Download or read book Why Football Matters written by Mark Edmundson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed essayist Mark Edmundson reflects on his own rite of passage as a high school football player to get to larger truths about the ways America's Game shapes its men Football teaches young men self-discipline and teamwork. But football celebrates violence. Football is a showcase for athletic beauty and physical excellence. But football damages young bodies and minds, sometimes permanently. Football inspires confidence and direction. But football instills cockiness, a false sense of superiority. The athlete is a noble figure with a proud lineage. The jock is America at its worst. When Mark Edmundson’s son began to play organized football, and proved to be very good at it, Edmundson had to come to terms with just what he thought about the game. Doing so took him back to his own childhood, when as a shy, soft boy growing up in a blue-collar Boston suburb in the sixties, he went out for the high school football team. Why Football Matters is the story of what happened to Edmundson when he tried to make himself into a football player. What does it mean to be a football player? At first Edmundson was hapless on the field. He was an inept player and a bad teammate. But over time, he got over his fears and he got tougher. He learned to be a better player and came to feel a part of the team, during games but also on all sorts of escapades, not all of them savory. By playing football, Edmundson became what he and his father hoped he’d be, a tougher, stronger young man, better prepared for life. But is football-instilled toughness always a good thing? Do the character, courage, and loyalty football instills have a dark side? Football, Edmundson found, can be full of bounties. But it can also lead you into brutality and thoughtlessness. So how do you get what’s best from the game and leave the worst behind? Why Football Matters is moving, funny, vivid, and filled with the authentic anxiety and exhilaration of youth. Edmundson doesn’t regret playing football for a minute, and cherishes the experience. His triumph is to be able to see it in full, as something to celebrate, but also something to handle with care. For anyone who has ever played on a football team, is the parent of a player, or simply is reflective about its outsized influence on America, Why Football Matters is both a mirror and a lamp.

Download or read book Nice Girls Don t Have Fangs written by Molly Harper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in the Half-Moon Hollow series is “wry, delicious fun” (Susan Andersen, New York Times bestselling author) as it follows a librarian whose life is turned upside down by a tempestuous and sexy vampire. Maybe it was the Shenanigans gift certificate that put her over the edge. When children’s librarian and self-professed nice girl Jane Jameson is fired by her beastly boss and handed twenty-five dollars in potato skins instead of a severance check, she goes on a bender that’s sure to become Half Moon Hollow legend. On her way home, she’s mistaken for a deer, shot, and left for dead. And thanks to the mysterious stranger she met while chugging neon-colored cocktails, she wakes up with a decidedly unladylike thirst for blood. Jane is now the latest recipient of a gift basket from the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, and her life-after-lifestyle is taking some getting used to. Her recently deceased favorite aunt is now her ghostly roommate. She has to fake breathing and endure daytime hours to avoid coming out of the coffin to her family. She’s forced to forgo her favorite down-home Southern cooking for bags of O negative. Her relationship with her sexy, mercurial vampire sire keeps running hot and cold. And if all that wasn’t enough, it looks like someone in Half Moon Hollow is trying to frame her for a series of vampire murders. What’s a nice undead girl to do?

Download or read book Beard with Me written by Penny Reid and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beard With Me' is the origin story of Billy Winston and Scarlet St. Claire (aka Claire McClure) and is just the beginning of their epic love story. No one is better at surviving than Scarlet St. Claire and making the best out of circumstances beyond her control is Scarlet's specialty. In an apocalyptic situation, she'd be the last person on earth, hermitting like a pro, singing along to her CD Walkman, and dancing like no one is watching. Scarlet is clever, Scarlet is careful, and Scarlet is smart . . . except when it comes to Billy Winston. No one is better at fighting than Billy Winston and raging against his circumstances--because nothing is beyond his control--is Billy's specialty. In an apocalyptic situation, he'd be the first person on earth to lead others to safety, overcome catastrophe, or die trying. Billy is fearless, Billy is disciplined, and Billy is honorable . . . except when it comes to Scarlet St. Claire.

Download or read book Between the World and Me written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Download or read book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings written by Maya Angelou and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-07-21 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin From the Paperback edition.

