Soldiers First: Duty, Honor, Country, and Football at West Point

Bestselling author Joe Drape reveals the unique pressures and expectations that make a year of Army football so much more than just a tally of wins and losses.
The football team at the U.S. Military Academy is not like other college football teams. At other schools, athletes are catered to and coddled at every turn. At West Point, they carry the same arduous load as their fellow cadets, shouldering an Ivy League-caliber education and year-round military training. After graduation they are not going to the NFL but to danger zones halfway around the world. These young men are not just football players, they are soldiers first.
"New York Times" sportswriter Joe Drape takes us inside the world of Army football, as the Black Knights and their third-year coach, Rich Ellerson, seek to turn around a program that had recently fallen on hard times, with the goal to beat Navy and "sing last" at the Army-Navy game in December. The 2011 season would prove a true test of the players' mettle and perseverance.
Drawing on his extensive and unfettered access to the players and the coaching staff, Drape introduces us to this special group of young men and their achievements on and off the field. Anchoring the narrative and the team are five key players: quarterback Trent Steelman, the most gifted athlete; linebacker Steve Erzinger, who once questioned his place at West Point but has become a true leader; Andrew Rodriguez, the son of a general and the top scholar-athlete; Max Jenkins, the backup quarterback and the second-in-command of the Corps of Cadets; and Larry Dixon, a talented first-year running back. Together with Coach Ellerson, his staff, and West Point's officers and instructors, they and their teammates embrace the demands made on them and learn crucial lessons that will resonate throughout their lives--and ours.

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Straight Shooter: The Brad Park Story

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By the time he retired, Brad Park had surpassed the great Bobby Orr in career assists by a defenseman. Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible, and later named one of the Top 100 NHL players of all time by "The Hockey News," Park will forever be remembered as one of the greatest men ever to take the ice. The first and only authorized biography of Park's life and career, "Straight Shooter: The Brad Park Story," delves deeper into his legendary success than any book has before, bringing together exclusive, candid insights from Park himself, as well as interviews with dozens of players, family members, and key figures from the hockey world.
Covering Park's early years growing up in Toronto, to his first exposure to the NHL with the New York Rangers and his stellar performance with the Boston Bruins, through the twilight of his career and retirement, the book examines every aspect of his remarkable life in unprecedented detail. Giving hockey fans a full, frank look at the career of an NHL legend--including the challenges Park faced in his personal life, including caring for his physically handicapped son--"Straight Shooter" is a fascinating look at one of the game's true greats.Offers a fascinating insight into the life of Brad Park, one of the greatest defensemen the NHL has ever seenCovers Park's life in detail, from his time with the Rangers and Bruins to his experiences with Team Canada in the 1972 Summit SeriesFeatures a Foreword from hockey legend Don Cherry
Working closely with Park himself, writer and researcher Thom Sears has created a thorough, authorized biography of one of the NHL's greatest legends and an essential read for hockey fans everywhere.

 

The Ultimate Super Bowl Book: A Complete Reference to the Stats, Stars, and Stories Behind Football's Biggest Game--And Why the Best Team Won (2ND ed.)

With a television viewership of over 100 million people and hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year on tickets, concessions, and merchandise alone, the Super Bowl is the greatest game on Earth. Offering in-depth analysis, detailed statistics, play-by-play recaps, and post-game insights for every Super Bowl ever played, "The Ultimate Super Bowl Book" is the most definitive reference to this iconic sporting event, exploring all the high and lows from more than four decades of gridiron drama, with stories and quotes from the men who made history on football's biggest stage. In addition to a comprehensive examination of each Super Bowl played since 1967, the book presents features on the greatest individual performances in Super Bowl history--from Joe Namath to Joe Montana, Tom Brady to Aaron Rodgers, Marcus Allen to Emmitt Smith, Jack Lambert to James Harrison--and the best and worst decisions by some legendary coaches, including Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Mike McCarthy, and more. Author Bob McGinn weighs in on the biggest Super Bowl shockers, the worst blunders, and the most entertaining characters. Quotes from players and coaches take you to the sidelines and into the huddle with the greatest teams in Super Bowl History, including the Green Bay Packers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots, and more. No sporting event can compete with the Super Bowl--and no book can compete with this one as the ultimate reference to the ultimate game.

