Big Game, Small World
Big Game, Small World

Author: Alexander Wolff

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2010-05-30

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0446561312

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Alex Wolff canvasses the globe and travels to 16 different countries (and 10 states in the U.S.) to find out exactly why basketball has become a worldwide phenomenon. Whether it's in a pick-up game on the Royal court in Bhutan, in the heart of a former female college player of the year turned cloistered nun, in the tragedy of the legendary junior national team in war torn Yugoslavia, or in the life's work of one of the greatest players to ever play in the NBA, Alex Wolff discovers that basketball can define an individual, a race, a culture, and in some instances even a country. Fusing John Feinstein's talent for finding the human drama behind sport with Bill Bryson's travelogue style, Wolff shows how the power and love of basketball extends to the four corners of the earth and engages people of all cultures, races, genders, and generations.

Big Game, Small World
Big Game, Small World

Author: Alexander Wolff

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2022-09-12

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1478023457

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During the late 1990s, eminent basketball journalist Alexander Wolff traveled the globe to determine how a game invented by a Canadian clergyman became an international phenomenon. Big Game, Small World presents Wolff’s dispatches from sixteen countries spread across five continents and multiple US states. In them, he asks: What can the game tell us about the world? And what can the world tell us about the game? Whether traveling to Bhutan to challenge its king to a pickup game, exploring the women’s game in Brazil, or covering the Afrobasket tournament in Luanda, Angola, during a civil war, Wolff shows how basketball has the power to define an individual, a culture, and even a country. This updated twentieth anniversary edition features a new preface in which Wolff outlines the contemporary rise of athlete-activists while discussing the increasing dominance within the NBA of marquee international players like Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo. A loving celebration of basketball, Big Game, Small World is one of the most insightful books ever written about the game.

Endpapers
Endpapers

Author: Alexander Wolff

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0802158277

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“A powerfully told story of family, honor, love, and truth . . . the beautiful and haunting stories told in this book transcend policy and politics.” —Beto O’Rourke A literary gem researched over a year the author spent living in Berlin, Endpapers excavates the extraordinary histories of the author’s grandfather and father: the renowned publisher Kurt Wolff, dubbed “perhaps the twentieth century’s most discriminating publisher” by the New York Times Book Review, and his son Niko, who fought in the Wehrmacht during World War II before coming to America. Born in Bonn into a highly cultured German-Jewish family, Kurt became a publisher at twenty-three, setting up his own firm and publishing Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Karl Kraus, and many other authors whose books would soon be burned by the Nazis. After fleeing Germany in 1933, Kurt and his second wife, Helen, founded Pantheon Books in a small Greenwich Village apartment. Pantheon would soon take its own place in literary history with the publication of Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, and as the conduit that brought major European works to the States. But Kurt’s taciturn son Niko, offspring of his first marriage to Elisabeth Merck, was left behind in Germany, where despite his Jewish heritage he served the Nazis on two fronts. As Alexander Wolff visits dusty archives and meets distant relatives, he discovers secrets that never made it to the land of fresh starts, including the connection between Hitler and the family pharmaceutical firm E. Merck. With surprising revelations from never-before-published family letters, diaries, and photographs, Endpapers is a moving and intimate family story, weaving a literary tapestry of the perils, triumphs, and secrets of history and exile.

Paddy on the Hardwood
Paddy on the Hardwood

Author: Rus Bradburd

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780826340269

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A burned out basketball coach takes a job in Ireland and is surprised by what he finds.

