Joe The Sports Boy

Dress one appealing young man in complete outfits for playing football, soccer, and baseball, plus baggy pants, and a baseball cap for skateboarding. 33 stickers.

What role does taste play in contemporary youth culture? How do young people reproduce, or alternatively, reject gender norms? Using new research and the work of renowned theorists such as Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu, Victoria Cann argues that popular culture affects young people's experiences of masculinity and femininity and forces them to navigate a social minefield in which they are pressured to display tastes deemed appropriate for their gender. Combining her own unique empirical research with a strong theoretical framework, Cann widens and links the fields of gender and taste studies to show the everyday reality of twenty-first-century youth and their apprehensions - especially those of young boys- about participating in activities, or embracing pop-cultural preferences that have traditionally only been associated with the opposite sex.

An inspiring portrait of the extraordinary high-school football team whose quest for perfection sustains its hometown in the heartland The football team in Smith Center, Kansas, has won sixty-seven games in a row, the nation's longest high-school winning streak. They have done so by embracing a philosophy of life taught by their legendary coach, Roger Barta: "Respect each other, then learn to love each other and together we are champions." But as they embarked on a quest for a fifth consecutive title in the fall of 2008, they faced a potentially destabilizing transition: the greatest senior class in school history had graduated, and Barta was contemplating retirement after three decades on the sidelines. In Smith Center—population: 1,931—this changing of the guard was seismic. Hours removed from the nearest city, the town revolves around "our boys" in a way that goes to the heart of what America's heartland is today. Joe Drape, a Kansas City native and an award-winning sportswriter for The New York Times, moved his family to Smith Center to discover what makes the team and the town an inspiration even to those who live hundreds of miles away. His stories of the coaches, players, and parents reveal a community fighting to hold on to a way of life that is rich in value, even as its economic fortunes decline. Drape's moving portrait of Coach Barta and the impressive young men of Smith Center is sure to take its place among the more memorable American sports stories of recent years.

A biography emphasizing the childhood of the baseball legend.

Jeffrey A. Kroessler's comprehensive and entertaining time line stretches from the pastoral entertainments of the Dutch to the corporate captivity of professional sports ... The Greater New York Sports Chronology covers the spectacle of blood sports like bullbaiting to the birth of baseball, the now-forgotten six-day pedestrian contests, and today's New York City Marathon.-publisher description.

Now a Major Motion Picture Directed by George Clooney The #1 New York Times–bestselling story about the American Olympic rowing triumph in Nazi Germany—from the author of Facing the Mountain. For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.

Described by James Dobson as "America's Keeper of the Story," Joe Wheeler has been collecting short stories from numerous sources for many years. Among these over 1,000 stories are some especially selected for boys, age 8-12, about sports. In this compilation of short stories, author/compiler Joe Wheeler captures the physical challenges and character-building choices of Terry and eleven other young athletes involved in a variety of sports including baseball, football, basketball, diving, hockey, rowing, bicycling and swimming. As a bonus, readers will see how things have changed in various sports over the years. Perfect for any boy who loves sports and the history behind them.