Download or read book Who Reads Poetry written by Fred Sasaki and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-10-20 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who reads poetry—and why? This rewarding volume provides answers from Roxane Gay, Roger Ebert, Lili Taylor, Alfred Molina, Aleksandar Hemon, and forty-five more. Who reads poetry? We know that poets do, but what about the rest of us? When and why do we turn to verse? Seeking the answer, Poetry magazine since 2005 has published a column called “The View From Here,” which has invited readers from outside the world of poetry to describe what has drawn them to poetry. Over the years, contributors have included philosophers, journalists, musicians, and artists, as well as doctors and soldiers, an ironworker, an anthropologist, and an economist. This collection brings together fifty compelling pieces, in turns surprising, provocative, touching, and funny. Anthropologist Helen Fisher turns to poetry while researching the effects of love on the brain: “As other anthropologists have studied fossils, arrowheads, or pot shards to understand human thought, I studied poetry . . . . I wasn’t disappointed: everywhere poets have described the emotional fallout produced by the brain’s eruptions.” The rapper Rhymefest attests to the self-actualizing power of poems: “Words can create worlds, and I’ve discovered that poetry can not only be read but also lived out. My life is a poem.” Musician Neko Case calls poetry “a delicate, pretty lady with a candy exoskeleton on the outside of her crepe-paper dress.” And music critic Alex Ross tells us that he keeps a paperback of The Palm at the End of the Mind by Wallace Stevens on his desk next to other, more utilitarian books like a German dictionary, a King James Bible, and a Mac troubleshooting manual. Contributors also include Ai Weiwei, Christopher Hitchens, Kay Redfield Jamison, Lynda Barry, and more. “The diversity of the authors results in an exceptionally broad range of topics and perspectives . . . Many of the contributors also tell intimate stories about poetry’s place in their personal lives. Sasaki and Share have chosen these pieces well.” —Publishers Weekly “Funny, moving and inspiring.” —The Australian

Download or read book Life in Motion written by Misty Copeland and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles the life and career of the professional ballerina, covering from when she began dance classes at age thirteen in an after-school community center through becoming the only African American soloist dancing with the American Ballet Theatre.

Download or read book The Other Wes Moore written by Wes Moore and published by One World. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the governor of Maryland, the “compassionate” (People), “startling” (Baltimore Sun), “moving” (Chicago Tribune) true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his. In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes just couldn’t shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen? That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies. Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.

Download or read book No Bad Kids written by Janet Lansbury and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern classic on the gentle art of discipline for toddlers, by the internationally renowned childcare expert, podcaster, and author of Elevating Child Care “No Bad Kids provides practical ways to respond to the challenges of toddlerhood while nurturing a respectful relationship with your child.”—Tina Payne Bryson, PhD, co-author of The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline Janet Lansbury is unique among parenting experts. As a RIE teacher and student of pioneering child specialist Magda Gerber, her advice is not based solely on formal studies and the research of others, but also on her more than twenty years of hands-on experience guiding hundreds of parents and their toddlers. A collection of her most popular articles about toddler behavior, No Bad Kids presents her signature approach to discipline, which she sees as a parent’s act of compassion and love for a child. Full of wisdom and encouragement, it covers common toddler concerns such as: • Why toddlers need clear boundaries—and how to set them without yelling • What's going on when they bite, hit, kick, tantrum, whine, and talk back • Advice for parenting a strong-willed child • How to be a gentle leader, and Lansbury’s secret for staying calm For parents who are anticipating or experiencing those critical years when toddlers are developmentally obliged to test the limits of our patience and love, No Bad Kids is a practical, indispensable resource for putting respectful discipline into action.

Download or read book The Complete Poetry of James Hearst written by James Hearst and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the regionalist movement that included Grant Wood, Paul Engle, Hamlin Garland, and Jay G. Sigmund, James Hearst helped create what Iowa novelist Ruth Suckow called a poetry of place. A lifelong Iowa farner, Hearst began writing poetry at age nineteen and eventually wrote thirteen books of poems, a novel, short stories, cantatas, and essays, which gained him a devoted following Many of his poems were published in the regionalist periodicals of the time, including the Midland, and by the great regional presses, including Carroll Coleman's Prairie Press. Drawing on his experiences as a farmer, Hearst wrote with a distinct voice of rural life and its joys and conflicts, of his own battles with physical and emotional pain (he was partially paralyzed in a farm accident), and of his own place in the world. His clear eye offered a vision of the midwestern agrarian life that was sympathetic but not sentimental - a people and an art rooted in place.

Download or read book Mexican WhiteBoy written by Matt de la Peña and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2008-08-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Newbery Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Matt de la Peña's Mexican WhiteBoy is a story of friendship, acceptance, and the struggle to find your identity in a world of definitions. Danny's tall and skinny. Even though he’s not built, his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot. Ninety-five mile an hour fastball, but the boy’s not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound he loses it. But at his private school, they don’t expect much else from him. Danny’ s brown. Half-Mexican brown. And growing up in San Diego that close to the border means everyone else knows exactly who he is before he even opens his mouth. Before they find out he can’t speak Spanish, and before they realize his mom has blond hair and blue eyes, they’ve got him pegged. But it works the other way too. And Danny’s convinced it’s his whiteness that sent his father back to Mexico. That’s why he’s spending the summer with his dad’s family. Only, to find himself, he may just have to face the demons he refuses to see--the demons that are right in front of his face. And open up to a friendship he never saw coming. Matt de la Peña's critically acclaimed novel is an intimate and moving story that offers hope to those who least expect it. "[A] first-rate exploration of self-identity."-SLJ "Unique in its gritty realism and honest portrayal of the complexities of life for inner-city teens...De la Peña poignantly conveys the message that, despite obstacles, you must believe in yourself and shape your own future."-The Horn Book Magazine "The baseball scenes...sizzle like Danny's fastball...Danny's struggle to find his place will speak strongly to all teens, but especially to those of mixed race."-Booklist "De la Peña blends sports and street together in a satisfying search for personal identity."-Kirkus Reviews "Mexican WhiteBoy...shows that no matter what obstacles you face, you can still reach your dreams with a positive attitude. This is more than a book about a baseball player--this is a book about life."-Curtis Granderson, New York Mets outfielder An ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults A Junior Library Guild Selection

