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The long-awaited sequel to the bestselling classic memoir, A Handful of Summers. Gordon Forbes played for the South African Davis Cup team in the 50s and early 60s and returned to the circuit as a writer and observer. In 'Too Soon to Panic' he takes the readers behind the scenes at the big tournaments - Wimbledon, Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows; Germany, Spain and Italy - and introduces them to many of tennis's most extraordinary and dynamic characters, including Mark McCormack, Rod Laver, Jim Courier and Andre Agassi. Crammed with riotously funny anecdotes and vivid evocations of the innocence and camaraderie of the game in Forbes's day - when tennis as still a gentlemanly, amateur and often rather ramshackle affair - and insightful observations on today's glamorous game - where money reigns and sheer strength sometimes seems to conquer skill - Forbes explores the remarkable changes that have come over the sport in the last forty years.
Fanciful dreams of gold-medal glory led Jennifer Sey to the local gymnastics club in 1976. A natural aptitude and a willingness to endure punishing hard work took her to the elite ranks by the time she was eleven years old. Jennifer traveled the country and the world competing for the U.S. National team, but the higher she set her sights--the world championships, the 1988 Olympics--the more she began to ignore her physical and mental well-being. Jennifer suffered devastating injuries, developed an eating disorder, and lived far from family and friends, all for the sake of winning. When her parents and coaches lost sight of her best interests, Jennifer had no choice but to redefine her path into adulthood. She had to save herself. Chalked Up delivers an unforgettable coming-of-age story that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt not good enough and has finally come to accept who they were meant to be.
How did an ancient spiritual practice become the preserve of the privileged? Nadia Gilani has been practising yoga as a participant and teacher for over twenty-five years. Yoga has saved her life and seen her through many highs and lows; it has been a faith, a discipline, and a friend, and she believes wholeheartedly in its radical potential. However, over her years in the wellness industry, Nadia has noticed not only yoga's rising popularity, but also how its modern incarnation no longer serves people of colour, working class people, or many other groups who originally pioneered its creation. Combining her own memories of how the practice has helped her with an account of its history and transformation in the modern west, Nadia creates a love letter to yoga and a passionate critique of the billion-dollar industry whose cost and inaccessibility has shut out many of those it should be helping. By turns poignant, funny, and shocking, The Yoga Manifesto excavates where the industry has gone wrong, and what can be done to save the practice from its own success.
This is a story of a simple idea that turned into a global movement. This is the story of parkrun, told for the very first time from the man who started it all. Growing up in the brutal care system of South Africa, Paul Sinton-Hewitt had a lonely, difficult childhood. Yet he found solace in running – a simple pleasure that taught him resilience and offered a young boy a sense of self-worth. With dogged determination, Paul built a stable family life for himself and eventually settled in the UK. But by 2004 he was struggling to hold it all together. He’d lost the successful career he’d worked so hard for, his marriage had broken down, and now a devastating injury threatened to cut him off from the running club which had been a lifeline. In search of connection and purpose, Paul came up with a simple idea. He would start a weekly time trial run every Saturday morning in his local park. There would be no winners or losers, it would always be free and Paul would be there every week – even on Christmas Day – whether or not anyone else came. Little did he know that from just thirteen runners on that first Saturday, parkrun would grow into a 10 million strong community across five continents. Twenty years on parkrun continues to grow, bringing together people from all walks of life in search of health, happiness and community. Filled with hope and optimism, One Small Step is a powerful affirmation of how coming together in simple ways can change our own lives and might even change the world.
