Who won the first professional sports championship for the city of Anaheim? Which Roller Hockey International team owner posed for Playboy? Which RHI team's logo did Sports Illustrated describe as looking like "a malevolent vacuum-cleaner attachment?" Which coach won two championships for two different teams in RHI's first two seasons? Why were fans nearly ejected from the Oakland Skates' arena for celebrating a hat trick? All those questions and more are answered in "Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks: A Rocking History of Roller Hockey International." Author Richard Graham takes you behind the scenes to show how Dennis Murphy created Roller Hockey International, and why Murphy might be the most unlikely, least known and most influential visionary in North American professional sports history. RHI was a professional league that ran from 1993-1999 and soared and then crashed much like the inline skating craze of the 1990s. Full of thrills, spills and body checks, along with an abundance of humor, "Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks" is the story of a niche sport and a professional league that dared to dream big.
Who won the first professional sports championship for the city of Anaheim? Which Roller Hockey International team owner posed for Playboy? Which RHI team's logo did Sports Illustrated describe as looking like "a malevolent vacuum-cleaner attachment?" Which coach won two championships for two different teams in RHI's first two seasons? Why were fans nearly ejected from the Oakland Skates' arena for celebrating a hat trick? All those questions and more are answered in "Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks: A Rocking History of Roller Hockey International." Author Richard Graham takes you behind the scenes to show how Dennis Murphy created Roller Hockey International, and why Murphy might be the most unlikely, least known and most influential visionary in North American professional sports history. Despite his rather leprechaun-like stature, "Murph" had tall dreams, a gift of gab and the ability to bring together a diverse group of people to work toward a common goal. After seeing some children playing hockey on inline skates on a suburban street, Murphy was inspired to create a professional league that ran from 1993-1999 and which soared and then crashed much like the inline skating craze of the 1990s. What's best about this book, however, are the stories that Graham has collected from the league's founders, team owners, players, administrators, referees and fans. You will alternately be amused and astounded by some of the hilarious events, player pranks, episodes of shortsightedness shown by some of the league's founders and team owners, the controversy over the league's puck and more. Particularly moving are the stories of players whose dreams of playing professional sports came true in Roller Hockey International. Full of thrills, spills and body checks, along with an abundance of humor, "Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks" is the story of a niche sport and a professional league that dared to dream big. With its hundreds of stories about players, coaches, managers, team owners and league administrators, Graham's book is similar in scope and depth to "Loose Balls" Terry Pluto's classic about the American Basketball, and as funny as Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" (but not as mean). Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks chronicles the fastest rise and fall of any sports league in modern history, and countless hours of research, interviews and off-the-record conversations have paid off for Mr. Graham and the reader. We meet the wheelers (the players), most of who were minor-league ice-hockey journeymen. These players were propelled by a new sport to take center stage at major NBA and NHL arenas during the summer months, fulfilling their dreams of fame and not so much fortune. Next are the dealers like Dennis Murphy, with connections so strong he could gather the top 10 sports moguls in a room with a single phone call. The disappointing saga of the puck specifically designed for roller hockey, which was counted on to supply the bucks to bankroll the league (imagine if the NBA earned a royalty for every basketball sold in the entire world), is a lesson that even today's big-league commissioners should heed. All sports fans and especially those who want to understand the operations of a league and its teams will benefit from this book. Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks: A Rocking History of Roller Hockey International recounts the six crazy seasons of Roller Hockey International and could well become the next great sports movie -- featuring characters even the greatest scriptwriters couldn't create. The foreword was written by Jeanie Buss, a former Roller Hockey International team owner and a current executive vice president for the 16-time NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers. For wild action (both on and off the playing surface), humor and the true story of Roller Hockey International, Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks can't be touched with a 10-foot-long hockey stick.
"What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.
Carol Milford dreams of living in a small, rural town. But Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, isn't the paradise she'd imagined. First published in 1920, this unabridged edition of the Sinclair Lewis novel is an American classic, considered by many to be his most noteworthy and lasting work. As a work of social satire, this complex and compelling look at small-town America in the early 20th century has earned its place among the classics.
Lovingly nicknamed the Igloo, the Civic Arena was home to the Pittsburgh Penguins until 2010 and hosted some of the most important sports and entertainment events in Steel City history. During the glorious Mario Lemieux era, the venue hosted four Stanley Cup Finals, including three championship-winning seasons. Muhammad Ali KO'ed Charlie Powell in 1963 there. It was home to Duquesne Basketball in the arena's early days and has hosted some of the University of Pittsburgh's most important basketball games as well. Some of the biggest acts in music history have rocked the Igloo's seats, including Elvis, the Beatles and frequent favorite, Bruce Springsteen. Join local sports and media writers as they recall the greatest moments in Civic Arena's storied history.
Trump. What else can be said about this ____________, __________, __________who committed ____________ against America in broad daylight? Most adjectives have already been used. In fact, people have been forced to CREATE new words to describe this ________, __________, and ________ piece of _________. Some of those words are not printable here, but you can imagine.
The New York Times bestseller A New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016 Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction One of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads San Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended books A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016 Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016 “Formidable and truth-dealing . . . necessary.” —The New York Times “This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.” —O Magazine In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash. “When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters who boosted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.
More than twenty years after departing Hartford, Connecticut, for Raleigh, North Carolina, the NHL's Whalers continue to inspire passion among fans. As HartfordBusiness.com reported in 2015, "Whalers merchandise...still has a cult following not only among fans in Connecticut but around the country." But Whalers devotees aren't just clamoring for jerseys, hats and t-shirts. They're nostalgic for a team that had New England roots for nearly 25 years--in Boston, Springfield, and Hartford--and featured some of the greatest players in NHL history, including Gordie Howe (with his sons Mark and Marty), Bobby Hull, and Ron Francis. Pat Pickens’s book details the Whalers’ origin in Boston in 1972, the team’s WHA championship in 1973, the roof collapse of their home arena that indirectly led to their entrance to the NHL in 1979, their stunning NHL playoff-series win against the top-seeded Quebec Nordiques in 1986, the 1986-87 season when they claimed their first division championship, and their relocation south in 1997 as the Carolina Hurricanes. Pickens imagines a Stanley Cup delivered to hockey-crazed Hartford in 2006, when the Hurricanes instead brought it home to North Carolina. The book also explores the likelihood of an NHL team returning to the Nutmeg State.
What's it like to start a revolution? How do you build the biggest tech company in the world? And why do you walk away from it all? Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft. Together he and Bill Gates turned an idea - writing software - into a company and then an entire industry. This is the story of how it came about: two young mavericks who turned technology on its head, the bitter battles as each tried to stamp his vision on the future and the ruthless brilliance and fierce commitment.
MACHINE OF DEATH tells thirty-four different stories about people who know how they will die. Prepare to have your tears jerked, your spine tingled, your funny bone tickled, your mind blown, your pulse quickened, or your heart warmed. Or better yet, simply prepare to be surprised. Because even when people do have perfect knowledge of the future, there's no telling exactly how things will turn out.