The Game of Inches
The Game of Inches

Author: Nigel Collin

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0730328961

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No spin, no fuss, no gurus: get the real secret to business success Game of Inches dispels the myth that success must come from disruption, and provides an actionable blueprint for real-world business achievement. Entrepreneur Nigel Collin interviewed over 80 successful Australian entrepreneurs and leaders to learn the key factors that make a successful business; in this book, he distils his findings into a simple process of four actions governed by three behaviours that will guide your path to the top. Examples and case studies eschew the limelight in favour of those on the front lines of business doing well, illustrating the revolutionary idea that you don't have to make headlines to be a success. By shifting your mindset from explosive, overnight success to a quieter, more consistent, more sustainable process, you gain the ability to reach the top and stay there. You'll discover that innovation is actually in reach, doesn't cost too much and is not really all that complex when approached from a growth-oriented mindset of making small changes consistently. You don't need to be Steve Jobs, and you don't need to create the next iPhone to be a success in business. What you do need to do is redirect your attention away from who you are and toward what you deliver. Learn what really drives sustainable success Discover innovation that's within reach right now Focus on what you do, not who you are Work toward a process of constant, consistent improvement Business success is not a one-off event or a single "eureka" moment. It's a continuous, step-by-step process of becoming better every day. Incremental change is the surest route to the top; though others may skip the climb in favour of a helicopter, those who earn the summit tend to stay longest. Game of Inches is your straightforward roadmap to no-nonsense, long-term business success.

The Most Dangerous Game
The Most Dangerous Game

Author: Richard Connell

Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof

Published: 2023-02-23

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13: 8728187490

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Sanger Rainsford is a big-game hunter, who finds himself washed up on an island owned by the eccentric General Zaroff. Zaroff, a big-game hunter himself, has heard of Rainsford’s abilities with a gun and organises a hunt. However, they’re not after animals – they’re after people. When he protests, Rainsford the hunter becomes Rainsford the hunted. Sharing similarities with "The Hunger Games", starring Jennifer Lawrence, this is the story that created the template for pitting man against man. Born in New York, Richard Connell (1893 – 1949) went on to become an acclaimed author, screenwriter, and journalist. He is best remembered for the gripping novel "The Most Dangerous Game" and for receiving an Oscar nomination for the screenplay "Meet John Doe".

Pacific Rims
Pacific Rims

Author: Rafe Bartholomew

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-06-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1101187913

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A young man's journey through the Philippines' most unlikely obsession: basketball. In Pacific Rims, Rafe Bartholemew, journalist, New Yorker, and veteran baller, ventures through the Philippines to investigate the country's love of basketball. From street corners where diehards fashion hoops out of old car parts to the professional league where politicians exploit team loyalties to win elections, Pacific Rims gets the story-and gets in the game.

The Last Amateurs
The Last Amateurs

Author: John Feinstein

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Published: 2008-11-16

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0316049220

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America's favorite sportswriter takes readers on a thrilling and unforgettable journey into the world of college basketball in this national bestseller. Like millions who love college basketball, John Feinstein was first drawn to the game because of its intensity, speed and intelligence. Like many others, he felt that the vast sums of money involved in NCAA basketball had turned the sport into a division of the NBA, rather than the beloved amateur sport it once was. He went in search of college basketball played with the passion and integrity it once inspired, and found the Patriot League. As one of the NCAA's smallest leagues, none of these teams leaves college early to join the NBA and none of these coaches gets national recognition or endorsement contracts. The young men on these teams are playing for the love of the sport, of competition and of their schools. John Feinstein spent a season with these players, uncovering the drama of their daily lives and the passions that drive them to commit hundreds of hours to basketball even when there is no chance of a professional future. He offers a look at American sport at its purest.

The Audacity of Hoop
The Audacity of Hoop

Author: Alexander Wolff

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1439913099

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While basketball didn’t take up residence in the White House in January 2009, the game nonetheless played an outsized role in forming the man who did. In The Audacity of Hoop, celebrated sportswriter Alexander Wolff examines Barack Obama, the person and president, by the light of basketball. This game helped Obama explore his identity, keep a cool head, impress his future wife, and define himself as a candidate. Wolff chronicles Obama’s love of the game from age 10, on the campaign trail—where it eventually took on talismanic meaning—and throughout his two terms in office. More than 125 photographs illustrate Obama dribbling, shooting free throws, playing pickup games, cooling off with George Clooney, challenging his special assistant Reggie Love for a rebound, and taking basketball to political meetings. There is also an assessment of Obama’s influence on the NBA, including a dawning political consciousness in the league’s locker rooms. Sidebars reveal the evolution of the president’s playing style, “Baracketology”—a not-entirely-scientific art of filling out the commander in chief’s NCAA tournament bracket—and a timeline charts Obama’s personal and professional highlights. Equal parts biographical sketch, political narrative, and cultural history, The Audacity of Hoop shows how the game became a touchstone in Obama’s exercise of the power of the presidency.