Author: Richard Moore
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681774690
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Beijing 2008: Usain Bolt slows down as he approaches the 100-meter finish line. He beats his chest, well ahead of his nearest rival, his face filled with euphoria, the world in thrall of his extraordinary talent. It is one of the greatest moments in sports history, and it is just the beginning.Of the ten fastest 100-meter times in history, eight belong to Jamaicans. How is it that this small island has come to dominate men’s and women’s sprinting? The Bolt Supremacy opens the doors to a community where sprinting permeates daily life; where the high school championships are watched by 35,000 screaming fans; where identity, success and status are forged on the track, and where "making it" means adoration and lucrative contracts. In such a society there can be the incentive for some to cheat. There are those who attribute Jamaican success to something beyond talent and hard work.Award-winning writer Richard Moore doesn’t shy away from difficult questions as he travels the length of this beguiling country speaking to antidoping agencies, scientists and skeptics as well as to coaches, superstars, and the young guns desperate to become the next big thing. Peeling back the layers, Moore finally reveals the secrets of Usain Bolt and the remarkable Jamaican sprint factory.
Author: Richard Moore
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0224092316
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Beijing 2008, the 100 metres final: Usain Bolt slows down, beats his chest, metres clear of his nearest rival, his face filled with the euphoria of a young man utterly in thrall to his extraordinary physical talent. It is one of the greatest sporting moments. It is just the beginning. Of the ten fastest 100-metres times in history, eight belong to Jamaicans. How is it that a small Caribbean island has come to almost totally dominate the men’s and women’s sprint events? The Bolt Supremacy opens the doors to a community where sprinting permeates conversations and interactions; where the high school championships are watched by 35,000 screaming fans; where identity, success and status are forged on the track, and where making it is a pass to a world of adoration and lucrative contracts. In such a society there can be the incentive for some to cheat. There are those who attribute Jamaican success to something beyond talent and hard work. Award-winning writer Richard Moore doesn’t shy away from difficult questions as he travels the length of this beguiling country speaking to anti-doping agencies, scientists and sceptics as well as to coaches, gurus, superstar athletes and the young guns desperate to become the next big thing. Peeling back the layers, Moore finally reveals the secrets of Usain Bolt and the Jamaican sprint factory.
Author: Robert Bolt
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408176335
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 165
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Book Description
A Man for All Seasons dramatises the conflict between King Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More. It depicts the confrontation between church and state, theology and politics, absolute power and individual freedom. Throughout the play Sir Thomas More's eloquence and endurance, his purity, saintliness and tenacity in the face of ever-growing threats to his beliefs and family, earn him status as one of modern drama's greatest tragic heroes. The play was first staged in 1960 at the Globe Theatre in London and was voted New York's Best Foreign Play in 1962. In 1966 it was made into an Academy Award-winning film by Fred Zinneman starring Paul Scofield."A Man for All Seasons is a stark play, sparse in its narrative, sinewy in its writing, which confirms Mr Bolt as a genuine and solid playwright, a force in our awakening theatre." (Daily Mail)
Author: Richard Moore
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408181568
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
The men's 100m final at the 1988 Olympics has been described as the dirtiest race ever - but also the greatest. Aside from Johnson's blistering time, the race is infamous for its athletes' positive drug tests. This is the story of that race, the rivalry between Johnson and Lewis, and the repercussions still felt almost a quarter of a century on.
