Tennis, Anyone?


Book Description

What kind of birthday present is a TENNIS RACKET? For the boy who tells this winning story, it seems awfully boring at first. It doesn't beep or buzz or do anything cool. And who plays tennis, anyway? As it turns out, Dad is the mastermind behind what our narrator decides is a pretty excellent present after all. (Besides-even if you don't like tennis, you can always pretend it's an electric guitar!)




Anyone for Tennis?


Book Description

Wimbledon has progressed from vicarage tea-party pastime to the greatest tennis tournament in the world. It is the one Grand Slam event that today’s multi-millionaire players yearn to win above all others. The only one still played in whites and fought on grass, and one of the few surviving bastions of true sportsmanship. The names of Perry, Lenglen, Wills Moody, Tilden, Budge, Laver, Borg, McEnroe, Navratilova, Sampras, Graf, Federer and the Williams sisters – etched among the immortals on the All-England Club’s honours board – will be remembered more for their exploits in SW19 than at any other tournament. Through the expert analysis and reporting of tennis correspondents such as A. Myers Wallis, John Olliff, Lance Tingay and John Parsons, the Daily Telegraph has chronicled the skill, artistry and courage of the game’s greatest exponents since the Championships first began in 1877. In over 130 years there has hardly been a cross-court winner, backhand down the line, overhead smash or double-fault that has passed unnoticed or uncommented. But Wimbledon is so much more than a tennis tournament. The Fortnight is a cornerstone of the mid-summer social season, as renowned for its gargantuan consumption of Champagne, smoked salmon and the ubiquitous strawberries and cream as for its controversies, tantrums and umbrellas on court. It is the only sporting event of the year that bursts off the sports pages and invades such diverse sections as fashion, cookery, television and property. Not to mention the front page, leader page and letters column – as The Daily Telegraph Book of Wimbledon now delightfully demonstrates. Over the years the Telegraph has attracted such notable writers as Michael Parkinson, Sebastian Faulks, Russell Davies and Taki to enthuse about Wimbledon, as well as providing a platform for insightful comment from great players of the past like John McEnroe, Fred Perry, Chris Evert and Billie-Jean King. Now we collect the very best of that writing to present the complete history of England’s greatest sporting institution. So kick back with that Pimms spritzer, and read on! Martin Smith was for many years Assistant Sports Editor of The Daily Telegraph.




Genre In The New Rhetoric


Book Description

In this work, theorists reflect on the growing interest in genre studies in a number of inter-related disciplines such as literary theory, sociology and cultural studies, and examine the implications this reconception of genre has on both research and teaching.




Anyone for Tennis?


Book Description




The Little Green Book of Tennis


Book Description

Golf is a disease, not a game. Especially when you take the game up in your fifties, as I did. After a series of injuries stopped my recreational tennis play, and my retirement from a lifetime of coaching and teaching tennis, I tried golf. It didn't take long to realize it was not an easy endeavor. Someone said, "You can't learn anything from a golf book, but you have to read a lot of golf books to find that out!" I found the gurus of golf instruction: Ledbetter, Pelz, and Hogan, who was said to have written the book with the secret! I did find one that really attracted me but in a somewhat different way.




Mind Games


Book Description

This text is full of advice, helpful cartoons and key learning points. It is written by a teenage competitor and his father, for young tennis players from beginners to aces, and for all adults involved in their game. It provides advice for performing at your best under pressure; the control of emotions on court; parents, coaches and officials; and how to gain the most fun from your tennis.




A Confederacy of Dunces


Book Description

Released by Louisiana State University Press in 1980, A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Rejected by countless publishers and submitted by the author's mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today there are almost two million copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages. Now, for the first time, John Kennedy Toole's comic masterpiece is available in a large print edition. Toole's lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, whom Walker Percy dubs "slob extraordinaire, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one." Set in New Orleans, A Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift, one of whose essays gives the book its title. As its characters burst into life, they leave the region and literature forever changed by their presence -- Ignatius and his mother; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levi Pants; inept, wan Patrolman Mancuso; Darlene, the Bourbon Street stripper with a penchant for poultry; Jones the jivecat in spaceage dark glasses. Included here is the introduction that writer and New Orleans resident Andrei Codrescu composed for the book's twentieth anniversary. Set in oversized type for ease in reading, the large print edition will gratify both first-timers seeking to discover this modern-day classic and longtime afficionados wishing to reread a favorite novel.




Routledge Handbook of Tennis


Book Description

Tennis is one of the world’s most popular sports, as levels of participation and spectatorship demonstrate. Moreover, tennis has always been one of the world’s most significant sports, expressing crucial fractures of social class, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity - both on and off court. This is the first book to undertake a survey of the historical and socio-cultural sweep of tennis, exploring key themes from governance, development and social inclusion to national identity and the role of the media. It is presented in three parts: historical developments; culture and representations; and politics and social issues, and features contributions by leading tennis scholars from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The most authoritative book published to date on the history, culture and politics of tennis, this is an essential reference for any course or program examining the history, sociology, politics or culture of sport.




A Social History of Tennis in Britain


Book Description

Winner of the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2015- from the British Society for Sports History. From its advent in the mid-late nineteenth century as a garden-party pastime to its development into a highly commercialised and professionalised high-performance sport, the history of tennis in Britain reflects important themes in Britain’s social history. In the first comprehensive and critical account of the history of tennis in Britain, Robert Lake explains how the game’s historical roots have shaped its contemporary structure, and how the history of tennis can tell us much about the history of wider British society. Since its emergence as a spare-time diversion for landed elites, the dominant culture in British tennis has been one of amateurism and exclusion, with tennis sitting alongside cricket and golf as a vehicle for the reproduction of middle-class values throughout wider British society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Consequently, the Lawn Tennis Association has been accused of a failure to promote inclusion or widen participation, despite steadfast efforts to develop talent and improve coaching practices and structures. Robert Lake examines these themes in the context of the global development of tennis and important processes of commercialisation and professional and social development that have shaped both tennis and wider society. The social history of tennis in Britain is a microcosm of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century British social history: sustained class power and class conflict; struggles for female emancipation and racial integration; the decline of empire; and, Britain’s shifting relationship with America, continental Europe, and Commonwealth nations. This book is important and fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the history of sport or British social history.