Sports

Bang the Drum Slowly Second Edition

Henry Wiggen, hero of The Southpaw and the best-known fictional baseball player in America, is back again, throwing a baseball “with his arm and his brain and his memory and his bluff for the sake of his pocket and his family.” More than a novel about baseball, Bang the Drum Slowly is about the friendship and the lives of a group of men as they each learn that a teammate is dying of cancer.
 
Bang the Drum Slowly was chosen as one of the top one hundred sports books of all time by Sports Illustrated and appears on numerous other lists of best baseball fiction. In the introduction to this new Bison Books edition Mark Harris discusses the making of the classic 1973 film starring Robert DeNiro, based on his screen adaptation of the book. Also available in Bison Books editions are The Southpaw, It Looked Like For Ever.
Price: $5.95

Friday Night Lights Mass Market TV Tie-in

Return once again to the enduring account of life in the Mojo lane, to the Permian Panthers of Odessa -- the winningest high school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, Bissinger chronicles one of the Panthers' dramatic seasons and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires-and sometimes shatters-the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms. Includes Reader's Group Guide inside. Now a an NBC TV weekly drama series.
Price: $1.79

The Essential Smart Football

The Essential Smart Football is an examination of football's most important strategies and ideas, through the lens of the game's best coaches, players, and schemes. Brilliantly written and eschewing unnecessary jargon and technicality, it makes a major contribution to our understanding of football to help all of us -- coaches, players, and fans -- appreciate the game we love all the more.

The Essential Smart Football features analysis of football's top strategists and their schemes, including:

  • Urban Meyer's spread offense
  • Tom Brady's no-huddle attack
  • Bill Belichick's hybrid defense
  • Mike Leach's pass-happy "Air Raid" offense
  • The most popular scheme for running the ball in the NFL
  • Nick Saban's school of defense.

    The book also includes explorations of modern approaches to the West Coast Offense, evolutions in defensive fronts and coverages, the changing role of the running game in spread and pro-style offenses, and much more.

    "Buy this book if you love football."
    -- Gregg Rosenthal, Senior Editor, NFL.com

    "[Chris Brown] has put together a book that you need to buy if you're a football fan with a pulse."
    -- Bill Barnwell, Staff Writer, Grantland

    "I'm a better coach after reading this book. A must have in every coach's library!"
    -- Dub Maddox, Offensive Coordinator, Jenks High School, Jenks, Oklahoma (12x Oklahoma State champions)

    "If you're a football geek, this is a mandatory purchase."
    -- Doug Farrar, Yahoo! Sports

    "Advanced stats are great, but they mean a lot more when you understand where the players are moving on the field and why. Nobody has taught me more about where the players are moving on the field and why than Chris Brown."
    -- Aaron Schatz, founder of FootballOutsiders.com, columnist for ESPN.com/ESPN the Magazine

    "Must-have new book for any football fan."
    -- Dan Shanoff, Quickish.com

    • Price: $8.95

    Surviving K2

    WILCO VAN ROOIJEN: SURVIVING K2
    Surviving two days in the Death Zone

    In the summer of 2008 the 'Norit K2 expedition' climbed without additional oxygen the 8611 meter high peak of K2 in Pakistan. During the descent the expedition turned from triumph to tradedy. One of the biggest tradedy's in mountain climbing history. Statistical every quarter 'conqueror' will die on the "Killer Mountain". In 2008 11 climbers lost their life. The news was going over the whole world from CNN, Al-Jazeera, Sky News, BBC, New York Times etc.

    Wilco van Rooijen, the Dutch expedition leader has been missing for three days and give up by the outside world. On his last strength he came back a life out of the 'Death Zone'. The 'Norit K2' Expedition 2008 paid a high price. What exactly took place that August 1, 2008? How could this tragedy have taken place?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF87ZZ0kKx4&feature=plcp&context=C478f53cVDvjVQa1PpcFMJZwOaH-BfYzrz5XShOh3dzhyfT-uq71c=
    Price: Too low to display

    To the Last Breath A Memoir of Going to Extremes

    Before Georgetown physics professor Francis Slakey decided to climb the highest mountain on every continent and surf every ocean, he had shut himself off from other people. His lectures were mechanical; his relationships were little more than ways to fill the evenings. But as his journey veered dangerously off course, everything about him began to change. A gripping adventure of the body and mind, To the Last Breath depicts the quest that leads Slakey around the globe, almost takes his life, challenges his fiercely held beliefs, and opens his heart. The scientist in Slakey explores the history of Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed Antarctica expedition, the technology of climbing, and the geophysics of waves. But it is the challenges he endures and the people he encounters — a Lama who gives him a mysterious amulet, a life-or-death choice atop Everest, an ambush at gunpoint in Indonesia, a head-on collision in the high desert — that culminate in a moving lesson about what it means to be human.
    Price: $19.34

    Don't Put Me In Coach My Incredible NCAA Journey from the ...

