Making The Majors

In this in-depth look at major league sports, Eric Leifer traces the growth and development of major leagues in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, and predicts fundamental changes as the majors pursue international expansion. He shows how every past expansion of sports publics has been accompanied by significant changes in the way sporting competition is organized. With each reorganization, the majors have created teams closer in ability, bringing repetition to competition across time, only to expand and energize the public's search for differences between teams and for events that disrupt the repetitive flow. The phenomenal success of league sports, Leifer writes, rests on their ability to manufacture inequalities for fans to latch on to without jeopardizing the equalities that draw fans in. Leifer supports his theory with historical detail and statistical analysis. He examines the special concerns of league organizers in pursuing competitive balance and presents a detailed analysis of how large-city domination has been undermined in the modern era of Major League Baseball. Using games from the four major league sports, he then shows how fans can themselves affect the course of competition. In NFL football, for example, fans account for nearly all of the persisting inequality in team performance. The possibility of sustaining inequality among equals emerges from the cross-pressures that fans and leagues place on competition. With substantial data in hand, Leifer asks the essential question facing the leagues today: how can they sustain a situation that depends entirely on simultaneous equality and contention, one in which fan involvement may evaporate as soon as one team dominates? His answer has significant implications for the future of major league sports, both nationally and internationally.

A behind-the-scenes look at one of the greatest baseball movies ever. If you love watching "Major League," you’ll be fascinated by this inside story. Based on interviews with all major cast members plus crew and producers, it tells how writer/director David S. Ward battled the Hollywood system to turn his own love of the underdog Cleveland Indians into a classic screwball comedy. Learn how a tight-knit group of rising young stars (and a few wily veterans) had a blast pretending to play ball while creating several iconic characters. Filled with little-known facts and personal recollections about outtakes and inside jokes, batting practice and script changes, all-night location shoots, bar hopping and more, this is the ultimate guide to the film that reinvented the baseball movie and inspired a generation of belly laughs. Includes rare photos, storyboard illustrations, script excerpts, and more. With a foreword by Charlie Sheen.

Choosing a college major is one of the most important decisions students ever make, yet there is often confusion about picking the right discipline. Studies show that nearly two-thirds of all college freshman have not chosen a major, and nearly 60 percent of undergraduates change their major at least once resulting in lost time, money and productivity. To minimize the uncertainty in selecting the right major, Peterson's has partnered with industry leader, CPP the makers of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The MBTI was developed in the 1940s to make Carl Jung's theory of personality type understandable and useful in everyday life. This book will include access to a personality assessment to determine likes/dislikes and strengths/weaknesses to aid them in making sound decisions. The MBTI assessment, now priced at $9.95, coupled with the descriptions of more than 800 college majors, including course requirements, related majors, and related careers, will provide students an invaluable resource for making The Major Decision.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the legendary actor and best-selling author: a novel about the making of a star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film...and the humble comic books that inspired it. Funny, touching, and wonderfully thought-provoking, while also capturing the changes in America and American culture since World War II. "Wild, ambitious and exceptionally enjoyable." —Matt Haig, best-selling author The Midnight Library, The Humans and Reasons to Stay Alive Part One of this story takes place in 1947. A troubled soldier, returning from the war, meets his talented five-year-old nephew, leaves an indelible impression, and then disappears for twenty-three years. Cut to 1970: The nephew, now drawing underground comic books in Oakland, California, reconnects with his uncle and, remembering the comic book he saw when he was five, draws a new version with his uncle as a World War II fighting hero. Cut to the present day: A commercially successful director discovers the 1970 comic book and decides to turn it into a contemporary superhero movie. Cue the cast: We meet the film’s extremely difficult male star, his wonderful leading lady, the eccentric writer/director, the producer, the gofer production assistant, and everyone else on both sides of the camera. Bonus material: Interspersed throughout are three comic books that are featured in the story—all created by Tom Hanks himself—including the comic book that becomes the official tie-in to this novel’s "major motion picture masterpiece."

This book highlights cutting-edge research into emergency early warning management and decision-making for severe accidents. Using toxic gas leakages as examples, it puts forward new design methods for emergency early warning systems, as well as a systematic description of emergency early warning information communication mechanisms and characteristics of regional evacuation, based on a wide range of theories, including safety engineering, information engineering, communication, behaviorology and others. The book applies a range of methods, such as case analysis, questionnaire interviews, and multi-objective optimization modeling. Drawing on this basis, it subsequently proposes a multi-objective optimization modeling and algorithm for emergency path selection, together with an evacuation risk assessment method. Divided into six chapters prepared by an international team of researchers, the book addresses the design of early warning systems, communication and dissemination mechanisms of early warning information, characteristics of regional evacuation, multi-objective optimization of emergency paths, and evacuation risk assessment. The book offers an essential reference guide for engineering technicians and researchers in a wide range of fields, including emergency management, safety science and engineering, disaster relief engineering, and transportation optimization, as well as graduate students in related majors at colleges and universities.

This carefully crafted ebook: "BEAU SABREUR: Adventures of Major De Beaujolais (The Making of a Beau Sabreur & The Making of a Monarch)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Beau Sabreur focuses on the adventures of Major Henri De Beaujolais, an officer in the French Foreign legion, known as the "Beau Sabreur", title given to him by his uncle, General de Beaujolais. When Henri and his legionary friends, Raoul de Redon and Dufour do not return in time to leave Algiers they end up in jail. The general sends Henry into the desert to learn the local customs with a mission to conclude the signing of a crucial peace treaty, during which he meets Mary Vanbrugh, an American journalist. A traitor, Becque attacks them… The novel provides a detailed and fairly authentic description of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion, which has led to suggestions that P. C. Wren himself served with the legion. Percival Christopher Wren (1875 - 1941) was an English writer, mostly of adventure fiction. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much-filmed book of 1924, involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. This was one of 33 novels and short story collections that he wrote, mostly dealing with colonial soldiering in Africa. While his fictional accounts of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion are highly romanticized, his details of Legion uniforms, training, equipment and barrack room layout are generally accurate, which has led to unproven suggestions that Wren himself served with the legion.

With so much at stake during college, students need smart and inspiring advice to help them excel. Now in its fifth edition, MAJOR IN SUCCESS reaches out to undecided freshmen and sophomores in search of a major that suits their interests and career ambitions; shows near-graduation students how to bolster their résumé and ace the interview to land their first real job; and presents innovative strategies for tackling the six biggest fears that hold students back. Revised edition of the best-selling guide for college students looking to discover their passion and make the most of their college years. Includes updated resources and websites, the latest job market research, and new student success stories. Named a "Best Book" by the New York Public Library. Previous editions have sold more than 120,000 copies.

Picking a college major is a two-step process: First, you have to discover which areas of study interest you the most; then you need to find out which colleges offer those majors. The College Board Book of Majors is the only resource that helps you do both. Whether you're just beginning to look at colleges or have already enrolled, you'll find what you need to know about every major -- from accounting to zoology -- offered in every college from Maine to Hawaii. Book jacket.