Download or read book League of Denial written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The story of how the NFL, over a period of nearly two decades, denied and sought to cover up mounting evidence of the connection between football and brain damage “League of Denial may turn out to be the most influential sports-related book of our time.”—The Boston Globe “Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players—including some of the all-time greats—to madness. In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru tell the story of a public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields of our twenty-first-century pastime. Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football, that the very essence of the game could be exposing these players to brain damage. In a fast-paced narrative that moves between the NFL trenches, America’s research labs, and the boardrooms where the NFL went to war against science, League of Denial examines how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research—a campaign with echoes of Big Tobacco’s fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. It chronicles the tragic fates of players like Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who was so disturbed at the time of his death he fantasized about shooting NFL executives, and former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of an unseemly scientific battle between researchers and the NFL. Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents, and private emails, this is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it—questions at the heart of a crisis that threatens football, from the highest levels all the way down to Pop Warner.
Download or read book League of Denial written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “meticulously documented and endlessly chilling” (The New York Times) exploration of the NFL’s decades-long attempt to deny and cover up mounting evidence connecting football and brain damage. “A first-rate piece of reporting [that] adds crucial detail, texture, and news to the concussion story, which despite the NFL’s best efforts, isn’t going away.”—Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, NPR “Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players—including some of the all-time greats—to madness. Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football. In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru expose the public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields and examine how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research—a campaign with echoes of Big Tobacco’s fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. They chronicle the tragic fates of players like Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who was so disturbed at the time of his death he fantasized about shooting NFL executives, and former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of a scientific battle between researchers and the NFL. Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents, and private e-mails, League of Denial is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it—questions at the heart of a crisis that threatens American football—and of the battle for the sport’s future.
Download or read book NFL 100 written by National Football League and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authorized visual history of America's most popular sport Timed to coincide with the National Football League's 100th anniversary, NFL 100 celebrates the history of America's most popular and highly watched sport. From its humble beginnings in Canton, Ohio, to its emergence as a sport cherished by millions, all the key moments and famous athletes are honored within the pages of this handsomely produced book. In addition to the lively text, and action and portrait photography, the story of the game and the context in which it grew are animated by original lists, charts, creative statistics, and infographics, along with beautiful photos of the evolving equipment and artifacts essential to the story of the sport. A perfect gift, NFL 100 will be cherished by every football fan, new or old.
Download or read book Concussion Movie Tie in Edition written by Jeanne Marie Laskas and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Dr. Bennet Omalu discovered something he could not ignore. The NFL tried to silence him. His courage would change everything. “A gripping medical mystery and a dazzling portrait of the young scientist no one wanted to listen to . . . a fabulous, essential read.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Jeanne Marie Laskas first met the young forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu in 2009, while reporting a story for GQ that would go on to inspire the movie Concussion. Omalu told her about a day in September 2002, when, in a dingy morgue in downtown Pittsburgh, he picked up a scalpel and made a discovery that would rattle America in ways he’d never intended. Omalu was new to America, chasing the dream, a deeply spiritual man escaping the wounds of civil war in Nigeria. The body on the slab in front of him belonged to a fifty-year-old named Mike Webster, aka “Iron Mike,” a Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the greatest ever to play the game. After retiring in 1990, Webster had suffered a dizzyingly steep decline. Toward the end of his life, he was living out of his van, tasering himself to relieve his chronic pain, and fixing his rotting teeth with Super Glue. How did this happen?, Omalu asked himself. How did a young man like Mike Webster end up like this? The search for answers would change Omalu’s life forever and put him in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful corporations in America: the National Football League. What Omalu discovered in Webster’s brain—proof that Iron Mike’s mental deterioration was no accident but a disease caused by blows to the head that could affect everyone playing the game—was the one truth the NFL wanted to ignore. Taut, gripping, and gorgeously told, Concussion is the stirring story of one unlikely man’s decision to stand up to a multibillion-dollar colossus, and to tell the world the truth.
