This award-winning novel tells the chilling, hilarious and touching tale of Percy, a seven year old boy in pre-World War II Hawaii, who creates ingenious ways of deal-ing with his parents' divorce in the face of an ancient Hawaiian curse placed on his family. This coming-of-age odyssey reads like a Salingeresque thriller of 1941's world of Hawaii, Hollywood film stars, movies, and celebrities of the day. You'll fall in love with little Percy, laugh at his escapades and cry at his misfortunes as he shares his quest to remove the ancient curse that he believes has destroyed his family, culminating with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
A compelling and compassionate work that never fails to stimulate. After the Ball is required reading for straights interested in understanding a minority that comprises 10% of the population and for gays who ar learning that the revolution is far from over.
(Limelight). An irreverent and engaging chronicle of popular music dating from the 1880s, when Tin Pan Alley was founded, to the present by a British-born songwriter and onetime pop star. "Brash, learned, funny, and perspicacious." The New Yorker
With Following the Ball, Todd Cleveland incorporates labor, sport, diasporic, and imperial history to examine the extraordinary experiences of African football players from Portugal’s African colonies as they relocated to the metropole from 1949 until the conclusion of the colonial era in 1975. The backdrop was Portugal’s increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, and its attendant use of the players as propaganda to communicate the supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies. Cleveland zeroes in on the ways that players, such as the great Eusébio, creatively exploited opportunities generated by shifts in the political and occupational landscapes in the waning decades of Portugal’s empire. Drawing on interviews with the players themselves, he shows how they often assumed roles as social and cultural intermediaries and counters reductive histories that have depicted footballers as mere colonial pawns. To reconstruct these players’ transnational histories, the narrative traces their lives from the informal soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field challenges and successes. By examining this multi-continental space in a single analytical field, the book unearths structural and experiential consistencies and contrasts, and illuminates the components and processes of empire.
"After the Ball" is the story of the dramatic events of 1905, when James Hazen Hyde, the flamboyant young heir to the majority shares in the billion-dollar Equitable Life Assurance Society, became the central figure in the most far-reaching financial scandal of the era. 20 photos throughout.
Charles Kassel Harris was a well-regarded American songwriter and publisher of popular music. During his long career, he advanced the relatively new genre, publishing more than 300 songs. Hewas born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., into a family of ten children. His father was a fur trader and moved the family to Saginaw, MI, and Milwaukee, WI, where he grew up. As a youth, he wrote his first song, "Since Maggie Learned to Skate," in 1885 for the play The Skating Rink by Nat Goodwin. In 1892, he wrote his most famous piece, "After the Ball," a song about an old man recounting to his niece the story of his long-lost love. It caught the attention of John Philip Sousa, who played the tune at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, boosting sheet music sales to in excess of five million copies in the 1890s. "Break the News to Mother" - originally written in 1891 about a dying fire fighter - was rewritten in 1898 about a dying solder in the Spanish-American War and furthered his popularity. In 1895, Harris moved his music publishing operations from Milwaukee to New York City. Later, Harris wrote songs for musicals, working with Oscar Hammerstein the Elder. An innovative music publisher, Harris was one of the founders of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1914 and also promoted copyright legislation that protected composers and publishers from theft of intellectual property and ensured that they were compensated for performance of their works.
Bounce along with this rhyming read-aloud about all kinds of balls From footballs to eyeballs, beach balls to meatballs, if you can roll it, this book has it! With his signature whimsy and wordplay, author Joshua David Stein compares and contrasts different kinds of balls in this part-reference, part-comedy act. The book invites readers to identify various sports balls, while simultaneously weaving in a whole selection of unexpected rollable objects. A winning formula for every young reader who loves to kick, throw, catch, or giggle.
Renowned NFL analysts' tips to make football more accessible, colorful, and compelling than ever before More and more football fans are watching the NFL each week, but many of them don't know exactly what they should be watching. What does the offense's formation tell you about the play that's about to be run? When a quarterback throws a pass toward the sideline and the wide receiver cuts inside, which player is to blame? Why does a defensive end look like a Hall of Famer one week and a candidate for the practice squad the next? These questions and more are addressed in Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0, a book that takes readers deep inside the perpetual chess match between offense and defense. This book provides clear and simple explanations to the intricacies and nuances that affect the outcomes of every NFL game. This updated edition contains recent innovations from the 2015 NFL season.
Illus. in color. A boy's madcap adventures as he tries to retrieve his bouncing ball are told in "lively rhyming prose. Humorous, repetitious situations will delight children. Recommended."--"School Library Journal.
A dog with a ball is one of the most relentlessly hopeful creatures on Earth. After his best little-girl pal leaves for school, this dog hits up yoga mom, baby, and even the angry cat for a quick throw. No luck. Forced to go solo, the dog begins a hilarious one-sided game of fetch until naptime’s wild, ball-centric dream sequence. The pictures speak a thousand words in this comic book-style ode to canine monomania. Ball? Ball.
