An NFL team rescues the future from the tyranny of technology. ULTRA BOWL is an adventure fable about the dangers of our Digital Age and the dystopian future toward which we may be heading. Flying home from the Super Bowl, the New York Knights are "time-napped"-transported 100 years into the future, where the global balance-of-power is decided in a football game played by robots. The Knights have been "drafted" to play for the United States in the Ultra Bowl, unaware that they are expendable pawns in a brilliant technocrat's diabolical plot to rule the world. Despite the insurmountable odds, the Knights embark on this suicide mission for the heart of a beautiful woman, the soul of a young boy and the humanity of an entire world. In this epic struggle between man & machine, a football team from the past valiantly attempts to rescue the future from the tyranny of technology.

Super Bowl fireworks come in all differentstyles: Game-altering tosses. Break-away runs.Bone-jarring sacks. Any or all of these canchange the course of the game and createfireworks on the field.

Super Bowl Monday is a thorough retelling of Super Bowl XXV, the epic January 1991 showdown between the New York Giants and the Buffalo Bills. Great characters and a gripping finish to the closest episode in Super Bowl history made for a wonderful conclusion to the game's Silver Anniversary. But what establishes that day as a special moment in American sports history was the cloud of war hanging over the game and the nation. Ten days before the Giants defeated the Bills 20-19 in Tampa Stadium, the United States had authorized Operation Desert Storm and begun the Persian Gulf War. The book is entitled Super Bowl Monday because the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who were able to watch the Giants vs. the Bills did so on Arabic Standard Time, several hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. For those men and women on duty in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, Super Bowl XXV took place early Monday morning. Super Bowl Monday features original research from newspaper and video archives in addition to lengthy interviews with many of the game's stars.

A de facto American national holiday and phenomenon, the Super Bowl claims a spot as one of the most significant sporting events in the world and the most widely celebrated, feasted and feasting event of the year— with $14+ billion at stake, commercials costing $7 million for a 30-second spot, record-setting broadcast ratings, and 113+ million viewers. More avocados (105 million pounds) are consumed, and more beer is drunk (325 million gallons) on the single day of Superbowl Sunday. But there is much more at play than partying at our annual sports extravaganza, as this scholarly researched yet readable volume demonstrates: Here you will read a historical perspective that includes discussions of the meta-event’s economics (stakeholders, host cities, advertising, gambling, and media), fandom, ratings, halftime entertainment, the roles of mythic spectacle and religion, football’s sexist, militaristic language, gender issues like cheerleaders and sex trafficking, the Puppy Bowl, medical concerns like concussions and violence, tailgating and foodie ideas—all along with tidbits about your favorite team(s) and player(s). Touchdown!

In Ultra-Talk, David Kirby poses a simple question: What makes a cultural phenomenon truly great? Exploring a wide variety of "king-sized cultural monuments," Kirby argues that one qualification for greatness is that a phenomenon be embraced by both the elite and the general public. Further, he argues, it must be embraced repeatedly over time. Kirby turns his critical eye to subjects that have been studied and written about, sought after avidly, discussed passionately, and even resisted vigorously around the world. Auto racing, Dante, folk music, food, Leonardo da Vinci, films, poetry, religion, striptease, television, and the internet are just some of the topics he examines. In Rome, heads of state kneel before Bernini's statue of Saint Teresa in ecstasy, says Kirby, and so do people who can't read. And everyone watches TV. Ultra-Talk pays homage to the work of two towering writers and critics. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Giacomo Leopardi both stated that a book was valid only if it had been accepted by both an intellectual elite and a vast public. Kirby would have added a second requirement: that the book's--or cultural monument's--popularity must have traction over time. By standing on the shoulders of Goethe and Leopardi, Kirby offers a way to read, see, and savor a post-theoretical worldview that everybody can share.