Random House New Releases - Social Science - Regional Studies

Muck City by Bryan Mealer

2013-08-13T00:30:00-05:00

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town
Written by Bryan Mealer

Trade Paperback, 336 pages | Three Rivers Press | Sports & Recreation - Football; Social Science - Regional Studies; Sports & Recreation - Sociology Of Sports | $15.00 | 978-0-307-88863-1 (0-307-88863-0)

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.

Muck City by Bryan Mealer

2012-10-23T00:30:00-05:00

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town
Written by Bryan Mealer

Hardcover, 336 pages | Crown Archetype | Sports & Recreation - Football; Social Science - Regional Studies; Sports & Recreation - Sociology Of Sports | $25.00 | 978-0-307-88862-4 (0-307-88862-2)

Muck City by Bryan Mealer

2012-10-23T00:30:00-05:00

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town
Written by Bryan Mealer

eBook, 336 pages | Crown Archetype | Sports & Recreation - Football; Social Science - Regional Studies; Sports & Recreation - Sociology Of Sports | $12.99 | 978-0-307-88864-8 (0-307-88864-9)

In Limestone Country by Scott Russell Sanders

2010-07-01T00:30:00-05:00

In Limestone Country
Written by Scott Russell Sanders

eBook | Beacon Press | History - United States - State & Local - Midwest (Ia, Il, In, Ks, Mi, Mn, Mo, Nd, Ne, Oh, Sd, Wi); Social Science - Regional Studies; Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs | $14.00 | 978-0-8070-9616-1 (0-8070-9616-4)

Good People in an Evil Time by Svetlana Broz

2005-01-17T00:30:00-05:00

Good People in an Evil Time
Written by Svetlana Broz

Trade Paperback, 584 pages | Other Press | Social Science - Essays; History - Europe - Eastern; Social Science - Regional Studies | $29.00 | 978-1-59051-196-1 (1-59051-196-4)

In the 1990s Svetlana Broz, granddaughter of former Yugoslav head of state Marshal Tito, volunteered her services as a physician in war-torn Bosnia. She discovered that her patients were not only in need of medical care, but that they urgently had a story to tell, a story suppressed by nationalist politicians and the mainstream media. What Broz heard compelled her to devote herself over the next several years to the collection of firsthand testimonies from the war. These testimonies show that ordinary people can and do resist the murderous ideology of genocide even under the most terrible historical circumstances. We are introduced to Mile Plakalovic, a magnificent humanist, who drove his taxi through the streets of Sarajevo, picking the wounded up off the sidewalk and delivering food and clothing to young and old, even when the bombing was at its worst. We meet Velimir Milosevic, poet, who traveled with an actor and entertained children as they hid in basements to avoid the bombing and gunfire, and we hear the stories of countless others who put themselves in grave danger to help others, regardless of ethnic background.

Faced with a world in which unspeakable crimes not only went unpunished but were rewarded with glory, profit, and power, the Bosnians of all faiths who testify in this book were starkly confronted with the limits and possibilities of their own ethical choices. Here, in their own words they describe how people helped one another across ethnic lines and refused the myths promoted by the engineers of genocide. This book refutes the stereotype of inevitable natural enmities in the Balkans and reveals the responsibility of individual actions and political manipulations for the genocide; it is a searing portrait of the experience of war as well as a provocative study of the possibilities of resistance and solidarity. The testimonies reverberate far beyond the frontiers of the former Yugoslavia. This compelling book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the reality on the ground of the ethnic conflicts of the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.

In Limestone Country by Scott Russell Sanders

1991-10-29T00:30:00-05:00

In Limestone Country
Written by Scott Russell Sanders

Trade Paperback, 188 pages | Beacon Press | History - United States - State & Local - Midwest (Ia, Il, In, Ks, Mi, Mn, Mo, Nd, Ne, Oh, Sd, Wi); Social Science - Regional Studies; Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs | $16.00 | 978-0-8070-6335-4 (0-8070-6335-5)

Random House New Releases - Social Science - Regional Studies

Muck City by Bryan Mealer

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten TownWritten by Bryan Mealer

Muck City by Bryan Mealer

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten TownWritten by Bryan Mealer

Muck City by Bryan Mealer

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten TownWritten by Bryan Mealer

In Limestone Country by Scott Russell Sanders

In Limestone Country Written by Scott Russell Sanders

Good People in an Evil Time by Svetlana Broz

Good People in an Evil Time Written by Svetlana Broz

In Limestone Country by Scott Russell Sanders

In Limestone Country Written by Scott Russell Sanders

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town
Written by Bryan Mealer

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town
Written by Bryan Mealer

Muck City Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town
Written by Bryan Mealer

In Limestone Country
Written by Scott Russell Sanders

Good People in an Evil Time
Written by Svetlana Broz

In Limestone Country
Written by Scott Russell Sanders