The Wonder Team

Details events leading to the 1927 World Series, when the New York Yankees, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Waite Hoyt, became baseball's best team ever. Draws on interviews with everyone connected to the team, from players and management to batboys, and relates stories concerning players' personalities, skills, and hijinks on and off the field. Includes 1927 statistics and biographical sketches of management, players, and staff, plus bandw photos. Paper edition (unseen), $13.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A time-twisting adventure from Leah Williamson, captain of the Euros-winning women’s England team, written with debut author Jordan Glover, including illustrations by Robin Boyden, perfect for children aged 8 - 12! It's time to kick off a new adventure! Loosely based on one of Leah Williamson's big inspirations, the Dick Kerr Ladies and their brave protest against the ban on women's football, The Wonder Team and the Forgotten Footballers is a fun adventure that comes from the heart. When Leah discovers a mysterious time capsule with her two best friends, she opens up a whole new world of adventure! Transported a hundred years back in time, Leah, George and Mimi make an unexpected discovery – women’s football has been banned! Along with their new friend Dot, Leah and the team must work together to make sure the all-important Championship Cup final still goes ahead. But with a mysterious figure working hard to ruin the team’s chances, Leah is in a race against time to put the clues together and catch the culprit before it’s too late! The odds are against them, but time is on their side!

The Wonder Team and the Pharaoh's Fortune is the second book in the bestselling time-twisting adventure series from Leah Williamson, captain of the Euros-winning England team! Written with author Jordan Glover and illustrated by Robin Boyden. It’s time to kick off an adventure with the Wonder Team! When Leah and her friends are magically transported to Egypt, they realize they've also been taken back in time – they're stuck in the year 1900! And, even worse, their school bully has somehow travelled back with them! But when they meet Khalid and his aunt Amina, an Egyptian archaeologist who's on an expedition to discover a mythical amulet, Leah and her friends are excited to join the hunt. With a mysterious figure working to sabotage Amina, The Wonder Team will have to work together to uncover the clues and dodge booby traps as they search for the pharaoh’s treasure. Can they solve the mystery before time runs out, or will the secret of the pyramids stay hidden forever?

Growing up is bewildering and exciting to every child. This was particularly true for a child born during the Great Depression (1930's) and who also experienced the "Home Front" efforts of World War II. Coupled with these great national events was the fact that this child lived in a multi-ethnic "melting pot" city of Passaic, New Jersey. The true growing up adventures are told in a series of stories, some with side-splitting humor, others highly poignant. For example: How learning the "facts of life" from the older guys on the street corner caused a major lifetime disaster; how, with his best friend, he personally helped defeat Japan and Germany in WWII; how he witnessed the three greatest aeronautical events of the 20th century; how the handwriting rules in the Passaic schools caused a blunder in front of President John F. Kennedy which helped Kennedy to decide to send a man to the moon; how the structural design of the giant Saturn rocket booster was actually invented in a Passaic toilet bowl. But more important, the stories provide the secret of how the immigrant-dominated Passaic uniquely prepared its children to succeed in America, and how it still doing it today.

Across America in the wake of World War I, college football entered a time of prominence, often referred to as a “Golden Era.” This same period saw the origins of many beloved traditions of Texas A&M: cadets became known as “Aggies;” the “Aggie War Hymn” penned by J. V. “Pinky” Wilson ’21 was officially adopted; maroon and white emerged as the sanctioned college colors. And in 1922, a lanky Dallas athlete named E. King Gill stepped up and agreed to be the “12th Man” at a football game that may have been the greatest ever played. Today, the 12th Man tradition is one of the most cherished parts of A&M heritage. The 1922 Dixie Classic, precursor to today’s Cotton Bowl, featured a contest between two championship coaches with strong ties to Texas A&M: D. X. Bible, who led the Aggies from 1916 to 1928, and Centre College’s “Uncle Charlie” Moran, who coached at A&M from 1909 to 1914. Historian John A. Adams Jr. ’73 uncovers enthralling details: the pregame conversation between Bible and E. King Gill that helped place Gill in uniform on the sidelines, the wedding celebration involving the Centre College team at the historic Adolphus Hotel the morning before the game, the diagram of the play the Aggies used to score the game-winning touchdown, and so much more. Sports fans and historians, especially those interested in the early days of American football, will savor the rich, previously unknown details surrounding this storied contest between two renowned coaches and their steadfast squads.

Historians of popular culture have recently been addressing the role of myth, and now it is time that social historians of sport also examined it. The contributors to this collection of essays explore the symbolic meanings that have been attached to sport in Europe by considering some of the mythic heroes who have dominated the sporting landscapes of their own countries. The ambition is to understand what these icons stood for in the eyes of those who watched or read about these vessels into which poured all manner of gender, class and patriotic expectations.

Goal! covers the history of the beautiful game from its origins in English public schools in the early 19th century to its current role as a crucial element of a globalized entertainment industry. The authors explain how football transformed from a sport at elite boarding schools in England to become a pastime popular with the working classes, enabling factories such as the Thames Iron Works and the Woolwich Arsenal to give birth to the teams that would become the Premier League mainstays known as West Ham United and Arsenal. They also explore how the age of amateur soccer ended and, with the advent of professionalism, how football became a sport dominated by big clubs with big money and with an international audience.

Since the birth of basketball in the YMCA's of New England at the dawn of the 20th century, the game has known many great coaches. Each makes his own contributions to the sport, others learn from his successes and build on what they've learned to make their own mark on the game. However, there was a time when there was no one to learn from, no successes to emulate. Someone had to be the first. When basketball was in its infancy, many men saw the sport's potential for building physical fitness and good character in young men. But one man possessed the rare combination of skill, passion and charisma that came together in unique circumstances to produce basketball's first great coach. Ernest Blood developed a system of training boys that dominated basketball in a way like none other before or since. Affectionately called Professor Blood or "Prof" Blood for short-the game's first coaching phenom amassed a mind-boggling 159-game win streak spanning six seasons with his teams at New Jersey's Passaic High School. It was no wonder his teams were dubbed the "Wonder Teams". Like many transcendent success stories, this one is rife with controversy and adversity, jealousy, and battles of wills. At the heart of it all, though you will find a coach whose greatness is not merely measured by his extraordinary record, but also by his deep love of the game, unquestionable values and a desire to help boys become men of integrity and honour. This is his story.