Gods Of Sport

An exclusive collection of previously unseen images taken from the photo-shoots of the 'Naked for a cause: Australian footballers 2008/9' calendar, which was launched in Australia in September 2007 as part of a fundraising initiative in aid of 'The McGrath Foundation' - an Australian based charity.

The Sport of the Gods is a novel set in the United States in the late nineteenth century. It chronicles the tribulations of the Oakleys, an African American family of four, as they struggle to survive and maintain their integrity in a Southern town and then in New York City. Prejudice, provincialism, and temptation take their tolls, and the justice system stands ever ready to grab the losers. This was Paul Laurence Dunbar’s final novel, published first in the May 1901 issue of Lipincott’s Monthly Magazine. In 1902, Dodd, Mead & Co. published it as a book.

Twelve interviews with Australian sports stars who are Christians in different churches, including charismatic, Uniting Church, Catholic and Anglican, telling of their careers and how their Christian experiences and values influence what they do. The players, in a wide range of sports, include Peter Warner, Tani Ruckle, Steve Lawrence and Craig Warren.

A beautifully observed narrative of American sport: character, grit, tragedy, unremarked heroism, and, always, the illuminating story behind the story. As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades. He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he’d tested positive for HIV. There are also little-known private moments: Joe Morgan whispering thank you to a virtually blind Jackie Robinson on the field at the 1972 World Series, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar saying he was more interested in being a good man than in being the greatest basketball player. Brimming with colorful vignettes and enlivened by Callahan’s eye for detail, Gods at Play offers surprising portraits of the most celebrated names in sports. Roger Rosenblatt calls Callahan “the most complete sportswriter in America. He knows the most and writes the best."

Sexy Australian football stars at the beach, on the open sea and under the shower.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

First published in 1902, "The Sport of the Gods" tells the story of a black family forced to leave the South and face the harsh realities of life in a Northern city. A moving examination of the life of African-Americans post-emancipation, "The Sport of the Gods" represents a landmark in African-American literature that will appeal to those with an interest in this particular chapter of American history. Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet during the start of the 20th century. Born to ex-slave parents, Dunbar began writing at a very early age and had even published his first poems by the age of 16 in a local newspaper. Much of his work was written in the "African-American Vernacular" associated with the antebellum South, although he also employed conventional English in his novels and poems. Dunbar was among the first African-American writers to garner international acclaim for their work. Contents include: "The Hamiltons", "A Farewell Dinner", "The Theft", "From a Clear Sky", "The Justice of Men", "Outcasts", "In New York", "An Evening Out", "His Heart's Desire", "A Visitor from Home", "Broken Hopes", "'All the World's a Stage'", etc. Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this novel now complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.