Sports Politics

On July 19, 1924, Eric Liddell was on top of the world. He was the most famous Briton at the time, having just won the gold in the Olympic 400-meter race. The story of that race - and the one he didn't run - was told in the popular movie classic Chariots of Fire. But what most of us don't know is what became of Eric Liddell in the years after the credits rolled. As the storm clouds of World War II rolled in, Liddell's strength of character led him to choose an uncertain future in China during World War II to continue helping the Chinese.

When thousands of Somali refugees resettled in Lewiston, Maine, a struggling, overwhelmingly white town, longtime residents grew uneasy. Then the mayor wrote a letter asking Somalis to stop coming, which became a national story. While scandal threatened to subsume the town, its high school's soccer coach integrated Somali kids onto his team, and their passion began to heal old wounds.

For more than a decade, New York University president John Sexton has used baseball to illustrate the elements of a spiritual life in a wildly popular course at NYU. Using great works of baseball literature as well as the actual game’s fantastic moments, its legendary characters, and its routine rituals - from the long-sought triumph of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers to the heroic achievements of players like the saintly Christy Mathewson and the sinful Ty Cobb to the loving intimacy of a game of catch between a father and son - Sexton teaches that through the game we can touch the spiritual dimensions of life.

On the heels of the cult television hit Friday Night Lights, The New York Times best-selling author of The Junction Boys pens the story of Texas high school football integration, and the three men who put together a championship team.

In the 1966 NCAA basketball championship game, an all-white University of Kentucky team was beaten by a team from Texas Western College (now UTEP) that fielded only black players. The game, played in the middle of the racially turbulent 1960s - part David and Goliath in short pants, part emancipation proclamation of college basketball - helped destroy stereotypes about black athletes.

Taiji (pronounced Tie-jee) is an excellent system of exercise characterized by spiraling, supple, lithe movements, but it is much more than just a mild exercise. Taiji can also be used as an effective martial art, moving meditation, a way by which blood, nerve, and lymph blockages can be reduced, as well as reducing needless tensions, thus improving health; a way to develop good balance and power, clearer thinking, smooth and more effective actions, and is even able to make one better looking.

Rick Reilly hat Donald Trump über 30 Jahre beim Golfspiel beobachtet. Sein Buch über dessen Verhalten beim Sport ist ebenso witzig wie erhellend. Wie man Golf spielt entblößt, wer man ist. Der bekannte Sport-Journalist und Golf-Enthusiast Rick Reilly hat Donald Trump viele Jahre auf dem Golfplatz erlebt, und schildert in seinem Buch urkomisch die Raffinesse und Kaltschnäuzigkeit, mit der sich Trump beim Gentleman-Sport auf alle nur erdenklichen Weisen einen Vorteil zu verschaffen weiß. Wenn es etwas gibt, was in Trumps Welt auf keinen Fall passieren darf, dann eine Niederlage - und sei es beim Spiel mit Tiger Woods.

Jools Walker rediscovered cycling aged 28 after a decade-long absence from the saddle. When she started blogging about her cycle adventures under the alias Lady Vélo, a whole world was opened up to her. But it's hard to find space in an industry not traditionally open to women - especially women of colour. Shortly after getting back on two wheels, Jools was diagnosed with depression and then, in her early 30s, hit by a mini-stroke. Yet, through all of these punctures, one constant remained: Jools' love of cycling.

Tom Blake changed the face of surfing and has long been lauded as one of the true pioneers and innovators in the sport. Although much has been written about him and his contributions (culminating in Gary Lynch's magisterial biography of him, Tom Blake: The Uncommon Journey of a Pioneer Waterman, published in 2001), very little work has been done on Tom Blake's Einsteinian philosophy.

Few people watch sport for its politics. Yet what happens on the field of play often reflects the problems in our society. Such was the case in the '80s, when black footballers emerged from the dressing room to find bananas being hurled from the stands, and racially motivated attacks and police harassment were the norm. Today, things have improved. Crowds are less hostile and stars like Anthony Joshua and Sir Mohamed Farah are among our most revered sporting heroes. But for athletes of colour, success on the field seldom converts to power away from it.

Jackie Robinson heroically broke the color barrier in 1947. But how—and, in practice, when—did the integration of the sport actually occur? Bill Madden shows that baseball’s famous black experiment” did not truly succeed until the coming of age of Willie Mays and the emergence of some star players—Larry Doby, Hank Aaron, and Ernie Banks—in 1954. And as a relevant backdrop off the field, it was in May of that year that the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, that segregation be outlawed in America’s public schools.

They've traded punches in knockdown brawls, crashed biplanes through barns, and raced to the rescue in fast cars. They add suspense and drama to the story, portraying the swimmer stalked by the menacing shark, the heroine dangling 20 feet below a soaring hot air balloon, or the woman leaping nine feet over a wall to escape a dog attack. Only an expert can make such feats of daring look easy, and stuntwomen with the skills to perform - and survive - great moments of action in movies have been hitting their mark in Hollywood since the beginning of film.

人類は今、新たな進化の段階に突入している。産業革命は社会を変えたが、IT革命は人間の心を変えようとしているのだ。

On a tenebrous winter morning in Denver, Colorado, Leo Jenkins felt the weight of the world crushing him. Leo has a decision to make - maintain a comfortable position in a career he's no longer passionate about - or take a massive leap of faith. Giving up everything he's ever known, Jenkins sells his business, purges every possession that won't fit into a single backpack, and sets off into the world in pursuit of answers.

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

Smart Ball follows Major League Baseball's history as a sport, a domestic monopoly, a neocolonial power, and an international business. MLB's challenge has been to market its popular mythology as the national pastime with pastoral, populist roots while addressing the management challenges of competing with other sports and diversions in a burgeoning global economy. Baseball researcher Robert F. Lewis II argues that MLB for years abused its legal insulation and monopoly status.

Girls' athletic participation in school and community sports programs is skyrocketing. Girls now comprise 33 percent of all high school athletes, representing a dramatic increase from four percent who participated in 1971, the year before the enactment of Title IX. You Go, Girl! is a collection of first person insights, thoughts, and stories from successful women in the world of sports.

The book chronicles the extraordinary life and leadership of Rome's Emperor Julius Caesar, from his early years to his assassination. "History of Julius Caesar" is one of many biographies aimed at young people written by Jacob Abbott and his brother. The biographies are written in such a way that makes them appealing and easily accessible to everyone.

On September 1, 2004, three middle-aged buddies set out on one of the last geographic challenges never before attempted in North America: to hike the Comb Ridge in one continuous push. The Comb is an upthrust ridge of sandstone-virtually a mini-mountain range-that stretches almost unbroken for a hundred miles from just east of Kayenta, Arizona, to some ten miles west of Blanding, Utah. To hike the Comb is to run a gauntlet of up-and-down severities, with the precipice lurking on one hand, the fiendishly convoluted bedrock slab on the other-always at a sideways, ankle-wrenching pitch.

The heart-pounding story of an unlikely band of ragtags who took on Hitler's Grand Prix driver.