The Shot Heard Round the World, in 1951. The Fight of the Century, in 1971. The horror of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Secretariat's legendary win at the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Stan Isaacs saw them all live. Isaacs covered thousands of sports stories in his more than fifty years as a journalist. But ten moments stand out in his memory. Ten Moments That Shook the Sports World offers Isaacs's eyewitness accounts of the events that changed sports history. This collection offers those old enough to remember these events a chance to relive them, and younger sports lovers will get to hear this history from someone who was there. Isaacs makes sports history live again.
Booktalking Nonfiction: 200 Sure-Fire Winners for Middle and High School Readers will provide an introduction to selecting and writing booktalks for nonfiction books with a focus on unique informational texts and biographies and autobiographies. A booktalk is a summary of a book presented in a way that would interest someone in reading the book described. Why non-fiction? Because the Common Core Standards Initiative, which most states have adopted, requires that 70% of the materials students read be from the category of informational texts it is especially important to focus on nonfiction when sharing books with students. Here’s everything you need to do just that. Chapters cover selecting, writing, preparing, and presenting booktalks, special tips for high-interest, low-level books, and using non-fiction in the library and the classroom. Two hundred ready-to-present booktalks arranged by genre are also included. Genres include animals, famous people, sports, crime and serial killers, movies and television, religion, war, history, and the supernatural.
“My idol growing up, all I wanted to be, was Stan Isaacs.” --Tony Kornheiser “Stan Isaacs is directly responsible for my television career--and much of how I approached what I’ve said and whom I’ve said it about.” --Keith Olbermann Iconoclastic and irreverent, Stan Isaacs was part of a generation that bucked the sports establishment with a skepticism for authority, an appreciation for absurdity, and a gift for placing athletes and events within the context of their tumultuous times. Isaacs draws on his trademark wink-and-a-grin approach to tell the story of the long-ago Brooklyn that formed him and a career that placed him amidst the major sporting events of his era. Mixing reminiscences with column excerpts, Isaacs recalls antics like stealing a Brooklyn Dodgers pennant after the team moved to Los Angeles and his many writings on Paul Revere’s horse. But Isaacs also reveals the crusading and humanist instincts that gave Black athletes like Muhammad Ali a rare forum to express their views and celebrated the oddball, unsung Mets over the straitlaced Yankees. Insightful and hilarious, Out of Left Field is the long-awaited memoir of the influential sportswriter and his adventures in the era of Jim Brown, Arthur Ashe, and the Amazin’ Mets.
Cast as the ultimate hardhats, football players of the 1960s seemed to personify a crewcut traditional manhood that channeled the Puritan work ethic. Yet, despite a social upheaval against such virtues, the National Football League won over all of America—and became a cultural force that recast politics in its own smashmouth image. Jesse Berrett explores pro football's new place in the zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s. The NFL's brilliant harnessing of the sports-media complex, combined with a nimble curation of its official line, brought different visions of the same game to both Main Street and the ivory tower. Politicians, meanwhile, spouted gridiron jargon as their handlers co-opted the NFL's gift for spectacle and mythmaking to shape a potent new politics that in essence became pro football. Governing, entertainment, news, elections, celebrity--all put aside old loyalties to pursue the mass audience captured by the NFL's alchemy of presentation, television, and high-stepping style. An invigorating appraisal of a dynamic era, Pigskin Nation reveals how pro football created the template for a future that became our present.
*A New York Times Notable Book* *A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year* From the bestselling National Book Award finalist and author of The Big House comes “a well-blended narrative packed with top-notch reporting and relevance for our own time” (The Boston Globe) about the young athletes who battled in the legendary Harvard-Yale football game of 1968 amidst the sweeping currents of one of the most transformative years in American history. On November 23, 1968, there was a turbulent and memorable football game: the season-ending clash between Harvard and Yale. The final score was 29-29. To some of the players, it was a triumph; to others a tragedy. And to many, the reasons had as much to do with one side’s miraculous comeback in the game’s final forty-two seconds as it did with the months that preceded it, months that witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, police brutality at the Democratic National Convention, inner-city riots, campus takeovers, and, looming over everything, the war in Vietnam. George Howe Colt’s The Game is the story of that iconic American year, as seen through the young men who lived it and were changed by it. One player had recently returned from Vietnam. Two were members of the radical antiwar group SDS. There was one NFL prospect who quit to devote his time to black altruism; another who went on to be Pro-Bowler Calvin Hill. There was a guard named Tommy Lee Jones, and fullback who dated a young Meryl Streep. They played side by side and together forged a moment of startling grace in the midst of the storm. “Vibrant, energetic, and beautifully structured” (NPR), this magnificent and intimate work of history is the story of ordinary people in an extraordinary time, and of a country facing issues that we continue to wrestle with to this day. “The Game is the rare sports book that lives up to the claim of so many entrants in this genre: It is the portrait of an era” (The Wall Street Journal).
