I'm a HUGE Notre Dame Football fan (4 and 0, baby!), but I also like sports in general. This whole replacement ref fiasco (welcome back, real refs!) reminded me how dramatic sports can be. The competition of the game, match, whathaveyou means that there is a built in story. Once you add the elements of perseverance, ego, and skill, you've got yourself quite the tale to tell.
This month's Variations on a Theme is all about sports.
Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
H.G. Bissinger
Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa—the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, H. G. Bissinger chronicles a season in the life of Odessa and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires—and sometimes shatters—the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms.
Wait Till Next Year
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Undefeated: Inside the 1972 Miami Dolphins Perfect Season
Mike Freeman
Swim: Why We Love the Water
Lynn Sherr
Swim is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It’s an inquiry into why we swim—the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It’s a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia, how this ancient activity is becoming more social than solitary today. It’s about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebearers, and with the costumes that we wear. You’ll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps.
The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever
Mark Frost
Other Sports Titles
The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL - Mark Bowden
Black Diamond: The Story of Negro League Baseball - Patricia J. McKissack and Frederick L. McKissack
The Blind Side: The Evolution of the Game - Michael Lewis
The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn
The Breaks of the Game - David Halberstam
Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year - Glenn Stout
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood - Jane Leavy
The Longest Shot: Jack Fleck, Ben Hogan, and Pro Golf's Greatest Upset at the 1955 U.S. Open - Neil Sagebiel
No Limits: The Will to Succeed - Michael Phelps
Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss - Marty Appel
Whenever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity, and the Perfect Knuckleball - R.A. Dickey
This month's Variations on a Theme is all about sports.
H.G. Bissinger
Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa—the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, H. G. Bissinger chronicles a season in the life of Odessa and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires—and sometimes shatters—the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year
is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with
her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner
store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally
divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans. We meet the people who most
influenced Goodwin's early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of
books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound: and her
father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers
of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil
Hodges. Most important, Goodwin describes with eloquence how the
Dodgers' leaving Brooklyn in 1957, and the death of her mother soon
after, marked both the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood.
Mike Freeman
Undefeated
explores the Miami Dolphins' legendary 1972 season, the only perfect
season in NFL history, and the journey to the championship—a story of
heartbreaking injuries, miraculous finishes, and tested relationships. Coach Don Shula transformed the
team—through hard work, long practices, and his no-nonsense attitude
toward the game—from a laughingstock expansion team, where careers went
to die, into a championship franchise. Led by such greats as Larry
Csonka, Bob Griese, Nick Buoniconti, Larry Little, Mercury Morris, and
Jake Scott—the Dolphins were undefeated in the regular season and went
on to win Super Bowl VII, in one of the greatest feats of toughness,
perseverance, and discipline the NFL has ever seen. Based on years of research and interviews, Undefeated examines
what is perhaps the single greatest accomplishment in team sports
history: the unforgettable NFL season in which the Dolphins never lost a
single game. There has never been a football team like those Miami
Dolphins, and there may never be again.
Lynn Sherr
Swim is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It’s an inquiry into why we swim—the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It’s a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia, how this ancient activity is becoming more social than solitary today. It’s about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebearers, and with the costumes that we wear. You’ll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps.
Mark Frost
The year: 1956. Four decades have
passed since Eddie Lowery came to fame as the ten-year-old caddie to
U.S. Open Champion Francis Ouimet. Now a wealthy car dealer and avid
supporter of amateur golf, Lowery has just made a bet with fellow
millionaire George Coleman. Lowery claims that two of his employees,
amateur golfers Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi, cannot be beaten in a
best-ball match. Lowery challenges Coleman to bring any two golfers of
his choice to the course at 10 a.m. the next day to settle the issue. Coleman accepts the challenge and
shows up with his own power team: Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, the
game's greatest living professionals, with fourteen major championships
between them. In Mark Frost's peerless hands,
complete with the recollections of all the participants, the story of
this immortal foursome and the game they played that day—legendarily
known in golf circles as the greatest private match ever played—comes to
life with powerful, emotional impact and edge-of-your-seat suspense.
Wayne Coffey
Once upon a time, they taught us
to believe. They were the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, a blue-collar
bunch led by an unconventional coach, and they engineered what Sports Illustrated
called the greatest sports moment of the twentieth century. Their
“Miracle on Ice” has become a national fairy tale, but the real
Cinderella story is even more remarkable. Wayne Coffey casts a fresh eye on
this seminal sports event, giving readers an ice-level view of the
amateurs who took on a Russian hockey juggernaut at the height of the
Cold War. He details the unusual chemistry of the Americans—formulated
by their fiercely determined coach, Herb Brooks—and seamlessly weaves
portraits of the boys with the fluid action of the game itself. Coffey
also traces the paths of the players and coaches since their stunning
victory, examining how the Olympic events affected their lives.
Other Sports Titles
The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL - Mark Bowden
Black Diamond: The Story of Negro League Baseball - Patricia J. McKissack and Frederick L. McKissack
The Blind Side: The Evolution of the Game - Michael Lewis
The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn
The Breaks of the Game - David Halberstam
Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year - Glenn Stout
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood - Jane Leavy
The Longest Shot: Jack Fleck, Ben Hogan, and Pro Golf's Greatest Upset at the 1955 U.S. Open - Neil Sagebiel
No Limits: The Will to Succeed - Michael Phelps
Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss - Marty Appel
Whenever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity, and the Perfect Knuckleball - R.A. Dickey
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