Gods of Sport


Book Description

An exclusive collection of previously unseen images taken from the photo-shoots of the 'Naked for a cause: Australian footballers 2008/9' calendar, which was launched in Australia in September 2007 as part of a fundraising initiative in aid of 'The McGrath Foundation' - an Australian based charity.




The Sport of the Gods


Book Description

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Sport of the Gods" by Paul Laurence Dunbar. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.




Games for the Gods


Book Description

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, proudly presents the original Olympics in all their sweaty, heroic glory. Like today, sports were a vital part of daily life in ancient Greece. "Games for the Gods" unearths the original traditions of athletics, highlighting both the fascinating similarities and the jarring differences between the ancient ways and our own. We might not be used to such Classical customs as associating athletic festivals with certain gods, seeing our athletes compete in the nude, or having them indulge in dirty fighting as accepted practice (then again...), but the excitement of competition, admiration for athletic skill, and adoration of champions--as well as several of the sports--are just as familiar to fans today as they were to the ancients. The Greek Games here come to life in a series of texts that explore the Olympics then and now, the origins of the games and various athletic events, and the ways in which the contests were prepared for and the victors honoured. With stunning illustrations of over 140 sculptures, vases, and coins, as well as photographs of modern athletes, "Games for the Gods" is a unique celebration of the Olympic spirit through the ages.




Gods at Play


Book Description

A beautifully observed narrative of American sport: character, grit, tragedy, unremarked heroism, and, always, the illuminating story behind the story. As a columnist for Time magazine, among many other publications, Tom Callahan witnessed an extraordinary number of defining moments in American sport across four decades. He takes us from Roberto Clemente clinching his 3,000th, and final, regular-season hit in Pittsburgh; to ringside for the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman fight in Zaire; and to Arthur Ashe announcing, at a news conference, that he’d tested positive for HIV. There are also little-known private moments: Joe Morgan whispering thank you to a virtually blind Jackie Robinson on the field at the 1972 World Series, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar saying he was more interested in being a good man than in being the greatest basketball player. Brimming with colorful vignettes and enlivened by Callahan’s eye for detail, Gods at Play offers surprising portraits of the most celebrated names in sports. Roger Rosenblatt calls Callahan “the most complete sportswriter in America. He knows the most and writes the best."




The Christian Athlete


Book Description

The Christian Athlete is a gospel-centered guide that assists athletes who identify as Christians and are seeking to understand how to practically apply their faith to their sport. Athletes desire—and deserve—a more substantive expression of the Christian faith in the context of sport, but they don’t know what it looks like or where to turn to learn more. Author Brian Smith shares his story as an athlete and coach, and his experience working with high-level athletes in the last decade to help readers better understand how to integrate faith and sport by: Assisting those who want a wide-angled understanding of how to live the Christian faith in the context of sports Walking through the many questions Christian athletes ask about winning, losing, injuries, practice, and everything in between Moving Christian athletes from simply having clichéd spiritual sayings decorating their bodies or t-shirts to actually living out their faith through all the opportunities their sport offers them The Christian Athlete will show readers how to live out a biblical perspective on athletics and urge them to engage in the gifts they are given to glorify God whether they are the team MVP or riding the bench.




Black Gods of the Asphalt


Book Description

J-Rod moves like a small tank on the court, his face mean, staring down his opponents. "I play just like my father," he says. "Before my father died, he was a problem on the court. I'm a problem." Playing basketball for him fuses past and present, conjuring his father's memory into a force that opponents can feel in each bone-snapping drive to the basket. On the street, every ballplayer has a story. Onaje X. O. Woodbine, a former streetball player who became an all-star Ivy Leaguer, brings the sights and sounds, hopes and dreams of street basketball to life. He shows that big games have a trickster figure and a master of black talk whose commentary interprets the game for audiences. The beats of hip-hop and reggae make up the soundtrack, and the ballplayers are half-men, half-heroes, defying the ghetto's limitations with their flights to the basket. Basketball is popular among young black American men but not because, as many claim, they are "pushed by poverty" or "pulled" by white institutions to play it. Black men choose to participate in basketball because of the transcendent experience of the game. Through interviews with and observations of urban basketball players, Onaje X. O. Woodbine composes a rare portrait of a passionate, committed, and resilient group of athletes who use the court to mine what urban life cannot corrupt. If people turn to religion to reimagine their place in the world, then black streetball players are indeed the hierophants of the asphalt.




Gods of Football


Book Description

Sexy Australian football stars at the beach, on the open sea and under the shower.




Game of the Gods


Book Description

"A Tom Doherty Associates Book" -- Title page.




Religion and Popular Culture in America, Third Edition


Book Description

The connection between popular culture and religion is an enduring part of American life. With seventy-five percent new content, the third edition of this multifaceted and popular collection has been revised and updated throughout to provide greater religious diversity in its topics and address critical developments in the study of religion and popular culture. Ideal for classroom use, this expanded volume gives increased attention to the implications of digital culture and the increasingly interactive quality of popular culture provides a framework to help students understand and appreciate the work in diverse fields, methods, and perspectives contains an updated introduction, discussion questions, and other instructional tools




Winning at All Costs


Book Description

Winning at all Costs: Sporting Giants and their Demons grapples with one of sport’s great conundrums: what raises outstanding champions above their rivals? What Gogarty and Williamson discover on their journey through the stadium of the mind is that the seed of greatness and domination can also be a curse. Why did Dean Karnazes head off on a 1000-mile ‘fun run’ after completing his 50th back-to-back marathon in the US? Why so many pranks and pratfalls for Gazza and how come Michael Jordan retired from basketball three times when he was already universally acknowledged as the greatest player of all time? What makes Jonny Wilkinson and David Beckham practice endlessly – it’s not just fitness. What made Mike Tyson graphically describe his aim in the ring to catch his opponent ‘right on the tip of the nose, because I try to push the bone into the brain.’ And just why is it that Romanian striker Adrian Mutu insists on wearing his underpants inside out? Winning at all Costs: Sporting Giants and their Demons is aimed at laymen who don’t think the unconscious is the place you reach on a Saturday night after sinking 15 pints. The book explores psychological triggers that just might have provided the electricity for some of the world’s most outstanding sporting successes. Those at the top are there for a reason, and as a defence for their more vulnerable selves, nowhere feels safer. Paul Gogarty is a journalist, television presenter, and award-winning author of The Water Road and The Coast Road. Ian Williamson is a practising Harley Street child and adolescent analyst. For 15 years, he played for and captained Blackheath and was on the fringes of the England rugby team. He is also a former Cambridge Blue and general sporting all-rounder and obsessive.