An impassioned firsthand account of the Russian Revolution An American journalist and revolutionary writer, John Reed became a close friend of Lenin and was an eyewitness to the 1917 revolution in Russia. Ten Days That Shook the World is Reeds extraordinary record of that event. 'It flashed upon me suddenly: they were going to shoot me!' This electrifying eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution, written by an American journalist in St Petersburg as the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, is an unsurpassed record of history in the making. John Reed (1887-1920) American journalist and poet-adventurer whose colorful life as a revolutionary writer ended in Russia but made him the hero of a generation of radical intellectuals. Reed became a close friend of V.I. Lenin and was an eyewitness to the 1917 October revolution. He recorded this historical event in his best-known book TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (1920). Reed is buried with other Bolshevik heroes beside the Kremlin wall.
“A powerful and poignant memoir” of an African American athlete who defied the establishment—decades before Colin Kaepernick (Cornel West, New York Times–bestselling author of Race Matters). An NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work—Biography/Autobiography John Carlos was a bronze medalist in the two hundred-meter race at the 1968 Olympics, but he is remembered for more than his athletic accomplishments. His and his fellow medalist’s Tommie Smith’s Black Power salutes on the podium sparked controversy and career fallout—yet their show of defiance, seen around the world, remains one of the most iconic images of both Olympic history and African American history. This is the remarkable story of John Carlos’s experience as a young man in Harlem, a track and field athlete, and lifelong activist. “This book is fascinating for more than just the sports history, as the text talks about Carlos’ connection to Dr. King, basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Olympic runner Ralph Boston, baseball legend Jackie Robinson and boxer George Foreman. Carlos even comments on topics in today’s news including First Lady Michelle Obama, the value of Twitter, the antics of athletes like Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens, and his views on an award he received at ESPN’s 2008 ESPYs.” —Chicago Tribune “John Carlos is an American hero . . . I couldn’t put this book down.” —Michael Moore, filmmaker and New York Times–bestselling author of Here Comes Trouble
Sometimes it is not big events or great men or women that change history. Often, an apparently trivial occasion or insignificant decision changes everything. Stephen Pollard's alternative history of the past sixty years examines ten such crucial days in our history. None of them are obviously historic. But each of them changed the country - some for good, others for ill. Combining history, analysis, humour and polemic, this incisive look at events stretched across six decades reveals how and why we became the nation we now are. The ten days which constitute Pollard's history of Britain deal with important areas of national life. The arrival on 22 June 1948 of 492 West Indians aboard HMS Empire Windrushchanged the very make-up of the country. The invention of the microwave on 8 October 1945 altered not just what we eat but how we eat - and drink. The education system, Pollard argues, was destroyed by the forced introduction of comprehensive schooling on 12 July 1965. Publication of Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch on 24 October 1970changed family life. And the staging of It's a Royal Knockout on 15 June 1987 marked the end of the monarchy as a serious institution. The events of other days transformed culture, politics, crime, sport and the very future of Western civilization. Behind each of the ten days is a story; some of these stories are well known, some obscure. Fusing narrative with analysis, and history with contemporary relevance, Ten Days That Changed the Nation shows us the major impact that apparently minor events can have on our lives. Stephen Pollard's approachable, readable narrative is as engaging as it is controversial. Sure to incite debate, Ten Days That Changed the Nation is a handbook for our times.
Penn State fans number in the millions and can be described in one word: rabid. This book presents lists about the good, the bad, and the ugly in Nittany Lion sports history. From Favorite Players to Greatest Flukes, Best Players to Worst Losses, this is a must-read book for anyone who's had the pleasure of yelling "We are Penn State!" Includes original contributions from famous PSU alumni!
Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics. Billie Jean King takes on Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes. Title IX is passed. Some moments in sports—whether they take place on a track, on a tennis court, or in a courtroom—transcend the event itself. Some have helped America live out its creed that all men are created equal. Others have pushed the nation toward gender equality. Others have changed individual sports to such a degree that they have transformed society. Powerful Moments in Sports: The Most Significant Sporting Events in American History encompasses more than a single player, team, or game. This book looks at how a particular event revolutionized a sport, how a contest of speed inspired a nation, or even how a humble victory affected the world. Martin Gitlin considers such impactful moments as Jackie Robinson’s integration of Major League Baseball, Gertrude Ederle becoming the first female to swim the English Channel—and shattering the times of five men who had accomplished the feat before her—and the underdog US hockey team defeating the Soviets at the 1980 Olympics. The twenty events featured in this book had profound social, political, and cultural importance and inspired athletes and spectators alike. Spanning multiple decades, Powerful Moments in Sports reveals the tremendous impact athletes have had on America—and the world—over the years. Covering football, baseball, hockey, basketball, track and field, boxing, and more, this book will fascinate and enlighten sports fans, historians, and those interested in the impact of athletic endeavors on culture and society.
