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Book #4 in The March Series - from USA Today Bestselling Author Barbara Dunlop, a comedic, contemporary romance series featuring the high-tech antics of matchmaking senior citizens unleashed on their unsuspecting heirs. Construction boss Hunter Vashon owes a huge debt to his grandmother Daisy for keeping his teenage secrets. When she asks for his help playing “Henry Higgins” to match-make his older brother, he can’t possibly say no. Machinist Kalie Gray has never been one for dresses and frills. She spends her days crafting state-of-the-art robotic parts and her weekends at dusty, off-road race-tracks. So she’s confused when handsome, sexy Hunter Vashon shows an interest in her. Kalie might be his brother’s perfect match, but Hunter can’t seem to stop himself from falling for her. She’s smart, funny and down to earth. And after her makeover, she’s drop dead gorgeous. He wants her for himself and tries desperately to reason with his grandmother. But Daisy stands her ground, and Hunter is torn between family loyalty and the woman he loves.
All the highlights of 150 editions of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack
A compelling and beautifully drawn social history of the first Australian cricket tour of England 'An excellent, bustling account of the first Australian cricket XI to tour England' Independent 'A fascinating story, well told' Choice The Ashes cricket series, played out between England and Australia, is the oldest - and undoubtedly the most keenly-contested - rivalry in international sport. And yet the majority of the first representative Australian cricket team to tour England in 1878 in fact regarded themselves as Englishmen. In May of that year the SS City of Berlin docked at Liverpool, and the Australians stepped onto English ground to begin the inaugural first-class cricket tour of England by a representative overseas team. As they made their way south towards Lord's to play MCC in the second match of the tour, the intrepid tourists - or 'the strangers' as they were referred to in the press - encountered arrogance and ignorance, cheating umpires and miserable weather. But by defeating a powerful MCC side which included W.G. Grace himself in a single afternoon's play, they turned English cricket on its head. The Lord's crowd, having begun by openly laughing at the tourists, were soon wildly celebrating a victory that has been described as 'arguably the most momentous six hours in cricket history' and claiming the Australians as their own. The Strangers Who Came Home is a compelling social history which brings that momentous summer to life, telling the story of these extraordinary men who travelled thousands of miles, risking life and limb, playing 43 matches in England (as well as several in Philadelphia, America, on their return journey) during a demanding but ultimately triumphant homecoming. It reveals how their glorious achievements on the field of play threw open the doors to international sports touring, and how these men from the colonies provided the stimulus for Australian nationhood through their sporting success and brought unprecedented vitality to international cricket.
'Hughes takes us on a breathless tour through cricket history, the great players, personalities, matches and events. He never slackens pace or dwells on the dry details of the scoreboard.' - The Times From the William Hill Award-Winning author of A Lot of Hard Yakka comes Cricket's Greatest Rivalry: A History of the Ashes in 10 Matches, a fast-paced, distinctive history of the iconic, 135-year-old cricketing rivalry between England and Australia. The new paperback edition is completely revised and updated to include the tumultuous two series of 2013-2014, which saw more more twists and turns in this enthralling contest. No other sport has a fixture like the Ashes. From the early 1880s the rivalry between these two great sporting nations has captured the public imagination and made sporting legends of its stars. Commentator, analyst and award-winning cricket historian Simon Hughes tells the story of the ten seminal series that have become the stuff of sporting folklore. Cricket's Greatest Rivalry places you right at the heart of the action of each pivotal match, explaining the social context of the time, the atmosphere of the crowd and the background and temperaments of the players that battled in both baggy green and blue caps. Simon starts his story at the very birth of the Ashes and tells the tale of the band of Australians that took on the best gentleman and players in the Empire's HQ and beat them on their home turf. That momentous occasion set the tone for some epic contests including: The thrilling 1902 Test at Old Trafford, which was one by a mere three runs. The incredible innings of Hobbs and Sutcliffe in front of a tense and packed Oval in 1926. The legendary 'bodyline' series of Jardine, Larwood, Bradman et al in 1933. The incredible run chase in 1948 that also saw Bradman's last test. England's reprise in the fifth test of 1953 when Lock, Trueman, Bailey and Hutton steered the hosts to a whirlwind victory. The fearsome pace attack from the likes of Lillie and Thompson that transformed the contest in the first Test of 1974 and shaped the Ashes as a tournament for decades to come. Botham's Ashes in 1981 that restored pride in a sports-mad nation. The match up at old Trafford where the magic of one Shane Warne sent shockwaves through the game. And finally the breaking of the Aussie stranglehold in 2005, when Flintoff, Pietersen and Vaughan did the seemingly impossible and re-established the greatest of rivalries. The book also includes complete statistics and records of all the Ashes fixtures and results and much, much more!
