A poignant story about hopes, dreams, and how far one man's talent takes him before he realizes it's about what you do-and how you do it. Frank Ryder is unstoppable on the baseball field-his pitches arrive faster than a batter can swing, giving his opponents no chance. He's being heralded as a game-changing pitcher. But within the maelstrom of press, adulation, and wild speculation, Frank is a man alone. Haunted by a tragic incident from years past, he yearns to be the best but cannot reconcile the guilt he carries with the man everyone believes him to be. Frank's path to redemption leads him on a journey back to where his life changed forever, to visit his family, his high school coach, and his brother. Through reconnection and reconciliation with those also deeply affected by the devastating event of Frank's youth, he finds peace and his place in the world both in and outside the game. The Fireballer is a lyrical, moving story of undeniable talent and the life-changing power of forgiveness and a subtly romantic ode to America's favorite pastime.

The Times Art Book of the Year 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022 'Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon ... A biography that no Bacon fan - or indeed foe - can afford to overlook ... Mesmerising' THE TIMES 'A magnificent triumph ... I was captivated by every line' OBSERVER A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait - rich, complex, and subtle - of a commanding modern figure. Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women - women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room. Bacon worked no less hard or ambitiously as a painter, at first with little success. Throughout the 1930s and early '40s he suffered ongoing failures, growing isolated and often ill. His health issues throughout his life were far more significant than he revealed. Then came his astonishing breakthrough in 1944, with Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. In the following decades, he emerged as one of the great iconoclasts and bon vivants of his time, a Wildean figure whom one friend called 'a terrific grandee.' Bacon was typically celebrated as a sexual adventurer who liked rough trade, but he never stopped longing for a serious committed relationship, however painful. He continued to make disturbing images of the strangeness within, but developed into a more varied artist than has been recognised, creating in particular an extraordinary series of self-portraits. He was an artist who believed in chance and paradox: the iconoclast eventually became an icon. This is a story, deeply researched and masterfully told, of a sickly boy who became one of the great figures of his time. The twentieth century does not know itself without Bacon.

Cricket Explained offers the sports enthusiast a user-friendly introduction to baseball's British cousin, a game that shares with America's national pastime the common ancestor "rounders."

This is the definitive beginner's guide to the game of cricket, written by a world authority on the sport, the co-inventor of the Coopers & Lybrand World Cricket Ratings System. Cricket Explained takes the reader from the game's fundamentals -- basic rules, terminology, equipment -- to the finer points of strategy, individual playing styles, and cricket lore.

The book includes a combined glossary/index for easy reference and is illustrated throughout with the lighthearted drawings of British cartoonist Mark Stevens. So even if you don't know "short leg" from "silly mid off" or a bowler from a batsman, you'll come away from Cricket Explained with an understanding for this truly international sport which, like baseball, is loved both for its elegant simplicity and its vexing complexity.

Among the topics covered in Cricket Explained's concise, user-friendly entries are:
-- Cricket's history
-- Making sense of the action on the field
-- Batsmen and the batting order
-- Fielders and fielding positions
-- Fielding and batting tactics
-- Scoring and statistics
-- Bowling strategy
-- How many players are required
-- How runs are scored, outs are made, and a game is won
-- Umpires and the rules
-- Bowlers and their individual styles
-- Different types of cricket played throughout the world

Learn to harness the programming power that comes standard with all unix and linux systems (including Apple's OSX). This guide encourages hands-on experimentation by including actual scripts that feature the korn shell (ksh), awk, and sed.

"God broke into my world. My life was shaken and transformed instantly." These words began the journey of transformation that took Mark Stevens (known for his role as Nick Page in TV's Neighbours, and as a worship leader at Hillsong Church and Life Church Bradford) out of a life bound by drug and alcohol addiction and into a new adventure of ministry and leadership that has touched all corners of the globe. Mark shares candidly his testimony of the excitement and temptation of celebrity fame and lifestyle, the devastatingly destructive effects of addiction, and the overwhelming and transforming power of God's healing and presence. He goes on to share from the many experiences and challenges of worship ministry and church leadership over the past fifteen years. Strength for the Road is Mark Stevens' first book, written to awaken and stir up the worshipper in each of us, to rise up and embrace the journey ahead of us with faith and boldness. Each of our journeys are different, but the truth of God's word and His love remains eternal and everlasting, giving each of us the strength we need - and more - to walk the road God has laid out before us.

Stop throwing thousand-dollar bills out the window and camouflaging spending as marketing Your Marketing Sucks cuts through the myths that claim marketing is about advertising, public relations, or direct mail. You should stop all marketing until you know how each component of your program justifies itself in dollars and cents and fire your advertising agency if it even thinks about applying for a Clio or other creative award. Learn how marketing it is about growing the revenue, profit, and valuation of the business with this bestseller. After reading Your Marketing Sucks, you'll demand that the money spent on marketing bring in more money in return.

Marketing is always the primary force -- the catalyst, the driver, the tsunami -- for propelling the growth of a business. The problem is, the art and science of marketing is often poorly designed and terribly executed to the point that it just plain sucks. It fails to achieve the only legitimate goal for marketing: to drive a company's growth. In this Tenth Anniversary edition of Your Marketing Sucks, renowned CEO Mark Stevens guides the reader through the principles of successful, business-building marketing, expanding on and updating his global Best Seller with fresh new content focused on state of the art guidance for building a wired brand designed to thrive in the viral era. In this invaluable, time-tested book, the bedrock principles of extreme marketing are fused with the power of the Internet/social media to deliver exponential results. It is, in its totality, an idea whose time has come

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone