Remember This Titan: The Bill Yoast Story


Book Description

Bill Yoast is the real-life hero of Remember the Titans, the hit movie that chronicled the struggles of black and white high school football athletes to create a championship season in 1972 Virginia. A World War II veteran, Yoast helped to mold the lives of hundreds of men and women through his inspirational coaching style. Yoast offers his personal recollections from that now-immortalized season as well as the coaching philosophy he developed in over 30 years of his career.




The Team the Titans Remember


Book Description

In 2000, Walt Disney Pictures released the film Remember the Titans which stirred the hearts of many but falsely depicted the Titans of T.C. Williams playing their arch-rival, George C. Marshall, in a nail-biter of a championship football game decided on the last play in a place called Roanoke Stadium. Wrong! The Titans played a small and scrappy bunch of players from Salem known as the Wolverines of Andrew Lewis High in the historic Victory Stadium of Roanoke. Salem native Mark A. O’Connell sets the record straight for all time in this book which tells the true story of the championship game and also links the 1971 Andrew Lewis High “Wolverines” to a lasting-legacy which had begun in 1962 under legendary head Coach Eddie Joyce. Now you can read the true—and unaltered—story. *** Now this from Coach Foster: Andrew Lewis, a small southwest Virginia school located in Salem and nicknamed the Wolverines, played—and won—against some of the largest schools in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Tennessee. Today, these schools would be classified in Virginia as 6A, the largest of all six classifications. During the 1971 season, Andrew Lewis played 7 schools that had student enrollments over 2,000 while Lewis’s enrollment was only 975 students. Lewis was 12-1 that year, its only loss to T.C. Williams (Remember the Titans Game) which had an enrollment of 5,000 students. Between 1962 and 1971, Andrew Lewis won 2 state championships (‘62,’64) and was runner-up 3 times (‘66,’67 and ‘71) as a member of the largest classification in Virginia. Over that span of time—considered as “the best years of Coach Joyce”—the Wolverines compiled a record of 88 wins, 15 losses and 2 ties—Dale Foster.




Remember This Titan: The Bill Yoast Story


Book Description

Bill Yoast is one of th real-life heroes of Remember the Titans, the inspirational hit movie that chronicled the struggles of black and white high school football athletes to create a championship season in racially charged Alexandria, Virginia in 1972. Uniting in a common effort, Yoast and Boone led T.C. Williams High School to an undefeated season, and in the process brought the school and polarized community together.




Invincible


Book Description

The true story of the NFL's oldest rookie In 1976, Vince Papale was thirty, a former schoolteacher and part-time bartender, and a season ticket-holder for his beloved Philadelphia Eagles. When he heard that Coach Dick Vermeil was holding open tryouts, he decided to give it a shot. Shocking himself and the coaches, he ran an explosive 40-yard-dash in just 4.5 seconds -- a world-class time -- and was offered a contract on the spot. When he joined the team, Papale became the oldest non-kicking rookie in NFL history, a fan favorite who played for four years and was named a team captain. Invincible is Vince Papale's story, and a tie-in to the Disney Pictures film of the same name starring Mark Wahlberg as Papale and Greg Kinnear as Vermeil. But more than just a tie-in, it tells Papale's story in his own words, covering subjects not included in the film. Like Rudy, Glory Road, and Rookie, it is the true story of an ordinary man who achieves an extraordinary goal.




The Book of the Epic


Book Description




When the Luck of the Irish Ran Out


Book Description

Few countries have been as dramatically transformed in recent years as Ireland. Once a culturally repressed land shadowed by terrorism and on the brink of economic collapse, Ireland finally emerged in the late 1990s as the fastest-growing country in Europe, with the typical citizen enjoying a higher standard of living than the average Brit. Just a few years after celebrating their newly-won status among the world's richest societies, the Irish are now saddled with a wounded, shrinking economy, soaring unemployment, and ruined public finances. After so many centuries of impoverishment, how did the Irish finally get rich, and how did they then fritter away so much so quickly? Veteran journalist David J. Lynch offers an insightful, character-driven narrative of how the Irish boom came to be and how it went bust. He opens our eyes to a nation's downfall through the lived experience of individual citizens: the people responsible for the current crisis as well as the ordinary men and women enduring it.




