publishers Weekly 
   
  “Will appeal to history buffs and sports fans alike.” —Library Journal

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  Sports and American History

  Matthew Andrews

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  Join celebrated UNC history professor Matthew Andrews to discover how sports have reflected various facets of American identity—both laudatory and troubling—throughout our nation’s history. Whether you love sports or find the American sports obsession confounding, this course will help you answer the fascinating question of why sports have mattered so much to this country. Although today’s sporting events bear little resemblance to the bloodsports of the early colonies, the passion with which Americans play and watch sports remains alive and well. Delve into the history of American sports to better understand the larger themes and controversies in this nation’s past in these 30 captivating lectures. As you explore stories of races won, touchdowns scored, and players rounding the bases, you’ll also learn about sports’ class and ethnic origins; racial prejudice, exclusion, and integration in sport and society; athleticism and the evolving ideas about masculinity and womanhood; the role of sport in the promotion of a vigorous national identity; and the use of sporting arenas as spaces to both legitimize and protest the political order.  By the end of the course, you will know more about the role of sports in American history, have a keen grasp on the general narrative and major figures in US sport history, and view contemporary sports in a new way. As you will see, sports are not mere games—they are significant cultural events in which Americans express and contest ideas about race, class, gender, and other important markers of identity.This course is part of the Learn25 collection.

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  No Heavy Lifting - Globetrotting...

  Rob Simpson

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  Join Rob Simpson on a dozen once-in-a-lifetime adventures in the world of international media
   
  Though he’s now known to hockey fans across North America for his NHL commentary and as co-host of the Stellick and Simmer SiriusXM radio show, Rob Simpson didn’t start his radio and TV career rinkside: his media background has taken him around the world and into uniquely unexpected situations. In No Heavy Lifting, Simpson recounts some of his wildest adventures from stints as a TV weatherman in Hawaii, a hockey reporter at the Torino Olympics, a skydiver in Idaho, and a marathoner in New York, to immigrating north of the border.
   
  Take ten grand a year out of your bank account, for ten years, and gamble it away? Check. Take a humanitarian trip to the Serengeti with a beloved NHL player whose brain damage may have led to his death? Check. Alienate and scandalize the most powerful man in Hawaiian politics? Check. Climb Mount Kilimanjaro wearing someone else’s boots and clothes? Checkmate.
   
  Featuring stories about NBA legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, “Dr. J” Julius Erving, and Larry Bird, and NHL superstars Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton, Steve Montador, Scott Gomez, Domenic Moore, and Nicklas Lidström, this episodic memoir is told with Simpson’s arch sense of humor.

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