The San Francisco 49ers are among the most dynamic franchises, not only in the National Football League but in all of professional sports. They have won five Super Bowl titles and have produced some of football's most dynamic players in Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and Ronnie Lott, all of whom were coached by Bill Walsh, one of the game's most innovative thinkers. The 49ers' greatness came 35 years after the franchise began in 1946. During those years, they achieved no conference or league titles, even though they produced eight Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees, including the celebrated "Million Dollar Backfield." Offering a detailed look at the 49ers' prolonged growing pains, from the 1940s through the mid-1970s, Founding 49ers focuses on that mostly unfulfilled time before the DeBartolo family rescued the franchise. Author Dave Newhouse provides a fascinating look at the 49ers' early years through the eyes of the players who gave the franchise its foundation. Ex-49ers from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s share their tales within these pages, including two members of the original 1946 team; Lou Spadia, the last surviving member of the 49ers' original front office; former 49ers coach George Seifert; and Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts, son of an early 49ers broadcaster. These mostly forgotten 49ers didn't win like their successors, but they were highly entertaining, they broke down racial barriers, and they turned San Francisco into a major-league city. Founding 49ers captures the history of those pre-Walsh 49ers like no book before it.

A fascinating tour of Oakland sports history and a look toward the future of professional sports in the East Bay. Oakland is a sports city like no other. It is the only city in America to be abandoned by the same team twice, with the Raiders most recently leaving for Las Vegas. The Golden State Warriors, who crossed the bay in 1971 in search of better digs, have now returned to San Francisco with trophies in tow. The long-fought battle to keep the Oakland Athletics in the East Bay may narrowly save the city from a hat trick of departures. And yet, Oakland has produced more than its share of success in the form of 10 national titles across the NFL, NBA, and MLB. The city is gritty, gutsy, and self-preserving, with a blue-collar mentality and a gold standard under that collar. Bolstered by the Silicon Valley tech boom, Oakland has become one of the most desirable places to live in the entire country, all while its sports fans increasingly find that, in the famous words of Gertrude Stein, "There is no there there." What is it about Oakland that inspires such wanderlust in its professional teams? Featuring numerous conversations with luminaries across sports, politics, and economics, this new book explores Oakland's fascinating and paradoxical identity as a sports town while illuminating a cast of characters as diverse as the city itself: rogues, superstars, movers and shakers operating on and off the field, and, of course, the fans. Through the insight of venerated Oakland Tribune scribe Dave Newhouse and sports business leader Andy Dolich, readers will come to appreciate the many quirks and challenges that define "The Town."

Having previously tied the world record, Eddie Hart was a strong favorite to win the 100-meter dash at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Then the inexplicable happened: he was disqualified after arriving seconds late for a quarterfinal heat. Ten years of training to become the "World's Fastest Human," the title attached to an Olympic 100-meter champion, was lost in a heartbeat. But who was to blame? Hart's disappointment, though excruciating, was just one of many subplots to the most tragic of Olympic Games, at which eight Arab terrorists assassinated eleven Israeli athletes and coaches as the world watched in horror. Five terrorists were killed, but three escaped to their homeland as heroes and were never brought to trial. Swimmer Mark Spitz won seven gold medals but was rushed out of Germany afterward because he was Jewish. Other American athletes, besides Hart, seemed jinxed in Munich. The USA men's basketball team thought it had earned the gold medal, but the Russians received it instead through an unprecedented technicality. Bob Seagren, the defending pole vault champion, was barred from using his poles and forced to compete with unfamiliar poles. And swimmer Rick DeMont lost one gold medal and the possibility of winning a second because of an allergy drug that had passed U.S. Olympic Committee specifications but was disallowed by the International Olympic Committee. It was that kind of Olympics, confusing to some, fatal to others. Hart traveled back to Munich forty-three years later to relive his utter disappointment. He returned to the same stadium where he did earn a gold medal in the 400-meter relay. In Disqualified, his interesting life story, told with author Dave Newhouse, sheds entirely new light on what really happened at Munich. It includes interviews with Spitz and the victimized American athletes and conversations with two Israelis who escaped the terrorists. And Hart finally learned who was responsible for his disqualifications and those of Rey Robinson, who was in the same heat, leading to an interesting epilogue in which these two seniors reflect on the opportunity denied them long ago.