    An irreverent, hilarious insider's look at big-time NCAA basketball, through the eyes of the nation's most famous benchwarmer and author of the popular blog ClubTrillion.com (3.6m visits!). Mark Titus holds the Ohio State record for career wins, and made it to the 2007 national championship game. You would think Titus would be all over the highlight reels. You'd be wrong.
     
    In 2006, Mark Titus arrived on Ohio State's campus as a former high school basketball player who aspired to be an orthopedic surgeon. Somehow, he was added to the elite Buckeye basketball team, given a scholarship, and played alongside seven future NBA players on his way to setting the record for most individual career wins in Ohio State history. Think that's impressive? In four years, he scored a grand total of nine—yes, nine—points.

    This book will give readers an uncensored and uproarious look inside an elite NCAA basketball program from Titus's unique perspective. In his four years at the end of the bench, Mark founded his wildly popular blog Club Trillion, became a hero to all guys picked last, and even got scouted by the Harlem Globetrotters. Mark Titus is not your average basketball star. This is a wild and completely true story of the most unlikely career in college basketball. A must-read for all fans of March Madness and college sports!
    Price: $14.96

    Beyond Belief Finding the Strength to Come Back

    Josh Hamilton was the first player chosen in the first round of the 1999 baseball draft. He was destined to be one of those rare "high-character " superstars. But in 2001, working his way from the minors to the majors, all of the plans for Josh went off the rails in a moment of weakness. What followed was a 4-year nightmare of drugs and alcohol, estrangement from friends and family, and his eventual suspension from baseball.

    BEYOND BELIEF details the events that led up to the derailment. Josh explains how a young man destined for fame and wealth could allow his life to be taken over by drugs and alcohol. But it is also the memoir of a spiritual journey that breaks through pain and heartbreak and leads to the spectacular rebirth of his major-league career.

    Josh Hamilton makes no excuses and places no blame on anyone other than himself. He takes responsibility for his poor decisions and believes his story can help millions who battle the same demons. "I have been given a platform to tell my story" he says. "I pray every night I am a good messenger." Also, as part of the paperback edition of BEYOND BELIEF, Josh's journey has been updated to include developments in his recovery.
    Price: $8.51

    Ball Four

    Twentieth-anniversary edition of a baseball classic, with a new epilogue by Jim Bouton.

    When first published in 1970, Ball Four stunned the sports world. The commissioner, executives, and players were shocked. Sportswriters called author Jim Bouton a traitor and "social leper." Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force him to declare the book untrue. Fans, however, loved the book. And serious critics called it an important social document. Today, Jim Bouton is still not invited to Oldtimer's Days at Yankee Stadium. But his landmark book is still being read by people who don'tordinarily follow baseball.
    Price: $8.75

    The Long Run Kindle Single

    After nearly twenty years of chasing oblivion, a fight in a bar reveals to a newly sober Mishka Shubaly that he is able to run long distances. Despite his best attempts to dodge enlightenment and personal growth, the irreverent young drunk and drug abuser learns to tame his self-destructive tendencies through ultrarunning. His outrageous sense of humor, however, rages unabated.
    Price: Too low to display

    Wherever I Wind Up My Quest for Truth Authenticity and the ...

    The Glass Castle meets Ball Four as Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey weaves searing honesty and baseball insight in this memoir about his unlikely journey to the big leagues.

    An English Lit major at the University of Tennessee, Dickey is as articulate and thoughtful as any professional athlete in any sport-and proves it page after page, as he provides fresh and honest insight into baseball and a career unlike any other. Fourteen years ago, Dickey was a heralded No. 1 draft choice of the Texas Rangers, only to have an $810,000 signing bonus, and his lifelong dream, ripped away by an X- ray-and the discovery that he did not have an ulna collateral ligament in his right elbow. Five years ago, he gave up a record six home runs in three innings to the Detroit Tigers-and was effectively consigned to the baseball scrap heap.

    Sustained by his profound Christian faith, the love of his wife and children, and a relentless quest for self-awareness and authenticity, the immensely likable Dickey details his transformation from a reckless, risk-taking loner to a grounded, life- affirming big leaguer. He emerged as one of the premier pitchers in the National League in 2010-and the knuckleballing embodiment of the wonders that perseverance and human wisdom can produce. Dickey views his story as one of redemption. Readers will come to see it as something more-a uniquely American story of beating back demons, listening to your heart, and overcoming extraordinary odds.

    Price: $16.43