Random House New Releases - Sports & Recreation - Sociology Of Sports - Between May 23, 2012 and June 22, 2013.

The Most Expensive Game in Town by Mark Hyman

2013-04-09T00:30:00-05:00

The Most Expensive Game in Town The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and the Toll on Today's Families
Written by Mark Hyman

A look at how commercialization has transformed youth sports from fun into a heavily commercialized and profitable venture

Examining the youth sports economy from many sides—the major corporations, the small entrepreneurs, the coaches, the parents, and, of course, the kids—Hyman probes the reasons for rapid changes in what gets bought and sold in this lucrative marketplace. He reveals the effects on kids and profiles the individuals and communities bucking this destructive trend of commercialization.

From the Hardcover edition.

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

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

Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson

2012-08-29T00:30:00-05:00

Haunts of the Black Masseur The Swimmer as Hero
Written by Charles Sprawson

In a masterful work of cultural history, Charles Sprawson, himself an obsessional swimmer and fluent diver, explores the meaning that different cultures have attached to water, and the search for the springs of classical antiquity.

In nineteenth-century England bathing was thought to be an instrument of social and moral reform, while in Germany and America swimming came to signify escape. For the Japanese the swimmer became an expression of samurai pride and nationalism. Sprawson gives is fascinating glimpses of the great swimming heroes: Byron leaping dramatically into the surf at Shelley’s beach funeral; Rupert Brooke swimming naked with Virginia Woolf, the dark water “smelling of mint and mud”; Hart Crane swallow-diving to his death in the Bay of Mexico; Edgar Allan Poe’s lone and mysterious river-swims; Leander, Webb, Weissmuller, and a host of others.

Informed by the literature of Swinburne, Goethe, Scott Fitzgerald, and Yukio Mishima; the films of Riefenstahl and Vigo; the Hollywood “swimming musicals” of the 1930s; and delving in and out of Olympic history, Haunts of the Black Masseur is an enthralling assessment of man—body submerged, self-absorbed. It is quite simply the best celebration of swimming ever written, even as it explores aspects of culture in a heretofore unimagined way.

Random House New Releases - Sports & Recreation - Sociology Of Sports - Between May 23, 2012 and June 22, 2013.

The Most Expensive Game in Town by Mark Hyman

The Most Expensive Game in Town The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and the Toll on Today's FamiliesWritten by Mark Hyman

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

Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson

Haunts of the Black Masseur The Swimmer as HeroWritten by Charles Sprawson

The Most Expensive Game in Town The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and the Toll on Today's Families
Written by Mark Hyman

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

Haunts of the Black Masseur The Swimmer as Hero
Written by Charles Sprawson