Download or read book Truth Doesn t Have a Side written by Bennet Omalu and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One day in 2002 the fifty-year old body of former Pittsburgh Steeler and hall of famer Mike Webster was laid on a cold table in front of pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu. Webster’s body looked to Omalu like the body of a much older man, and the circumstances of his behavior prior to his death were clouded in mystery. But when Omalu cut into Webster’s brain, it appeared to be normal. Something didn’t add up. It was at this moment, Omalu studying slides of Webster’s brain tissue under a microscope, that the world of contact sports would never be the same: the discovery of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. CTE can result in an array of devastating consequences including deterioration in attention, memory loss, social instability, depression, and even suicide. And Omalu’s discovery of CTE in the brain of an American football player has become the catalyst of a blazing controversy across all contact sports. At the center of that controversy stands the unlikely Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian-born American citizen, a mild-mannered, gentle man of faith. It is fascinating that it would take someone on the outside of American culture to make this amazing discovery, and refuse to let it be kept hidden. Dr. Omalu began his life in strife, growing up in war-torn Nigeria. But his medical studies in forensic pathology proved to be a lifeline. It fed his natural curiosity and awakened within a deeper desire to always search for the truth. Who would have thought that such an unexpected character would play such a role in bringing to life this world-changing data? In Truth Doesn’t Have a Side, discover the truth about CTE: Its causes and symptoms, how we might keep our children safe and guide professional athletes when CTE sets in. The problem of CTE is coming to light with each new story about an athlete’s concussion problem, and we are likely facing dramatic changes to professional sports. You’ll be inspired by Dr. Bennet Omalu a man driven by his love and concern for the welfare of all people, and his professional vow to speak the truth.
Download or read book The Concussion Crisis in Sport written by Dominic Malcolm and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concussion has become one of the most significant issues in contemporary sport. The life-changing impact of head injury and the possible threat that chronic traumatic encephalopathy poses to children and young athletes in particular is calling into question the long-term future of some of our most well-established sports. But what are the real issues behind the headlines and the public outcry, and what can and should be done to save sport from itself? This concise, provocative introduction draws on perspectives from sociology, medicine, ethics, psychology, and public health to answer these questions and more. The book explores the context in which the current cultural crisis has emerged. It assesses the current state of biomedical knowledge; the ethics of regulating for brain injury; the contribution of the social sciences to understanding the behaviour of sports participants; and the impact of public health interventions and campaigns. Drawing on the latest research evidence, the book explores the social roots of sport’s concussion crisis and assesses potential future solutions that might resolve this crisis. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in sport, from students and researchers to athletes, coaches, teachers, parents, policy-makers, and clinicians.
Download or read book Concussion Inc written by Irvin Muchnick and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2015-02-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside the most controversial issue in sports Traumatic brain injury in football is not incidental, but an inevitable and central aspect of the sport. Starting in high school, through college, and into the NFL, young players face repeated head trauma, and those sustained injuries create lifelong cognitive and functional difficulties. Muchnick's Concussion Inc. blog exposed the decades-long cover-up of scientific research into sports concussions and the ongoing denial to radically reform football in North America. This compilation from Muchnick's no-holds-barred investigative website reveals the complete head injury story as it developed, from the doctor who played fast and loose with the facts about the efficacy of the state-mandated concussion management system for high school football players, to highly touted solutions that are more self-serving cottage industry than of any genuine benefit. Known for extensive reporting on the tragic story of the Chris Benoit murder-suicide, Muchnick turns his investigative analysis to traumatic brain injury and probes deep into the corporate, government, and media corruption that has enabled the $10-billion-a-year National Football League to trigger a public health crisis.
Download or read book Play Hard Die Young written by Bennet Omalu and published by Neo Forenxis Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Forensic neuropathologist Bennet Omalu, MD, explains the science of brain trauma, offers practical solutions, and recounts the moving stories of the lives, and tragic deaths, of NFL stars cut down by gridiron dementia."-- Cover.
Download or read book Slow Getting Up written by Nate Jackson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the National Football League As an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup of the Denver Broncos, Nate Jackson took the path of thousands of unknowns before him to carve out a professional football career twice as long as the average player. Through his story recounted here—from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches—even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the NFL's workweek. Fast-paced, lyrical, dirty, and hilariously unvarnished, Slow Getting Up is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell.
Download or read book The Concussion Crisis written by Linda Carroll and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the current epidemic of sports-related concussions, including true-life stories of victims and the ongoing research to unravel the mysteries of concussions, as well as the crusade to prevent these types of injuries.
