Break Point


Book Description

Spadea gives a riveting and often hilarious account of the ultra-competitive world of pro tennis. Along the way, he analyses Agassi, Roddick, Federer, Navratilova, Sharapova et al in more colourful and personal terms than you've ever seen before!




The Lifestyle Puzzle


Book Description

The author describes the emergence of a radically new type of tribalism, one based not on the fixity of age-old ethnic tradition but on the fluidity of diverse lifestyle choices being made by contemporary individuals. --Stephen Bertman, PhD, author of Hyperculture and Cultural AmnesiaAmerican society is more diverse than ever. A country that used to think of itself as the great melting pot may soon be calling itself the great lifestyle buffet. With increasing affluence, more and more Americans are in a position to choose whatever lifestyle most appeals to them. The result is that the national landscape has become an intricate mosaic of varying styles, self-expressions, and ways of life. Even the distinction between majority and minority is starting to blur.Is there any pattern to this ever-shifting kaleidoscope of identities? Social scientist and communications specialist Henrik Vejlgaard puts the pieces together into a coherent picture in this fascinating study of American diversity. Applying the astute pattern-recognition skills that he demonstrated in his previous book, the critically acclaimed Anatomy of a Trend, Vejlgaard examines how we transform our identities into practical everyday living-into our lifestyle.Going beyond the usual markers of identity-race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, income level, etc-he focuses on modes of communicating group identity nonverbally through consumer choices, clothing fashions, personal color choices, adornments, accessories, logos, signs, and symbols. Curiously, what emerges from his analysis is a pattern as ancient as human culture itself-a new form of tribalism. He foresees this trend continuing so that by the end of the twenty-first century there will be less identification with nation-states and ethnic groups and more small-group identification. As globalization and mass communication continue to link us together, we may all become so used to diversity that the idea of conflict based on national identity distinctions may seem antiquated.A book of remarkable insights, The Lifestyle Puzzle will have great appeal to readers interested in popular culture, social change, and consumer tastes.Henrik Vejlgaard, M.A., M.Sc. (Copenhagen, Denmark), is the author of Anatomy of a Trend, the groundbreaking book about how changes in style and taste take place. Combining a background of social science and communication, he is a master of recognizing patterns where others see only chaos. He has lectured on lifestyle and trend sociology at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Arhus, both in Denmark. Anatomy of a Trend has been published in more than thirty countries and translated into, among other languages, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Italian. Previously he has written three books in Danish on lifestyle and trend sociology. Visit Henrik Vejlgaard online at www.henrikvejlgaard.com.




A Lifestyle Worth Living


Book Description

What would you pay to have your own - Life Coach - Personal Trainer - Yoga Instructor - Meditation Coach OR ALL OF THESE SPECIALISTS AT ONCE? Welcome to one of the most unique Life Awakening Systems YOUwill ever hold in your hands Are you a good candidate for this masterful self-improvement program? Take This Quiz and See: 1. Are you stressed about money, a relationship, your job or your life in general? 2. Are you going crazy playing a role in the social game of your life? 3. Are you confused about your purpose on this earth? 4. Do you feel like your mind is always racing and never gives you a break? 5. Are you confused about nutrition and exercise? 6. Do you take medications you feel are holding you back? Would you like to learn to get off of them? 7. Is your physical health suffering because any of the reasons above? 8. Are you concerned about where your nation and the world is heading in terms of our humanity? 9. In the back of your mind, do you question whether there is a better way to live more balanced and happy? 10. If you had the opportunity to change your life with a proven system, would you stop stressing and take action? If you answered YES to just ONE of these questions, the book you are holding in your hand was made for you. READ IT NOW The ultimate reference guide for your daily life Learn simple proven techniques to improve your mental, physical and spiritual life.




