A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist follows an embattled Little League team in inner-city Newark, New Jersey, revealing the complex realities of urban life in one of America's most dangerous citiesWhen Rodney Mason, an ex-con drug dealer from Newark's rough South Ward, was shot and paralyzed, he vowed to turn his life around. A former high-school pitching ace with a 93 mph fastball, Mason decided to form a Little League team to help boys avoid the street life that h...

“The incomparable and mysterious Sandy Koufax is revealed…. This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.” —Wall Street Journal“Leavy has hit it out of the park…A lot more than a biography. It’s a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero’s self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory… a remarkably rich portrait.” — TimeThe instant New York Times bes...

An unforgettable chronicle of a year of minor-league baseball in a small Iowa town that follows not only the travails of the players of the Clinton LumberKings but also the lives of their dedicated fans and of the town itself.Award-winning essayist Lucas Mann delivers a powerful debut in his telling of the story of the 2010 season of the Clinton LumberKings. Along the Mississippi River, in a Depression-era stadium, young prospects from all over the world compete for a chance to mov...

The "compelling" story behind the 1995 Chicago weather disaster that killed hundreds—and what it revealed about our broken society ( Boston Globe).On July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day in which the temperature would reach 106 degrees. The heat index—how the temperature actually feels on the body—would hit 126. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had buckled; records for electrical use were shattered; and power grids had fail...

The definitive and dramatic story of the Alex Rodriguez and Biogenesis scandal, written by the reporters who broke and covered the story.“Blood Sport is riveting...a tragicomedy filled with characters straight out of a Carl Hiaasen novel.”—The Washington PostThe effects of the Biogenesis case—the biggest drug scandal in the history of American sports—are still being felt today. Fifteen Major League Baseball players were su...

"A thorough education in how to move from simply maximizing the economic output of cities to improving the well-being of all urban residents." —Daniel L. Doctoroff, CEO, Sidewalk Labs2017 PROSE Award Winner: Outstanding Scholarly Work by a Trade PublisherCities are birthplaces of civilization; centers of culture, trade, and progress; cauldrons of opportunity—and the home of eighty percent of the world's population by 2050. As the twenty-firs...

Very early in my coaching career I was fortunate to meet a 10 year old who questioned everything! Initially I felt his questions were a test of my patience, but when he asked, "How long do I wait Coach?" during a hitting drill, I realized what I was saying did not make sense. Wow, and I thought I was the coach.

With more than half its population under twenty years old, Iran is one of the world's most youthful nations. The Iranian state characterizes its youth population in two ways: as a homogeneous mass, "an army of twenty millions" devoted to the Revolution, and as alienated, inauthentic, Westernized consumers who constitute a threat to the society. Much of the focus of the Islamic regime has been on ways to protect Iranian young people from moral hazards and to prevent them from providing a ga...

On the sixtieth anniversary of the Dodgers' move to Los Angeles, the full story of the controversial building of Dodger Stadium and how it helped transform the city.When Walter O'Malley moved his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957 with plans to construct a new ballpark next to downtown, he ignited a bitter argument over the future of a rapidly changing city. For the first time, City of Dreams tells the full story of the controversial building of Dodge...

Baseball stadia are places of memory, identity, athletic and architectural accomplishment. They are sites capable of arousing passion, sentimentality and a sense of community. The baseball stadium provides a unique lens through which to understand, explore and expand an understanding of communication theories. While baseball has previously been explored by scholars, this volume introduces the stadium as a way of exploring communication and communication theories through an examination of t...

In this comprehensive history of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), Chicago native Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the city’s Black Power movement was both a response to and an extension of the city’s civil rights movement. Williams focuses on the life and violent death of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader who served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and continued to pursue a civil rights agenda when he became chairman of the revolutionary Chicago-based Black...

Formerly prosperous cities across the United States, struggling to keep up with an increasingly global economy and the continued decline of post-war industries like manufacturing, face the issue of how to adapt to today's knowledge economy. In Invention and Reinvention, authors Mary Walshok and Abraham Shragge chronicle San Diego's transformation from a small West Coast settlement to a booming military metropolis and then to a successful innovation hub. This instructive story of a...