Download or read book Spiral of Denial written by Matt Chaney and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the reality of tissue-building substances in America's holy football--the historical story of steroids, HGH, and more. Author Matt Chaney identifies the problem through extensive research and lives the gamut of guilty parties, as juicer football player, perpetrator coach, ostrich reporter, and partying fan. Now in middle age, Chaney gets the picture and brings it, connecting the problem's dots, its sustaining forces from the cultural realms of economy, social structure, and ethos. Finally, Chaney proposes to drop urinalysis and moralizing in favor of research and real-world prevention. Then America can genuinely impact this uniquely American problem--muscle doping in its brutal football.
Download or read book Game of Shadows written by Mark Fainaru-Wada and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-03-23 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1998 two of baseball leading sluggers, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, embarked on a race to break Babe Ruth’s single season home run record. The nation was transfixed as Sosa went on to hit 66 home runs, and McGwire 70. Three years later, San Francisco Giants All-Star Barry Bonds surpassed McGwire by 3 home runs in the midst of what was perhaps the greatest offensive display in baseball history. Over the next three seasons, as Bonds regularly launched mammoth shots into the San Francisco Bay, baseball players across the country were hitting home runs at unprecedented rates. For years there had been rumors that perhaps some of these players owed their success to steroids. But crowd pleasing homers were big business, and sportswriters, fans, and officials alike simply turned a blind eye. Then, in December of 2004, after more than a year of investigation, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the story that in a federal investigation of a nutritional supplement company called BALCO, Yankees slugger Jason Giambi had admitted taking steroids. Barry Bonds was also implicated. Immediately the issue of steroids became front page news. The revelations led to Congressional hearings on baseball’s drug problems and continued to drive the effort to purge the U.S. Olympic movement of drug cheats. Now Fainaru-Wada and Williams expose for the first time the secrets of the BALCO investigation that has turned the sports world upside down. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroid Scandal That Rocked Professional by award-winning investigative journalists Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, is a riveting narrative about the biggest doping scandal in the history of sports, and how baseball’s home run king, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, came to use steroids. Drawing on more than two years of reporting, including interviews with hundreds of people, and exclusive access to secret grand jury testimony, confidential documents, audio recordings, and more, the authors provide, for the first time, a definitive account of the shocking steroids scandal that made headlines across the country. The book traces the career of Victor Conte, founder of the BALCO laboratory, an egomaniacal former rock musician and self-proclaimed nutritionist, who set out to corrupt sports by providing athletes with “designer” steroids that would be undetectable on “state-of-the-art” doping tests. Conte gave the undetectable drugs to 28 of the world’s greatest athletes—Olympians, NFL players and baseball stars, Bonds chief among them. A separate narrative thread details the steroids use of Bonds, an immensely talented, moody player who turned to performance-enhancing drugs after Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals set a new home run record in 1998. Through his personal trainer, Bonds gained access to BALCO drugs. All of the great athletes who visited BALCO benefited tremendously—Bonds broke McGwire’s record—but many had their careers disrupted after federal investigators raided BALCO and indicted Conte. The authors trace the course of the probe, and the baffling decision of federal prosecutors to protect the elite athletes who were involved. Highlights of Game of Shadows include: Barry Bonds A look at how Bonds was driven to use performance-enhancing drugs in part by jealousy over Mark McGwire’s record-breaking 1998 season. It was shortly thereafter that Bonds—who had never used anything more performance enhancing than a protein shake from the health food store—first began using steroids. How Bonds’s weight trainer, steroid dealer Greg Anderson, arranged to meet Victor Conte before the 2001 baseball season with...
Download or read book Love Zac written by Reid Forgrave and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The story of a young man from small-town Iowa who decided to take his own life rather than continue his losing battle against the traumatic brain injuries (CTE) he had sustained as a no-holds-barred high school football player, and at the same time a larger story about the hot-button issues that football raises about masculinity and violence, and about what values we want to instill in our kids"--
Download or read book Amazing Yoga written by Sean Conley and published by Autumn House Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical understanding of yinyasa yoga that allows people to find true health by creating a deep spiritual connection.
