The first book to be set in the new Richler typeface, commissioned by Random House of Canada Limited and Jack Rabinovitch in memory of Mordecai. Mordecai Richler’s final book pays homage to his personal heroes and celebrates a writer’s love of sport with his trademark irascibility, humour and acuity. Even while writing his bestselling novels, Mordecai Richler nurtured his obsession with sports, writing brilliantly on ice hockey, baseball, salmon fishing, bodybuilding, and wrestling for such publications as GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Inside Sports, Commentary, and The New York Review of Books. Mordecai himself chose the pieces to include in Dispatches from the Sporting Life, and together they give us an intimate portrait of a man who admired the players and prized the struggle of sport -- as much as he enjoyed skewering those who made a mockery of its principles. His encounters with Pete Rose, Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe (“Mr. Elbows…the big guy with the ginger-ale bottle shoulders”) are by turns bizarre, moving and uproarious. Richler travelled with Guy LaFleur’s Montreal Canadiens (“Les Canadiens sont là!”), but also with the “far-from-incomparable” Trail Smoke Eaters to Stockholm for the world hockey championships, where Canadians are “widely known, and widely disliked.” There are wonderful pieces here about Ring Lardner, George Plimpton, Hank Greenberg and lady umpires, and a marvellous essay on his unlimited enthusiasm for the all-inclusive Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, which includes among its champions Sandy Koufax, “who may well be the greatest pitcher of all time, regardless of race, colour or creed,” as well as one Steve Allan Hertz, an infielder who played five total games in Houston in 1964 and had a batting average of .000.

In an all-new compendium of travel tales, the Outside magazine columnist, explorer, and author of The Hard Way presents accounts of his true-life adventures and experiences in the farthest corners of the globe.

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR • Southwest Review • Electric Literature Perfect for fans of Barbarian Days, this memoir in essays follows one man's decade-long quest to uncover the hidden meaning of skateboarding, and explores how this search led unexpectedly to insights on marriage, love, loss, American invention, and growing old. In January 2012, creative writing professor and novelist Kyle Beachy published one of his first essays on skate culture, an exploration of how Nike’s corporate strategy successfully gutted the once-mighty independent skate shoe market. Beachy has since established himself as skate culture's freshest, most illuminating, at times most controversial voice, writing candidly about the increasingly popular and fast-changing pastime he first picked up as a young boy and has continued to practice well into adulthood. What is skateboarding? What does it mean to continue skateboarding after the age of forty, four decades after the kickflip was invented? How does one live authentically as an adult while staying true to a passion cemented in childhood? How does skateboarding shape one's understanding of contemporary American life? Of growing old and getting married? Contemplating these questions and more, Beachy offers a deep exploration of a pastime—often overlooked, regularly maligned—whose seeming simplicity conceals universal truths. THE MOST FUN THING is both a rich account of a hobby and a collection of the lessons skateboarding has taught Beachy—and what it continues to teach him as he strugglesto find space for it as an adult, a professor, and a husband.

Producing Graphic Media for Sports: New Horizons and Possibilities for the Motion Media Specialist explores the origins, applications, and future of the production of sports-oriented motion graphics. Beginning with the evolution and development of sports-oriented art and design, this book investigates the importance of motion graphics within a variety of environments in the sphere of organized, competitive activity. Venue-based presentation, broadcast and streaming environments, and the importance of graphic standards and brand guidelines are all discussed in detail, along with applications within social media and mobile platforms. A final chapter on emerging technologies covers the potential use of motion media for e-sports and other trending developments within the sports world. The author draws on case studies and interviews with sports media professionals to augment his own research and observation of trends and processes and to highlight the exciting career opportunities that exist within the sports presentation and marketing industries. This book is recommended reading for students of advanced media production, sports marketing, and media production for advertising.

"The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

One of today's best young novelists, Ray Robertson is also one of its ablest critics. Mental Hygiene is a collection of his most entertaining, insightful, controversial, and funniest reviews and essays written over the last five years. Believing that ''writers have a responsibility to help maintain the mental hygiene of their time, '' Robertson, following in the footsteps of Mordecai Richler and other novelist-critics such as Anthony Burgess, Kingsley and Martin Amis and John Updike, is at the front line of contemporary literary debate. Whether castigating the bland cabal he refers to as McCanlit, poking fun at the trendy ephemera of intellectual fashion or arguing for his own unique fictional aesthetic, Robertson pulls no punches and suffers no fools

Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945, Fred Clarke began his career in 1894 with a record day at the plate, going 5 for 5. He would go on to play for 21 years spending most of that time as the player-manager of the Pirates, a team he led to four pennants and one World Series Championship (1909).