This book vividly describes the life of Adrian Peterson, an NFL running back who struggles with a disability. Adrain grew up with a major speech impediment that blocked his voice from ever being clearly understood. But by the grace of GOD he honed his talents and abilities all the way to the Superbowl. This triumph in life will inspire us all to glare into our own mirrors and tell the self-doubt that lives within us Don't Dis My Abilities.
People who are close to the NFL’s Adrian Peterson call him A.D., a nickname his father gave him because he could run All Day. From an early age, A.D.’s athletic talent was obvious to everyone who saw him play. He overcame painful losses during his childhood to become the nation’s top high school football player. Peterson then went on to break college football rushing records at the University of Oklahoma before becoming a top NFL draft pick for the Minnesota Vikings. Rushing titles, MVP awards, and Pro Bowl honors have all been part of his stellar professional football career.
Playmakers introduces young readers to their current heroes on and off the field. Adrian Peterson: Record-setting Running Back summarizes Adrian Peterson's life and career to date and draws attention to accomplishments beyond his athletic skill as well as career highlights thus far. Short, informative sidebars add to the engaging, easy-to-read text, making Playmakers a hit for any reader in your library! Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. SportsZone is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
"An elementary introduction to the life, work, and popularity of Adrian Peterson, a professional football star who became the all-time leading rusher for the Minnesota Vikings"--Provided by publisher.
Anywhere football is played, Texas is the force to reckon with. Its powerhouse programs produce the best football players in America. In The Republic of Football, Chad S. Conine vividly captures Texas’s impact on the game with action-filled stories about legendary high school players, coaches, and teams from around the state and across seven decades. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Conine offers rare glimpses of the early days of some of football’s biggest stars. He reveals that some players took time to achieve greatness—LaDainian Tomlinson wasn’t even the featured running back on his high school team until a breakthrough game in his senior season vaulted him to the highest level of the sport—while others, like Colt McCoy, showed their first flashes of brilliance in middle school. In telling these and many other stories of players and coaches, including Hayden Fry, Spike Dykes, Bob McQueen, Lovie Smith, Art Briles, Lawrence Elkins, Warren McVea, Ray Rhodes, Dat Nguyen, Zach Thomas, Drew Brees, and Adrian Peterson, Conine spotlights the decisive moments when players caught fire and teams such as Celina, Southlake Carroll, and Converse Judson turned into Texas dynasties. Packed with never-before-told anecdotes, as well as fresh takes on the games everyone remembers, The Republic of Football is a must-read for all fans of Friday night lights.
The Times (UK) book of the year! Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? In The Aristocracy of Talent, esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities, and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system. Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.