Arthur Ashe


Book Description

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A “thoroughly captivating biography” (The San Francisco Chronicle) of American icon Arthur Ashe—the Jackie Robinson of men’s tennis—a pioneering athlete who, after breaking the color barrier, went on to become an influential civil rights activist and public intellectual. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1943, by the age of eleven, Arthur Ashe was one of the state’s most talented black tennis players. He became the first African American to play for the US Davis Cup team in 1963, and two years later he won the NCAA singles championship. In 1968, he rose to a number one national ranking. Turning professional in 1969, he soon became one of the world’s most successful tennis stars, winning the Australian Open in 1970 and Wimbledon in 1975. After retiring in 1980, he served four years as the US Davis Cup captain and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985. In this “deep, detailed, thoughtful chronicle” (The New York Times Book Review), Raymond Arsenault chronicles Ashe’s rise to stardom on the court. But much of the book explores his off-court career as a human rights activist, philanthropist, broadcaster, writer, businessman, and celebrity. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ashe gained renown as an advocate for sportsmanship, education, racial equality, and the elimination of apartheid in South Africa. But from 1979 on, he was forced to deal with a serious heart condition that led to multiple surgeries and blood transfusions, one of which left him HIV-positive. After devoting the last ten months of his life to AIDS activism, Ashe died in February 1993 at the age of forty-nine, leaving an inspiring legacy of dignity, integrity, and active citizenship. Based on prodigious research, including more than one hundred interviews, Arthur Ashe puts Ashe in the context of both his time and the long struggle of African-American athletes seeking equal opportunity and respect, and “will serve as the standard work on Ashe for some time” (Library Journal, starred review).




In a League of Her Own


Book Description

Some of the most influential women in sports tell their stories of courage, adversity, and triumph to trailblazer Bonnie-Jill Laflin. A half-century after Title IX legislation leveled the playing field for women and girls, the time has come to celebrate the lives and careers of some of the most notable groundbreaking women in sports, while also encouraging future generations to make history of their own. In a League of Her Own: Celebrating Female Firsts in Sports shares the stories of nineteen impactful women in sports, including Billie Jean King, Danica Patrick, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Laila Ali, Jeanie Buss, and Mary Lou Retton. These iconic women open up to Bonnie-Jill Laflin, herself a trailblazer as the first and only female NBA scout, about the sobering realities females face in the sports world and the many obstacles they had to overcome. But they also celebrate the amazing support they received from colleagues, friends, family, and the women who came before them, and impart their own desires to inspire young women through their stories. In a League of Her Own gives these remarkable women a voice to share their experiences across the sports industry. They discuss such issues as the pressures of social media, the sexism that still exists in boardrooms and locker rooms, and their hopes for closer equality in the sports space. Their journeys are each unique, but together, they have changed the face of sports and culture forever.




Tennis Fitness for the Love of it


Book Description

Practical advice for suiting your training to your body's requirements and improving your tennis performance while preventing injury.




The Divine Miss Marble


Book Description

“In Robert Weintraub’s exhaustive biography, The Divine Miss Marble, he transports the reader into Marble’s vibrant world. It’s a dreamy, indomitable life worth reading about as today’s tennis tries to return to form.”—The Washington Post “An intriguing book about a fascinating woman . . . Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review) “Delightful and engrossing, this is a must for tennis fans.”—Publishers Weekly The story of 1930s tennis icon Alice Marble, and her life of sports, celebrity, and incredible mystery Who was Alice Marble? In her public life, she was the biggest tennis star of the pre-war era, a household name like Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis. She was famous for overcoming serious illness to win the biggest tournaments, including Wimbledon. She was also a fashion designer and trendsetter, a contributor to a pioneering new comic called Wonder Woman—and friend to the biggest names in Hollywood and society, like Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, and members of families named Bloomingdale, Loew, and du Pont. She helped integrate tennis with her support of Althea Gibson, and even coached two young women who became stars in their own right: Billie Jean King and Sally Ride. Yet her private life provoked constant speculation while she was alive, and her own memoirs added layers of legend upon stories. According to Alice, she married a man who was killed in the skies over Europe during World War II. But who was the man she loved, and had he even existed? She was widely known for her patriotism during World War II. Had she really nearly given her life for her country as a spy, shot during a wild car chase fleeing foreign espionage agents? In The Divine Miss Marble, bestselling author Robert Weintraub traveled the country to uncover her fascinating story. And the more he learned about her, the more her mysteries and contradictions deepened. Alice was a powerful woman who knew her worth, demanding equal pay to men decades earlier than other female athletes; yet she was held in sway by a domineering, highly successful coach with whom she had a volatile relationship. She was renowned for her California style, and had a brilliant mind and the guts to overcome a lifetime of physical trauma. For the first time here, we come closer than ever before to the truths of this unforgettable life, and somehow it’s a story even more extraordinary than everything we already know about the divine Alice Marble.