Download or read book Last in a Long Line of Rebels written by Lisa Lewis Tyre and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sheila Turnage meets Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie in this debut about a small town and a young girl who discovers some old family secrets. Lou might be only twelve, but she’s never been one to take things sitting down. So when her Civil War-era house is about to be condemned, she’s determined to save it—either by getting it deemed a historic landmark or by finding the stash of gold rumored to be hidden nearby during the war. As Lou digs into the past, her eyes are opened when she finds that her ancestors ran the gamut of slave owners, renegades, thieves and abolitionists. Meanwhile, some incidents in her town show her that many Civil War era prejudices still survive and that the past can keep repeating itself if we let it. Digging into her past shows Lou that it’s never too late to fight injustice, and she starts to see the real value of understanding and exploring her roots.

Download or read book Big Cherry Holler written by Adriana Trigiani and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-07-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Ave Maria must decide between old love and new adventures in this enthralling second novel in the beloved Big Stone Gap series “Heartwarming . . . Everything that really matters is here: humor, romance, wisdom, and drama.”—The Dallas Morning News Eight years have passed since Ave Maria Mulligan married Jack Mac, moved up into the hills, and dug in her roots even deeper. But Ave Maria soon discovers that the mountains cannot shelter her from the painful lessons of the heart. As her life reaches a crossroads, almost everybody in town has advice to offer—including the Bookmobile’s self-appointed sexpert Iva Lou Wade, savvy pharmacy owner Pearl Grimes, crusty chain-smoking cashier Fleeta, and of course, the always-wise band director Theodore Tipton. But when Ave Maria takes her daughter to Italy for the summer, her passion for a seductive stranger will test her marriage—and push her to choose the man who is truly her destiny. At once funny and deeply poignant, resonant with the power of love and forgiveness and the unexpected events that force us to stake a claim in our own lives, Big Cherry Holler is a wise, wonderful story to treasure. Don’t miss any of Adriana Trigiani’s beloved Big Stone Gap series BIG STONE GAP • BIG CHERRY HOLLER • MILK GLASS MOON • HOME TO BIG STONE GAP

Download or read book Anatomy of a Miracle written by Jonathan Miles and published by Chatto & Windus. This book was released on 2018 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Confined to a wheelchair after a paralyzing injury, an Afghanistan War veteran endures a hardscrabble existence in his sister's ramshackle Mississippi home before spontaneously regaining his ability to walk, an apparent miracle that subjects him to scientific and religious debates and exposes his most private secrets."--

Download or read book One of Ours written by Willa Cather and published by e-artnow. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claude Wheeler is a young man who was born after the American frontier has vanished. The son of a successful farmer and an intensely pious mother, Wheeler is guaranteed a comfortable livelihood. Nevertheless, Wheeler views himself as a victim of his father's success and his own inexplicable malaise.Thus, devoid of parental and spousal love, Wheeler finds a new purpose to his life in France, a faraway country that only existed for him in maps before the First World War. Will Wheeler ever succeed in his new goal? The novel is inspired from real-life events and also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.

Download or read book The Poisonwood Bible written by Barbara Kingsolver and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

Download or read book Elevating Child Care written by Janet Lansbury and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern parenting classic—a guide to a new and gentle way of understanding the care and nurture of infants, by the internationally renowned childcare expert, podcaster, and author of No Bad Kids “An absolute go-to for all parents, therapists, anyone who works with, is, or knows parents of young children.”—Wendy Denham, PhD A Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE) teacher and student of pioneering child specialist Magda Gerber, Janet Lansbury helps parents look at the world through the eyes of their infants and relate to them as whole people who have natural abilities to learn without being taught. Once we are able to view our children in this light, even the most common daily parenting experiences become stimulating opportunities to learn, discover, and connect with our child. A collection of the most-read articles from Janet’s popular and long-running blog, Elevating Child Care focuses on common infant issues, including: • Nourishing our babies’ healthy eating habits • Calming your clingy, fearful child • How to build your child’s focus and attention span • Developing routines that promote restful sleep Eschewing the quick-fix tips and tricks of popular parenting culture, Lansbury’s gentle, insightful guidance lays the foundation for a closer, more fulfilling parent-child relationship, and children who grow up to be authentic, confident, successful adults.