The commercialization of sport since the 1990s has had a number of consequences. The market forces that have defined commercialization, notably pay-per-view television, whilst initially welcomed as important new sources of revenue, have also had the unanticipated consequences of de-stabilizing many sporting competitions and institutions, undermining the financial future of clubs in their traditional role as key social and cultural institutions. This has been manifested in the paradox of chronic financial loss-making amongst professional sports’ clubs in an era of exponential revenue growth, a trend exemplified by the experience of Italy’s Series A and the English Premier League – both cases examined in detail in this book. But, at the same time, some traditional sporting organizations have sought with some success, to chart a middle way, retaining traditional sporting movement objectives whilst also embracing a form of commercialism. The Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland, the supporter-owned FC Barcelona football club, and New Zealand rugby union, offer illustrative examples of such strategies examined in detail. This book explores the background to this clash of commercial and traditional sporting objectives, and debates the consequences for wider sports governance. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.
Big tobacco meets the boob tube in this incendiary satire from the bestselling author of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis Jefferson Tatum is a self-made man. Founder of Tatum Cigarette Company, he wrote the brand’s advertising jingle—“Tatums smoke mild like an innocent child”—and has been bringing home big money—and hunting huge bears—ever since. But this year his tobacco sales are down 3 percent thanks to the surgeon general’s cancer warnings. To make matters worse, Tatum’s forty-three-year-old son, Virgil, shows more interest in presiding over his unaccredited college and its undefeated football team than learning about the family business. Hoping to kill two birds with one stone, Tatum sets out to reinvigorate his company by transforming Acanthus College into a top-tier research institution. The school’s scientists will prove that food is more dangerous than cigarettes, making everyone so anxious they’ll start smoking again. But when Tatum hires a New York theater director turned Hollywood bigwig to produce a documentary about the research, nothing goes as planned. Secrets are unearthed, old loves are rekindled, and a TV director with a conscience (will wonders never cease?) threatens to expose the whole scam.
“Beautifully researched and engagingly told, this book captures the bitter conflicts and surprising continuities that marked the emergence of a national style in Brazil as it tells the story of the men and women who, despite their many differences, together created ‘the beautiful game.’”—Roger Kittleson, author of The Country of Football: Soccer and the Making of Modern Brazil “Compellingly shows how each segment of Brazilian society—players, club owners, and spectators, especially the usually neglected female fans—was touched by the sport that it eventually came to proudly embrace as its own.”—Amy Chazkel, coeditor of The Rio de Janeiro Reader: History, Culture, Politics “Highlights the narrative power of soccer, showing how Brazilians—from elite sportsmen and nationalist intellectuals to common men and women—infused the sport with both personal and national importance.”—Joshua Nadel, author of Fútbol!: Why Soccer Matters in Latin America Although the popular history of Brazilian football narrates a story of progress toward democracy and inclusion, it does not match the actual historical record. Instead, football can be understood as an invention of early twentieth century middle-class and wealthy Brazilians who called themselves “sportsmen” and nationalists, and used the sport as part of their larger campaigns to shape and reshape the nation. In this cross-cutting cultural history, Gregg Bocketti traces the origins of football in Brazil from its elitist, Eurocentric identity as “foot-ball” at the end of the nineteenth century to its subsequent mythologization as the specifically Brazilian “futebol,” o jogo bonito (the beautiful game). Bocketti examines the popular depictions of the sport as having evolved from a white elite pastime to an integral part of Brazil’s national identity known for its passion and creativity, and concludes that these mythologized narratives have obscured many of the complexities and the continuities of the history of football and of Brazil. Mining a rich trove of sources, including contemporary sports journalism, archives of Brazilian soccer clubs, and British ministry records, and looking in detail at soccer’s effect on all parts of Brazilian society, Bocketti shows how important the sport is to an understanding of Brazilian nationalism and nation building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.