Author: Orlando Patterson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674243072
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
The preeminent sociologist and National Book Award–winning author of Freedom in the Making of Western Culture grapples with the paradox of his homeland: its remarkable achievements amid continuing struggles since independence. There are few places more puzzling than Jamaica. Jamaicans claim their home has more churches per square mile than any other country, yet it is one of the most murderous nations in the world. Its reggae superstars and celebrity sprinters outshine musicians and athletes in countries hundreds of times its size. Jamaica’s economy is anemic and too many of its people impoverished, yet they are, according to international surveys, some of the happiest on earth. In The Confounding Island, Orlando Patterson returns to the place of his birth to reckon with its history and culture. Patterson investigates the failures of Jamaica’s postcolonial democracy, exploring why the country has been unable to achieve broad economic growth and why its free elections and stable government have been unable to address violence and poverty. He takes us inside the island’s passion for cricket and the unparalleled international success of its local musical traditions. He offers a fresh answer to a question that has bedeviled sports fans: Why are Jamaican runners so fast? Jamaica’s successes and struggles expose something fundamental about the world we live in. If we look closely at the Jamaican example, we see the central dilemmas of globalization, economic development, poverty reduction, and postcolonial politics thrown into stark relief.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
Author: Neil Duncanson
Publisher: Headline Welbeck Non-Fiction
ISBN: 1787396673
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
With an exclusive foreword by Usain Bolt, The Fastest Men on Earth tells the fascinating inside stories of the Olympic Men's 100m Champions. It takes just under ten seconds to run, but the results of the Olympic men's 100 metres are etched forever into history. In The Fastest Men on Earth, journalist Neil Duncanson tells the stories of the 25 athletes who've been crowned champions in the event, and earned the coveted title of 'Fastest Man on Earth'. Each chapter explores the fascinating, inspiring, and occasionally tragic lives of these supremely talented sprinters, as well as the intense drama of the record-breaking runs that wrote them into history. Immaculately researched and featuring exclusive interviews with several Olympic champions, including a new conversation with Usain Bolt, The Fastest Men on Earth brings the stories of some of the greatest athletes of all time to life like never before.
Author: David K. Wiggins
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538152843
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
"An essential source on African American athletes and Olympic history.” —Booklist, Starred Review, and Named a Booklist Top 10 Sports Book of 2023 The first book to fully chronicle the struggles and triumphs of African American athletes in the Modern Olympic summer games. In the modern Olympic Games, from 1896 through the present, African American athletes have sought to honor themselves, their race, and their nation on the global stage. But even as these incredible athletes have served to promote visions of racial harmony in the supposedly-apolitical Olympic setting, many have also bravely used the games as a means to bring attention to racial disparities in their country and around the world. In Black Mercuries: African American Athletes, Race, and the Modern Olympic Games, David K. Wiggins, Kevin B. Witherspoon, and Mark Dyreson explore in detail the varied experiences of African American athletes, specifically in the summer games. They examine the lives and careers of such luminaries as Jesse Owens, Rafer Johnson, Wilma Rudolph, Florence Griffith-Joyner, Michael Johnson, and Simone Biles, but also many African American Olympians who have garnered relatively little attention and whose names have largely been lost from historical memory. In recounting the stories of these Black Olympians, Black Mercuries makes clear that their superior athletic skills did not always shield them from the racial tropes and insensitivity spewed by fellow athletes, the media, spectators, and many others. Yet, in part because of the struggles they faced, African American Olympians have been extraordinarily important symbolically throughout Olympic history, serving as role models to future Black athletes and often putting their careers on the line to speak out against enduring racial inequality and discriminatory practices in all walks of life.
Author: Kiese Laymon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982174838
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Fiction From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a “funny, astute, searching” (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi. Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared. Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan. City’s two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother’s house, where he discovers the key to Baize’s disappearance. Brilliantly “skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism” (Publishers Weekly), this dreamlike “smart, funny, and sharp” (Jesmyn Ward), novel shows the work that young Black Americans must do, while living under the shadow of a history “that they only gropingly understand and must try to fill in for themselves” (The Wall Street Journal).
Author: Andrew R. M. Smith
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477319786
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Olympic gold medalist. Two-time world heavyweight champion. Hall of Famer. Infomercial and reality TV star. George Foreman’s fighting ability is matched only by his acumen for selling. Yet the complete story of Foreman’s rise from urban poverty to global celebrity has never been told until now. Raised in Houston’s “Bloody Fifth” Ward, battling against scarcity in housing and food, young Foreman fought sometimes for survival and other times just for fun. But when a government program rescued him from poverty and introduced him to the sport of boxing, his life changed forever. In No Way but to Fight, Andrew R. M. Smith traces Foreman’s life and career from the Great Migration to the Great Society, through the Cold War and culture wars, out of urban Houston and onto the world stage where he discovered that fame brought new challenges. Drawing on new interviews with George Foreman and declassified government documents, as well as more than fifty domestic and international newspapers and magazines, Smith brings to life the exhilarating story of a true American icon. No Way but to Fight is an epic worthy of a champion.
