|
Books > Biography > Sport
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.
In February 2019, award-winning writer Alex Roddie left his online
life behind when he set out to walk 300 miles through the Scottish
Highlands, seeking solitude and answers. In leaving the chaos of
the internet behind for a month, he hoped to learn how it was truly
affecting him - or if he should look elsewhere for the causes of
his anxiety. The Farthest Shore is the story of Alex's solo trek
along the remote Cape Wrath Trail. As he journeyed through a
vanishing winter, Alex found answers to his questions, learnt the
nature of true silence, and discovered frightening evidence of the
threats faced by Scotland's wild mountain landscape.
 |
Clemente
(Paperback)
David Maraniss
|
R582
R541
Discovery Miles 5 410
Save R41 (7%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
On New Year's Eve 1972, following eighteen magnificent seasons in
the major leagues, Roberto Clemente died a hero's death, killed in
a plane crash as he attempted to deliver food and medical supplies
to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. David Maraniss now
brings the great baseball player brilliantly back to life in
"Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, " a book
destined to become a modern classic. Much like his acclaimed
biography of Vince Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered, " Maraniss
uses his narrative sweep and meticulous detail to capture the myth
and a real man.
Anyone who saw Clemente, as he played with a beautiful fury,
will never forget him. He was a work of art in a game too often
defined by statistics. During his career with the Pittsburgh
Pirates, he won four batting titles and led his team to
championships in 1960 and 1971, getting a hit in all fourteen World
Series games in which he played. His career ended with
three-thousand hits, the magical three-thousandth coming in his
final at-bat, and he and the immortal Lou Gehrig are the only
players to have the five-year waiting period waived so they could
be enshrined in the Hall of Fame immediately after their
deaths.
There is delightful baseball here, including thrilling accounts
of the two World Series victories of Clemente's underdog Pittsburgh
Pirates, but this is far more than just another baseball book.
Roberto Clemente was that rare athlete who rose above sports to
become a symbol of larger themes. Born near the canebrakes of rural
Carolina, Puerto Rico, on August 18, 1934, at a time when there
were no blacks or Puerto Ricans playing organized ball in the
United States, Clemente went on to become the greatest Latino
player in the major leagues. He was, in a sense, the Jackie
Robinson of the Spanish-speaking world, a ballplayer of
determination, grace, and dignity who paved the way and set the
highest standard for waves of Latino players who followed in later
generations and who now dominate the game.
The Clemente that Maraniss evokes was an idiosyncratic character
who, unlike so many modern athletes, insisted that his
responsibilities extended beyond the playing field. In his final
years, his motto was that if you have a chance to help others and
fail to do so, you are wasting your time on this earth. Here, in
the final chapters, after capturing Clemente's life and times,
Maraniss retraces his final days, from the earthquake to the
accident, using newly uncovered documents to reveal the corruption
and negligence that led the unwitting hero on a mission of mercy
toward his untimely death as an uninspected, overloaded plane
plunged into the sea.
|
|