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Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards Into Battlegrounds

This may be hard to believe but it is very likely that more people live in closer proximity to more wild animals, birds and trees in the eastern United States today than anywhere on the planet at any time in history. For nature lovers, this should be wonderful news -- unless, perhaps, you are one of more than 4,000 drivers who will hit a deer today, your child's soccer field is carpeted with goose droppings, coyotes are killing your pets, the neighbor's cat has turned your bird feeder into a fast-food outlet, wild turkeys have eaten your newly-planted seed corn, beavers have flooded your driveway, or bears are looting your garbage cans.
For 400 years, explorers, traders, and settlers plundered North American wildlife and forests in an escalating rampage that culminated in the late 19th century's "era of extermination." By 1900, populations of many wild animals and birds had been reduced to isolated remnants or threatened with extinction, and worry mounted that we were running out of trees. Then, in the 20th century, an incredible turnaround took place. Conservationists struggled to reverse wildlife devastation by outlawing commercial hunting, creating wildlife sanctuaries, transplanting isolated species to restored habitats and imposing regulations on hunters and trappers. Over decades, they slowly nursed many wild populations back to health.
But after the Second World War something happened that conservationists hadn't foreseen: sprawl. People moved first into suburbs on urban edges, and then kept moving out across a landscape once occupied by family farms. By 2000, a majority of Americans lived in neither cities nor country but in that vast in-between. Much of sprawl has plenty of trees and its human residents offer up more and better amenities than many wild creatures can find in the wild: plenty of food, water, hiding places, and protection from predators with guns. The result is a mix of people and wildlife that should be an animal-lover's dream-come-true but often turns into a sprawl-dweller's nightmare.
"Nature Wars" offers an eye-opening look at how our well-meaning efforts to protect animals allowed wild populations to burgeon out of control, causing damage costing billions, degrading ecosystems, and touching off disputes that divided neighborhoods, polarized communities, and wreaked havoc on local politics. What's more, award-winning journalist and reporter Jim Sterba demonstrates what happens when Americans now spend 90% of their time indoors and how our society lost touch with the natural landscape and got its ideas about nature from films and television shows where wild creatures act like humans or are portrayed as furry, cuddly animals.
A deeply researched, eloquently written, counterintuitive and often humorous look at relations between man and beast--and the deepening chasm between the two--" Nature Wars" will be the definitive book on how we created this unintended mess.
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Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, "Born to Run "is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: "Why does my foot hurt? "In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world's greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.
Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence. With the help of Caballo Blanco, a mysterious loner who lives among the tribe, the author was able not only to uncover the secrets of the Tarahumara but also to find his own inner ultra-athlete, as he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of Americans, including a star ultramarathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder.
With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultrarunners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons. "Born to Run" is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.

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Classic Hikes of North America: 25 Breathtaking Treks in the United States and Canada

Classic Hikes of North America is a beautifully photographed and eminently practical account of the best backcountry journeys in the United States and Canada. Peter Potterfield, an experienced hiker and photographer, has analyzed and graded these spectacular wilderness experiences with both beginners and avid hikers in mind.
Included in the book is helpful information, such as: level of difficulty, trail conditions, recommended seasons, potential hazards and difficulties, resource information, and detailed maps of hiking routes. Illustrated with more than 200 color photographs and hiking directions, here is inspiration and information in a single volume. There are routes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Big Beaver Little Beaver Loop in the North Cascades National Park of Washington State, and the Slate Range in the Canadian Rockies, Alberta and British Columbia, and many more. These are journeys to dream on, and Potterfield puts them within reach of any aspiring hiker.

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Racing Through the Dark: Crash. Burn. Coming Clean. Coming Back.