Download or read book Big Game written by Mark Leibovich and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A raucous, smash-mouth, first-person takedown of the National Football League." —Wall Street Journal The New York Times bestseller From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Town, an equally merciless probing of America's biggest cultural force, pro football, at a moment of peak success and high anxiety Like millions of Americans, Mark Leibovich has spent more of his life tuned into pro football than he'd care to admit. Being a lifelong New England Patriots fan meant growing up on a steady diet of lovable loserdom. That is, until the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick era made the Pats the most ruthlessly efficient and polarizing sports dynasty of the modern NFL, and its fans the most irritating in all of Pigskin America. Leibovich kept his obsession quiet, making a nice career for himself covering that other playground for rich and overgrown children, American politics. Still, every now and then Leibovich would reach out to Tom Brady to gauge his willingness to subject himself to a profile. He figured that the chances of Brady agreeing were a Hail Mary at best, but Brady returned Mark's call in summer 2014 and kept on returning his calls through epic Patriots Super Bowl victory and defeat, and a scandal involving Brady--Deflategate--whose grip on sports media was as profound as its true significance was ridiculous. So began a four-year odyssey that took Mark Leibovich deeper inside the NFL than anyone has gone before. From the owners' meeting to the draft to the sidelines of crucial games, he takes in the show at the elbow of everyone from Brady to big-name owners to the cordially despised NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell. Ultimately, BIG GAME is a chronicle of "peak football"--the high point of the sport's economic success and cultural dominance, but also the time when the dark side began to show. It is an era of explosive revenue growth, but also one of creeping existential fear. Players have long joked that NFL stands for "not for long," but as the true impact of concussions becomes inescapable background noise, it's increasingly difficult to enjoy the simple glory of football without the buzz-kill of its obvious consequences. And that was before Donald Trump. In 2016, Mark's day job caught up with him, and the NFL slammed headlong into America's culture wars. Big Game is a journey through an epic storm. Through it all, Leibovich always keeps one eye on Tom Brady and his beloved Patriots, through to the 2018 Super Bowl. Pro football, this hilarious and enthralling book proves, may not be the sport America needs, but it is most definitely the sport we deserve.
Download or read book Counting the Days While My Mind Slips Away written by Ben Utecht and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After five major concussions, NFL tight-end Ben Utecht of the Indianapolis Colts and Cincinnati Bengals is losing his memories. This is his powerful and emotional love letter to his wife and daughters—whom he someday may not recognize—and an inspiring message for all to live every moment fully. Ben Utecht has accumulated a vast treasure of memories: tossing a football in the yard with his father, meeting his wife, with whom he’d build a loving partnership and bring four beautiful daughters into the world, writing and performing music, catching touchdown passes from quarterback Peyton Manning, and playing a Super Bowl Championship watched by ninety-three million people. But the game he has built his living on, the game he fell in love with as a child, is taking its toll in a devastating way. After at least five major concussions—and an untold number of micro-concussions—Ben suffered multiple mild traumatic brain injuries that have erased important memories. Knowing that his wife and daughters could someday be beyond his reach and desperate for them to understand how much he loves them, he recorded his memories for them to hold on to after his essential self is gone. Counting the Days While My Mind Slips Away chronicles his remarkable journey from his early days throwing a football back and forth with his father to speaking about the long-term effects of concussions before Congress, and how his faith keeps him strong and grounded as he looks toward an uncertain future. Ben recounts the experiences that have shaped his life and imparts the lessons he’s learned along the way. Emotionally powerful, inspiring, and uplifting, Ben’s story will captivate and encourage you to make the most of every day and treasure all of your memories.
Download or read book Brain Damage in Contact Sports written by Bennet Ifeakandu Omalu and published by Bennet Omalu, MD. This book was released on 2018-02-05 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Omalu provides answers to parents who fear that contact sports might cause injuries that have long-term effects. Should your child play football, ice hockey, mixed martial arts, boxing, wrestling, rugby, gymnastics, soccer, lacrosse, BMX bike riding, trampoline jumping and gymnastics or other sports? This book will help you answer this question, for only you, the parent can answer this question. But after you have read the last page of this book, it will be a very easy question for you to answer. The simplicity of the truth can even be more fantastic and more beautiful than football or any other sport. Dr. Omalu has received phone calls, e-mails, text and social media messages from thousands of parents reaching out to him from across the world for help-asking the same questions: "Should my son continue to play rugby after his last concussion six months ago?" "I do not want my daughter to play soccer but she loves it so much, what should I do?" "Are concussions permanent brain damage?" "Is it true that helmets can cause brain damage?" "My son never suffered any brain injury while he played but did ice hockey cause his depression, diminishing intelligence and drug abuse?" "Was my son's suicide caused by football?" "If my child shouldn't play football or ice hockey, can I let him play lacrosse or soccer?"