The NFL legend and Heisman Trophy winner shares the inspiring story of his life and diagnosis with dissociative identity disorder. Herschel Walker is widely regarded as one of football's greatest running backs. He led the University of Georgia to victory in the Sugar Bowl on the way to an NCAA Championship and he capped a sensational college career by earning the 1982 Heisman Trophy. Herschel spent twelve years in the NFL, where he rushed for more than eight thousand yards and scored sixty-one rushing touchdowns. But despite the acclaim he won as a football legend, track star, Olympic competitor, and later a successful businessman, Herschel realized that his life, at times, was simply out of control. He often felt angry, self-destructive, and unable to connect meaningfully with friends and family. Drawing on his deep faith, Herschel turned to professionals for help and was ultimately diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. While some might have taken this diagnosis as a setback, Herschel approached his mental health with the same indomitable spirit he brought to the playing field. It also gave him, for the first time, insight into his life's unexplained passages, stretches of time that seemed forever lost. Herschel came to understand that during those times, his "alters," or alternate personalities, were in control. Born into a poor, but loving family in the South, Herschel was an overweight child with a stutter who suffered terrible bullying at school. He now understands that he created "alters" who could withstand abuse. But beyond simply enduring, other "alters" came forward to help Herschel overcome numerous obstacles and, by the time he graduated high school, become an athlete recognized on a national level. In "Breaking Free, " Herschel tells his story -- from the joys and hardships of childhood to his explosive impact on college football to his remarkable professional career. And he gives voice and hope to those suffering from DID. Herschel shows how this disorder played an integral role in his accomplishments and how he has learned to live with it today. His compelling account testifies to the strength of the human spirit and its ability to overcome any challenge.
College soccer star Mark Zupan had been out drinking one night and had passed out in the back of his best friend's pickup truck when his friend got in the driver's seat, decided to take the truck for a spin, and accidentally crashed it. Thrown into a canal and stuck in frigid water for fourteen hours, Mark was finally rescued and learned soon after that he'd broken his neck. He'd most likely be a quadriplegic and spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, doctors told him. At first Mark's only goal was to walk again. When that proved impossible, he fell into the depths of anger and despair, retreating from the world and the people closest to him. But love, friendship, and a new sport, quad rugby (a.k.a. murderball), helped Mark create a new existence that's truly exceptional. Gimp, the no-holds-barred memoir of a Paralympic athlete and the star of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Murderball, is an inspiring, defiant, and revealing celebration of spirit and will that confounds readers' prejudices by offering proof that a guy in a chair can still do amazing things: have sex with his girlfriend, party with his friends . . . even crowd-surf at Pearl Jam shows.
A one-time Southampton policeman and BBC literary producer working with such writers as E.M. Forster, John Betjeman and Dylan Thomas, who became a close friend, John Arlott has always considered himself lucky. From his first ten-minute summaries of the 1946 Indian cricket tour until his retirement in 1980 he commentated on every Test match England ever played. This autobiography looks at his schooldays, about great cricketers he has known or watched and about his standing for the Liberals in the 1955 General Election.
There is no college ball more passionate and competitive than football in the Southeastern Conference, where seven of the twelve schools boast stadiums bigger than any in the NFL and 6.5 million fans hit the road every year to hoot and holler their teams to victory. In September 2006, popular sports columnist and lifelong University of Tennessee fan Clay Travis set out on his "Dixieland Delight Tour." Without a single map, hotel reservation, or game ticket, he began an 8,000-mile journey through the beating heart of the Southland. As Travis toured the SEC, he immersed himself in the bizarre game-day rituals of the common fan, brazenly dancing with the chancellor's wife at a Vanderbilt frat party, hanging with University of Florida demigod quarterback Tim Tebow, and abandoning himself totally to the ribald intensity and religious fervor of SEC football. "Dixieland Delight" is Travis's hilarious, loving, irreverent, and endlessly entertaining chronicle of a season of ironic excess in a world that goes a little crazy on football Saturdays.
To everyone who truly loves the game, Mickey Mantle epitomizes the golden age of baseball, when the mighty New York Yankees indisputably ruled, appearing in an unprecedented twelve World Series in fourteen years! In this intimate memoir, Mantle recounts the joys and trials of his rise from rural Oklahoma youngster to the pinnacle of baseball greatness. In "All My Octobers," the one and only Mick relives every one of his World Series appearances -- from the 1951 battle when he played alongside an aging Joe DiMaggio to his three-home-run performance in the 1964 showdown. In addition to the on-field heroics, Mantle talks candidly about the injuries, the alcohol, the parties and celebrations, and the terrible toll they can take on a young athlete's life. But most of all, it is a remembrance of October greatness, of postseason pyrotechnics . . . and a loving appreciation of a team of titans that achieved something marvelous and unequaled to this day. |
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