"WORLD-CLASS CYCLIST"," "Tour de France stage winner, and time trial specialist David Millar offers a vivid portrait of his life in professional cycling--including his soul-searing detour into performance-enhancing drugs, his dramatic arrest and two-year ban, and his ultimate decision to return to the sport he loves to race clean--in this arrestingly candid memoir, which he wrote himself.
As a young Scottish expat living in Hong Kong with his father after his parents' divorce, Millar showed early promise with mountain biking and BMX. Two wise local cyclists took him under their wings, encouraging him to concentrate on road racing. Millar proved a ready convert. "Racing Through the Dark "offers the winning account of his climb through the ranks--first as an amateur and then as a pro, riding for the French team Cofidis. Among his early triumphs were several stage wins in the Tour de France.
From the moment Millar turned pro, he began to see hints of the unethical measures that many-- maybe most--of the other pros were taking in order to race at the very tops of their games . . . and beyond. At first, he felt that he was immune to temptation, that he could win clean. But the ugly pervasiveness of performance-enhancing drugs and the seemingly universal attitude that condoned it began to corrode his willpower. "Racing Through the Dark "details his eventual capitulation, his subsequent arrest and two-year ban from cycling, and his remarkable comeback as a clean cyclist who is now doing his utmost to keep performance-enhancing drugs out of the sport he so loves.
Filled with thrilling descriptions of the world's most spectacular courses, "Racing Through the Dark "captures the pure joy of cycling and includes some of the most vivid accounts of racing ever written by a true insider.

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The Last Boys Picked: Helping Boys Who Don't Play Sports Survive Bullies and Boyhood

Boys who don't play sports are often the targets of bullying, but a boy's worst bully may be the one he can't see: society's expectations about how he should act, how he should relate, and how he should play.
Overlooked by a society that reinforces impossible standards of "masculinity," boys who are uninterested in competitive sports or have non-aggressive personalities are often vilified and bullied for being different as they grow up in the shadow of America's obsession with bigger, faster, richer, and stronger.
Through a fascinating assortment of in-depth interviews, clinical case studies, and examples from popular literature, Dr. Janet Sasson Edgette and Beth Margolis Rupp illustrate how these boys are relegated to a second-class social status simply because they can't make a free throw or because they can spell better than they can run.
Compassionate, empowering, and instructive, "The Last Boys Picked" will help parents, teachers, coaches, and caregivers identify the social and emotional hurdles that these boys face. It offers specific action steps to help any child build resilience and a healthy self-esteem-and tips for talking to them about their experiences and teaching them to face the schoolyard-and the world-with confidence.

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On Par: The Everyday Golfer's Survival Guide

Bill Pennington, author of the beloved and widely read "On Par" golf column for the "New York Times," knows how to interpret the experts and pros for the rest of us. For years, he has traveled the globe in search of golf's essentials--those basic principles, those elusive truths (and who are we kidding, any trick or quick fix he can pick up along the way) that will improve anyone's game. He has consulted the world's leading golf instructors as well as countless caddies, groundskeepers, parking lot attendants, and bartenders. He has played rounds with Tiger Woods, Annika Sorenstam, and Justin Timberlake. He has sought the advice of psychiatrists, physicists, economists, zen masters. And on a particularly bad golf outing, he has even discussed the fickleness of golf with a quite helpful raccoon.
"On Par "captures it all: From equipment and instruction, to the rules and language of golf, to camaraderie and psychology, to the short game/long game debate, Pennington informs and entertains as he gets to the essence of this mercurial game, including golf's holy grail, the hole in one.
Part instruction, part education, part therapy, and shot through with Pennington's trademark wit, this is a book for everyone who has ever felt the game's distinct pull--and slice.

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Grizzly Bears: A Falcon Field Guide

"Grizzly Bears: A Falcon Field Guide" presents readers with substantive yet easily digestible information on this most revered and feared of large mammals. Where do grizzly bears live? What do they eat? What type of predators might be capable of taking on a grizzly bear? How do they communicate? What issues exist with the relationship between grizzly bears and humans?
This book contains all the information you need to know to become familiar with these fascinating animals. Accompanied by numerous full-color photos of grizzly bears in their natural habitat, this handy field guide makes an excellent take-home souvenir and reference for anybody interested in the mighty grizzly.


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