Terror In The City Of Champions

A New York Times Bestseller Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens—even, possibly, a beloved athlete. Terror in the City of Champions opens with the arrival of Mickey Cochrane, a fiery baseball star who roused the Great Depression’s hardest-hit city by leading the Tigers to the 1934 pennant. A year later he guided the team to its first championship. Within seven months the Lions and Red Wings follow in football and hockey—all while Joe Louis chased boxing’s heavyweight crown. Amidst such glory, the Legion’s dreadful toll grew unchecked: staged “suicides,” bodies dumped along roadsides, high-profile assassination plots. Talkative Dayton Dean’s involvement would deepen as heroic Mickey’s Cochrane’s reputation would rise. But the ballplayer had his own demons, including a close friendship with Harry Bennett, Henry Ford’s brutal union buster. Award-winning author Tom Stanton weaves a stunning tale of history, crime, and sports. Richly portraying 1930s America, Terror in the City of Champions features a pageant of colorful figures: iconic athletes, sanctimonious criminals, scheming industrial titans, a bigoted radio priest, a love-smitten celebrity couple, J. Edgar Hoover, and two future presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. It is a rollicking true story set at the confluence of hard luck, hope, victory, and violence. .

The changing fortunes of Detroit, told through the lens of the city's major sporting events, by the bestselling author of Soccernomics, and a prizewinning cultural critic From Ty Cobb and Hank Greenberg to the Bad Boys, from Joe Louis and Gordie Howe to the Malice at the Palace, City of Champions explores the history of Detroit through the stories of its most gifted athletes and most celebrated teams, linking iconic events in the history of Motown sports to the city's shifting fortunes. In an era when many teams have left rustbelt cities to relocate elsewhere, Detroit has held on to its franchises, and there is currently great hope in the revival of the city focused on its downtown sports complexes—but to whose benefit? Szymanski and Weineck show how the fate of the teams in Detroit's stadiums, gyms, and fields is echoed in the rise and fall of the car industry, political upheavals ushered in by the depression, World War II, the 1967 uprising, and its recent bankruptcy and renewal. Driven by the conviction that sports not only mirror society but also have a special power to create both community and enduring narratives that help define a city's sense of self, City of Champions is a unique history of the most American of cities.

This volume presents fifteen chapters of biography of African American and black champions and challengers of the early prize ring. They range from Tom Molineaux, a slave who won freedom and fame in the ring in the early 1800s; to Joe Gans, the first African American world champion; to the flamboyant Jack Johnson, deemed such a threat to white society that film of his defeat of former champion and “Great White Hope” Jim Jeffries was banned across much of the country. Photographs, period drawings, cartoons, and fight posters enhance the biographies. Round-by-round coverage of select historic fights is included, as is a foreword by Hall-of-Fame boxing announcer Al Bernstein.

A 1911 account of the origins and characteristics of Greek tragedies, discussing the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Roman and Elsbone were veteran animal trappers and hunters. They were warned by the Chalukyas tribesmen that the Devil Dogs were ferocious and did not fear man or any other animal. The hunters were experienced predators and huntsmen and knew that the wild beast that the tribesmen were leery of were just Himalayan tempestuous wolves. The Chalukyas tribesmen disclosed to the hunters that they had seen two Devil Dogs bring down a huge wild boar and tear it apart one evening at the base of the Mahila Mountains. It is known amongst hunters and wildlife individuals that no wild animal/beasts or man want any part of the violent desolate fierce boars; these Devil Dogs were fearsome and vicious. The major deciding factors that finally made the huntsmen want to seek and capture the wolves were these main issues: One, the Los Angeles zoo was offering a large amount of money for two legendary Devil Dogs from India. The second aspect was they heard that a single Devil Dog had fought and killed a Siberian Tiger; this factor increased their inquisitiveness and curiosity of this sensational beast and its folklore. Their egos also played a part in their judgment to capture the animals An element they had to contemplate and had caused them concern was that they were told that the beast only come out after the sun has set. Nightfall, this is an advantageous factor for the nighttime predator. So these beasts were nocturnal hunters; this was not an odd characteristic for any wolf, but still it was a concern for the hunters. All these tidbits of information just enticed Roman and Elsbone even more, and it heightened their hunting and ego desires. The two English veteran hunters were now traveling toward their prey and compensations as they were now heading toward the foothills of the snowcapped Himalayas, the hunting grounds of the Devil Dogs. The huntsmen eventually had left their regular and familiar stomping grounds of South Africa years earlier because of the civil turmoil that continues to cause chaos and havoc with many of the unsettled tribes and conformed city dwellers. The other object and issue was now there are all the new restrictions and hunting laws causing hardship on hunters and trappers, also there were the conservation laws protecting the wild beast limiting them even more. Elsbone and Roman left Africa and went and took their trade to South America. But after some time, they grew tired of the humid atmosphere, the different language, and customs along with the constant damp eerie rain forest. So now they were here in India following the harsh rumors of the ferocious wild Devil Dogs that killed cattle, pigs, and villagers and nowthey also heardeven killed mountain lions. The hunters journey did have some hardships. They needed to travel far through hot rough desolate deserts with very cold nights.