War Football

An NFL insider’s explosive account of the ruthless power struggles between owners and players over the future of football. During his fourteen years as the head of the NFL Players Association, DeMaurice Smith was a front line advocate for football players through some of the most tumultuous...

Bill Belichick is one of the titans of today's game of football. Now, sports commentator and best-selling author Michael Holley follows three NFL teams - the New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons - from training camp 2010 through the Super Bowl and into the April draft, opening a new window into Belichick's influence on the game. This one-of-a-kind exploration takes football fans behind the scenes of the most popular sport in America, with unprecedented insider access to the head coaches, scouts, trainers, and players.

Immediate Action is a no-holds-barred account of an extraordinary life, from the day Andy McNab was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital to the day he went to fight in the Gulf War. As a delinquent youth he kicked against society. As a young soldier he waged war against the IRA...

In late November 1941, two college football teams, Willamette University and San Jose State, set sail for Honolulu for a series of games with the University of Hawaii. Instead of a festive few weeks of football and fun, the players found themselves caught up in the first days of the United States' war with Japan. For two weeks after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, the young men were recruited to dig and man trenches, string barbed wire, guard hotels, and join patrols as martial law took hold in Honolulu.

The untold WWII story of a former NFL player turned White House insider who worked with Churchill’s undercover agents in New York City to conduct the biggest foreign spy operation ever within the US, and inspired Ian Fleming's James Bond, for fans of Ben Macintyre and Erik Larson. As a tough...

In the 1960s, on the heels of the “Greatest Game Ever Played”, professional football began to flourish across the country - except in Texas, where college football was still the only game in town. But in an unlikely series of events, two young oil tycoons started their own professional football franchises in Dallas the very same year: the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, and, as part of a new upstart league designed to thwart the NFL’s hold on the game, the Dallas Texans of the AFL. Almost overnight, a bitter feud was born.

“One of Ten Best History Books of 2021.” —Smithsonian Magazine For fans of The Boys in the Boat and The Storm on Our Shores, this impeccably researched, deeply moving, never-before-told “tale that ultimately stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit” (Garrett M. Graff...

In a country where loyalty is enforced and obedience is demanded, one man dares to stand tall. Heinz Krügel grows up in a coal-dust village where football is the only escape from poverty. As a boy, he studies the game from the steps of his crumbling home—learning not by playing, but by watching. And in that same street lives Lena Baumann, the girl with the charcoal-stained fingers who sketches him from behind lace curtains. She sees what others miss: the way he reads space, the way he leads without a word, and the fire inside him that refuses to be extinguished. But childhood promises ...

From military bases to playing fields, from boxing rings to boardrooms - this is the unforgettable true story of a man shaped by discipline, driven by heart, and fueled by an unshakable will to succeed. After leaving home at a young age, he rose to become a West Point graduate, top-ranked boxer, teacher in a rough California school, real estate entrepreneur, licensed pilot, global traveler, devoted husband, and proud father. With every chapter of his life - triumphant, humorous, and sometimes tragic - Eddie leaned on the values instilled in him early - education, persistence, integrity, and...

Updated Second Edition. Since the 1950s, China has used the gifting of soccer stadiums throughout the world (known as stadium diplomacy) as a means of propaganda and influence peddling. This is especially the case on the continent of Africa. The practice has largely been overlooked as a curiosity until recently when it was linked to the People's Republic of China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Chinese Soccer Stadium Diplomacy is used to export the game's virtue while creating debt traps and concessions where strongarmed leaders have photo ops with soccer stars all the while ...

If those walls could talk…what a story they would have to tell. Spanish missions…kit houses...trolley parks...gambling...diners...camp meetings…diamonds…lighthouses...beer...boardwalks…Apache wars…super highways...octagonal farm buildings…iron horses...Negro League baseball...German POWs...Miss America...dirigibles…Iditarod sled dog race…Civil rights…rock and roll…gold rushes…”flickers”…earthquakes…zoos…the “Peacemaker”…skyscrapers…theme parks…outlaws…Japanese relocation camps…basketball…Meskers…incline planes…Pony Express…bourbon…...

In the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the 1942 Rose Bowl was moved from Pasadena to Durham, North Carolina, out of fear of Japanese attacks on the West Coast. It remains the only Rose Bowl game to ever be played outside of Pasadena. Duke University, led by legendary coach Wallace Wade Sr., faced off against underdog Oregon State College, with both teams preparing for a grueling fight on the football field while their thoughts wandered to the battlefields they would soon be on.

The life and adventures of Thomas Cochrane, a young man who rose from midshipman to admiral, are so extraordinary that, to paraphrase Patrick O’Brian, one has to suspend disbelief. In fact, O’Brian admitted to using Cochrane as the model for his character Jack Aubrey. Second only to Nelson...

The Border War football series between Colorado State and Wyoming is defined by its longevity, proximity and one of the more unique traveling trophies in sports. The universities, separated by only 65 miles, have battled on the gridiron in three centuries for the iconic Bronze Boot, which was an actual combat boot worn by a military member in Vietnam. This book covers the history of the rivalry, from its controversial beginning in 1899 through the snowy battle for the boot in 2017. The Border War combatants agree to disagree on the all-time series ledger, but both sides have enjoyed their ...

Brought to you by Penguin. The definitive account of the rise of the Kinahan gang and the deadly feud that shocked a nation and brought the gang to the edge of destruction. __________ February 2016. A daring gun attack in the Regency Hotel brings Dubliner Christy Kinahan and his international...

In 1914, the year the war breaks out, football is on the rise. Attendances are steadily increasing, and the players are beginning to become household names. Underlining how football has surpassed cricket as the national sport, George V becomes the first monarch to attend the FA Cup Final in May. In this masterful work of history, Christopher Evans explores how footballers were put under immense pressure to sign up once the war began, resulting in the formation of the Football Battalion in England. He tells the story of World War I through the eyes of seven leading footballers of the day.

At 5-foot-8, 175 pounds, Daniel Rodriguez was an unlikely recruit for the gridiron. But on the battlefield, under the daily rain of sniper fire, he made a promise to his best friend. "When I get out of this shit hole, I'm going to play college football." Daniel had joined the Army just weeks after graduating from high school, having recently suffered a devastating loss. At age nineteen he had no idea what war really was; he just wanted to get out of town.

Each November, about a hundred people with paper poppies pinned to their coats gather around a memorial in Edinburgh. They're there to commemorate the more than a dozen members of the local football team, Heart of Midlothian - almost every member of its starting lineup and many of its backup players - who went to war. A Bigger Field Awaits Us tells the little-known but poignant story of a group of Scottish athletes and their fans who went to war together - and the stories of the few who made it home.

When we think of great events in the history of the world, we tend to think of war, revolution, political upheaval or natural catastrophe. But throughout history there have been moments of vital importance that have taken place not on the battlefield, or in the palaces of power, or even in the...

“The Breacher’s Playbook: A Deklan Novak Novel” Deklan fought his demons in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL breacher and now in Chicago as a special agent for the FBI’s Violent Crimes Against Children squad. That grit will be what he leans on in his new role as a tough FBI agent tasked with unraveling the disappearance of two children from a daycare center owned by his mother in this first installment. This debut narrative, the first in a planned three-book series, is a fictional account based on Hruby’s real-life story. The mystery thriller lays the ...