Muck City: Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town

In a town deep in the Florida Everglades, where high school football is the only escape, a haunted quarterback, a returning hero, and a scholar struggle against terrible odds.
The loamy black "muck" that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided much of the nation's vegetables, often on the backs of roving, destitute migrants. Many of these were children who honed their skills along the field rows and started one of the most legendary football programs in America. Belle Glade's high school team, the Glades Central Raiders, has sent an extraordinary number of players to the National Football League - 27 since 1985, with five of those drafted in the first round.
The industry that gave rise to the town and its team also spawned the chronic poverty, teeming migrant ghettos, and violence that cripples futures before they can ever begin. "Muck City" tells the story of quarterback Mario Rowley, whose dream is to win a championship for his deceased parents and quiet the ghosts that haunt him; head coach Jessie Hester, the town's first NFL star, who returns home to "win kids, not championships"; and Jonteria Willliams, who must build her dream of becoming a doctor in one of the poorest high schools in the nation. For boys like Mario, being a Raider is a one-shot window for escape and a college education. Without football, Jonteria and the rest must make it on brains and fortitude alone. For the coach, good intentions must battle a town's obsession to win above all else.
Beyond the Friday night lights, this book is an engrossing portrait of a community mired in a shameful past and uncertain future, but with the fierce will to survive, win, and escape to a better life.

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Winning Spirit Basketball: Find Your Greatness Within

Winning Spirit Basketball grew out of conversations between basketball great Chris Mullin and sports psychologist Tom Mitchell about players, coaches, parents and the game of basketball. The book was written specifically for players who want to gain a competitive edge and a better understanding of the habits and behaviors that are key to an athlete's success: confidence, communication, work ethic, teamwork, practice and concentration. It is also valuable for parents and coaches who want to help players develop their mental game.Though written by a Hall of Fame player and former basketball head coach, this book is not about the Xs and Os of basketball. Readers will not learn how to run a play, shoot a free throw, or break a full court press. Rather, they will learn about the values within the game of basketball that help you become a better player on the court and a better person in life. Through basic, easy-to-understand messages and exercises, athletes of all ages will be able to put the things they learn from this book into practice immediately.

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Build the Swing of a Lifetime: The Four-Step Approach to a More Efficient Swing

The best way to shave multiple strokes off your golf game is to develop an efficient, repeatable swing that enables you to hit the ball farther and straighter with greater consistency. To achieve this ideal swing, you need a clear picture of the finished product and a simple step-by-step process for building it, testing it, and maintaining it. Now you have it.
In Build the Swing of a Lifetime, Mike Bender, one of Golf Digest's 5 Best Teachers in America, shows you how to develop the same swing that boosted the careers of 2007 Masters champion Zach Johnson, multiple PGA Tour winner Jonathan Byrd, and 2006 LPGA Rookie of the Year Seon Hwa Lee.
Mike Bender didn't become the 2009 PGA National Teacher of the Year by offering quick fixes and compensations for deficient swings. He did it by creating a science-based, biomechanical approach to understanding the elements of an efficient, powerful, repeatable swing and devising a simple, checkable method for practicing and perfecting that swing.
In four simple steps illustrated by 150 photographs, Mike shows you how to aim and turn properly, get your hands on the correct downswing plane, and match up your arm swing and body rotation to square the clubface more consistently. He provides clear and simple guidance on how to make sure you're practicing each step correctly. Using broken club shafts, construction cones, and other forms of feedback, you'll discover how to check your alignment and posture, and make sure that your shaft and hands are moving on-plane in good sequence with one another.
There are a million ways to hit a golf ball, but only one is the most efficient way to produce shots that are consistently long and on target, and only one will help you keep shaving that handicap down toward scratch for as long as you keep playing. That is the swing you will develop by practicing and applying what you learn in Build the Swing of a Lifetime.

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The Wild Duck Chase: Inside the Strange and Wonderful World of the Federal Duck Stamp Contest

"The Wild Duck Chase "takes readers into the peculiar world of competitive duck painting as it played out during the 2010 Federal Duck Stamp Contest-the only juried art competition run by the U.S. government. Since 1934, the duck stamp, which is bought annually by hunters to certify their hunting license, has generated more than $750 million, and 98 cents of each collected dollar has been used to help purchase or lease 5.3 million acres of waterfowl habitat in the U.S.-the core of the National Wildlife Refuge System.
As Martin J. Smith chronicles in his revealing narrative, within the microcosm of the duck stamp contest are intense ideological and cultural clashes between the mostly rural hunters who buy the stamps and the mostly suburban and urban birders and conservationists who decry the hunting of waterfowl. At issue is preserving the habitat of ducks and other waterfowl for all to enjoy: If the number of hunters continues to decrease-and unless nature lovers support the duck stamp program-this landmark conservation effort faces possible extinction.
The competition also fuels dynamic tensions between competitors and judges, and among the invariably ambitious, sometimes obsessive, and often eccentric artists-including Minnesota's three fabled Hautman brothers, the "New York Yankees" of competitive duck painting. Martin Smith takes readers down an arcane and uniquely American rabbit hole into a wonderland of talent, ego, art, controversy, scandal, big money, and migratory waterfowl.

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