The Long Green Shore


Book Description

Written in 1947 but not published until 1995, John Hepworth's debut novel is a gripping account of Australian soldiers fighting in New Guinea at the end of World War II. The product of Hepworth's own experience, The Long Green Shore recounts the lives - and deaths - of a group of soldiers battling the Japanese in the rain-soaked jungle. In sublime prose, it captures the terror and the monotony of war. On its publication The Long Green Shore was met with immediate critical acclaim. It was recognised as one of the world's great war novels. John Hepworth was born in 1921 and lived in Melbourne. A journalist, author, playwright and poet, he is well remembered for his contribution to the Nation Review in the 1970s and for his work at the ABC. He wrote many books, some co-authored with Bob Ellis and others illustrated by Michael Leunig. He died in 1995 soon after learning that The Long Green Shore would finally be published. 'Australia's All Quiet on the Western Front...The timeless record of a generation of men who had it hard and copped it sweet, and went off into battle not knowing what the day would bring.' Bob Ellis 'This novel is a masterpiece of war fiction.' Publishers Weekly







Reilly of the White House


Book Description

Reilly of the White House, first published in 1947, is Michael Reilly’s fascinating account of his tenure as head of the White House Secret Service detail for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The book details his security and protection measures for the President, the close-calls from those attempting to harm FDR, and his worldwide travels, including meetings of Roosevelt with Churchill, Stalin, and other world leaders. From the dust jacket: Mike Reilly guarded, for four years, the number one Nazi target: FDR. This is the story of that stewardship, which ranged from buying White House groceries to standing behind a curtain with his gun trained on the middle button of a diplomat’s uniform. Reilly never left the President’s side. His protection methods had to be fast and frequently unorthodox. His behind-the-scenes story—of those methods, of the hair-trigger emergencies, of the world-famous people he met; above all, of FDR—is even faster and even more unorthodox. It was on December 7th, 1941, that Mike Reilly took over the top Secret Service spot of guarding the President. From that day on it was his business to protect the President from assassination which might come via guns, daggers, bombs, poison, fire, or the well-known blunt instrument. In order to get an armored car, for example—which the Constitution does not provide for—Mike had to borrow one from the Treasury Department. It was Al Capone’s originally and it served until one of the big automobile companies made one specially and leased it to the President for one dollar a year.




Turned On


Book Description

How much happier could you be by simply lifting your head up? What possibilities await you when you tell the world that you are open for business? Who could you become with a bigger smile that says, "I'm up for the relationship?" We live in a time when people are so busy and so focused on what's next that they're missing out on what's happening right now. We're lonely yet surrounded by others. There are so many opportunities right in front of us, but we will surely miss them unless we do what to most may seem counter-intuitive to success; we must "slow down to move ahead." Human beings have reached a tipping point. In our short attention span, fast-paced, competitive world, we can no longer relax. We don't know how to deal with downtime. In our race to success, we've incorporated more text and email to save time, more devices, and advances to communicate, more friends and more contacts to get ahead. Yet most of us are falling behind in our spirit. Many of us are discovering that the advancements meant to make our lives less complicated are actually causing us more stress. Rather than freeing us up, they are consuming more of our time. The things that were supposed to connect us have, in some ways, made us retreat. When was the last time you waited in line without reaching for your phone? The last time you sat down for family dinner without an electronic device on? The last time you seized the day rather than seeking the data? We are indeed miracles. God literally hard-wired us humans for connection. But somewhere along the way, we outpaced ourselves. We ran too far ahead, and now many of us are feeling left behind. We've been taken out of context, out of connection and out of communion with the people surrounding us. We're sometimes even strangers in our own homes. The Word tells us that we are the light. That we are not to be placed under a bowl. That we are indeed meant to shine and shine we will. The light in the world is dim and it's time to get TURNED ON.