Re-Designing Your Life


Book Description

Re-Designing Your Life: A Practical Spirituality for the Second Half of Life is a timely and engaging book for living out the second half of your life with spiritual integrity. In this study you are invited to think about your life as a house undergoing renovations where, with God’s grace, you get to design something new and life-giving. Through practical exercises, thought-provoking discussion topics and memorable anecdotes, Re-Designing Your Life will guide you through: Coping with endings, empty-nesting and retirement; Caring for self while caring for elderly parents and grandchildren; Letting go of the things that get in the way of becoming your true self; Creating a spiritual legacy; Strengthening relationships; and Finding your passion in your second half of life. Re-Designing Your Life is a must-read for pastors, congregations and individuals who want to discover God’s calling in the second half of life. Video resources for group studies are also available.




Life, Living and Lifestyle


Book Description

A life is what is given to us; a lifestyle is what is given by us. Research claims that maintaining only 5 good habits—eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, drinking only in moderation, not smoking and maintaining a healthy body weight—can not only keep the life vibrant through years but also extend a woman’s life expectancy at age 50 by 14 years, and a man’s by 12 years. The book, Life, Living and Lifestyle, illustrates these aspects of lifestyles with a special connection between human evolution and civilization! This book along with its four companion books—Nature Is My Teacher; Of Human Nature and Good Habits; How to Win Nature and Enjoy Good Life and Health and Medical Care—constitutes a series that tells the nature-human connection and its implication in our daily life, in the related set of separate episodes. Life, Living and Lifestyle deals with lifestyle experiences of daily living. The book contains chapters: Active Lifestyle (As we grow, we travel through a series of institutional communities: first our family, then our school and university, then the workplace, then local and global institutions.); Play and Exercise (The guidelines of World Health Organization (WHO) on physical activity for an adult is very attainable: 75 minutes of vigorous exercise or 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week.); Joy of Yoga (“I lost weight,” “I quit smoking,” “It de-stressed me,” “I sleep better,” “It saved my marriage,” “It improved my child’s grades,” “I am now pregnant,” “It saved my family”—on and on and on goes the claims of yoga’s practitioners.); Lose Weight (By definition, in the centimeter-gram-second (CGS) system, the BMI number is a person’s weight in kilograms (kg) divided by square of height in meters (m). BMI=kg/m^2.); Walking and Running (An adult can walk 17,000 steps a day comfortably, which is roughly 7 to 8 miles.); Quit Smoking (The truth of smoking is disease, death, and horror—not glory, glamour, or pleasure.); Sleep (Sleep is by far the single critical factor, and definitely a calmest booster to improve the brain function.); Life, Living and Work Ethics (Simple life has its own reward.); Science and Technology (The tiny computer chips are embedded in all our gadgets, devices, and machines, from cell phone to brain cell, from microscope to telescope, and from subatomic level to space-level equipment.); Organize Yourself (For organizational skill, discipline is at the root.); Work and Workplace (In a global job war, according to a Gallup poll in 2011, out of 7 billion people worldwide, there were 5 billion people over fifteen years old, out of which 3 billion wanted full-time jobs, while there were available only 1.2 billion jobs.); Personal Finance and Money Habits (Poverty is not a shame, but being ashamed of it, is. Young minds are systematically victimized. When they grow up, they feel the guilt and shame of poverty.)




Live the Best Story of Your Life


Book Description

CHANGE CAN BE EASY. CHANGE CAN BE FAST. Do you want a new story? Most of us do. We are all looking to shift the stories in our lives. But the question remains: How? This book is the how. A result of thousands of hours of research from the best minds in the field of human potential, Live the Best Story of Your Life harnesses the power of your personal story and provides a guide to creating positive shifts in any area of your life. Bob Litwin, a leading performance coach on Wall Street and a World Champion tennis player, brings you 33 personalized coaching sessions that will help you reach new levels of success on every level of your life. Where therapy fails, his brand of storytelling is a faster, more effective way to lasting change. Live the Best Story of Your Life does not shift what we do, it shifts who we are. It will also show you how to: • Get clear on your old stories and learn to leave them in the past. • Discover the excitement and energy of your new story. • Access the 33 strategies followed by people who always seem to win at life. Are you on the cusp of a brand new story? If you can feel change brewing, if you want that change to be painless and almost instantaneous, Live the Best Story of Your Life is your hand to hold, your private coach, the map you’ve been waiting for to live the best story of your life.