Today Australian Rules football is a multi - million - dollar business' with superstar players' high - profile presidents and enough scandals to fill a soap opera. The game has changed beyond recognition - or has it? In A Game of Our Own' esteemed historian Geoffrey Blainey documents the birth of our great national game. Who were the characters and champions of the early days of Australian football? How was the VFL formed? Why was the umpire's job so difficult? Blainey takes a sceptical look at the idea that the game had its origins in Ireland or in Aboriginal pastimes. Instead he demonstrates that footy was a series of inventions. The game played in 1880 was very different to that of 1860' just as the game played today is different again. Journey back to an era when the ground was not oval' when captains acted as umpires' when players wore caps and jerseys bearing forgotten colours and kicked a round ball that soon lost its shape. A Game of Our Own is a fascinating social history and a compulsory read for all true fans of the game.

In 2010 twenty American women were selected to represent Team USA in the fourth Women's Baseball World Cup in Caracas, Venezuela; most Americans, however, had no idea such a team even existed. A Game of Their Own chronicles the largely invisible history of women in baseball and offers an account of the 2010 Women's World Cup tournament. Jennifer Ring includes oral histories of eleven members of the U.S. Women's National Team, from the moment each player picked up a bat and ball as a young girl to her selection for Team USA. Each story is unique, but they share common themes that will resonate with young female players and fans alike: facing skepticism and taunts from players and parents when taking the batter's box or the pitcher's mound, self-doubt, the unceasing pressure to switch to softball, and eventual acceptance by their baseball teammates as they prove themselves as ballplayers. These racially, culturally, and economically diverse players from across the country have ignored the message that their love of the national pastime is "wrong." Their stories come alive as they recount their battles and most memorable moments playing baseball--the joys of exceeding expectations and the pleasure of honing baseball skills and talent despite the lack of support. With exclusive interviews with players, coaches, and administrators, A Game of Their Own celebrates the U.S. Women's National Team and the excellence of its remarkable players. In response to the jeer "No girls allowed!" these are powerful stories of optimism, feistiness, and staying true to oneself.

A Sports Illustrated Best Book of the Year: “Vivid portraits of the kids, parents and coaches of the Greater Miami Pop Warner league” (Linda Robertson, The Miami Herald). Although its participants are still in grade school, Pop Warner football is serious business in Miami, where local teams routinely advance to the national championships. Games draw thousands of fans; recruiters vie for nascent talent; drug dealers and rap stars bankroll teams; and the stakes are so high that games sometimes end in gunshots. In America’s poorest neighborhood, troubled parents dream of NFL stardom for children who long only for a week in Disney World at the Pop Warner Super Bowl. In 2001, journalist Robert Andrew Powell spent a year following two teams through roller-coaster seasons. The Liberty City Warriors, former national champs, will suffer the team’s first-ever losing season. The Palmetto Raiders, undefeated for two straight years, will be rewarded for good play with limo rides and steak dinners. But their flamboyant coach (the “Darth Vader of Pop Warner coaches”) will face defeat in a down-to-the-wire playoff game. We Own This Game is an inside-the-huddle look into a world of innocence and corruption, where every kickoff bares political, social, and racial implications; an unforgettable drama that shows us just what it is to win and to lose in America. “Powell elevates We Own This Game well above the average sports book to a significant sociological study.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Create the next Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, The Game of Life, Ticket to Ride, or Settlers of Catan with this creative board game book! Board games are back in vogue, with board game cafés popping up around the world. This interactive gaming book teaches you how, in just half an hour, you and your friends can come up with a new game and start playing immediately. Just decide on a theme for the game, pick a rule set from the book, agree on some variations, color in one of many board game designs, and gather your die and counters! Possible to play in any order, this book is packed with tips, tricks, and mechanics on how to design the perfect game. With 40 different rule sets, each introducing a new concept, it encourages you to develop and test your own rules. Whatever the age range or experience of players, the game that you create from this book will always be playable, entertaining, and surprising. Each board you create is easy to pull out and completely reusable to play again and again.

A guide for women football fans explains each component of the game of football, describes the role of each position player, outlines common plays, and provides descriptions of some of the most memorable moments in NFL history.

Games are a unique art form. They do not just tell stories, nor are they simply conceptual art. They are the art form that works in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be in games and what to care about; they designate the player's in-game abilities and motivations. In other words, designers create alternate agencies, and players submerge themselves in those agencies. Games let us explore alternate forms of agency. The fact that we play games demonstrates something remarkable about the nature of our own agency: we are capable of incredible fluidity with our own motivations and rationality. This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on games' unique value in human life. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part of how we become mature, free people. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. We can pursue goals, not for their own value, but for the sake of the struggle. Playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life, and the fact that we can engage in this motivational inversion lets us use games to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, then, are a special medium for communication. They are the technology that allows us to write down and transmit forms of agency. Thus, the body of games forms a "library of agency" which we can use to help develop our freedom and autonomy. Nguyen also presents a new theory of the aesthetics of games. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. They are unlike traditional artworks in that they are designed to sculpt activities - and to promote their players' aesthetic appreciation of their own activity.

“[A] timely book . . . a wonderfully entertaining trip around the board, through 4,000 years of game history.” —The Wall Street Journal Board games have been with us even longer than the written word. But what is it about this pastime that continues to captivate us well into the age of smartphones and instant gratification? In It’s All a Game, Tristan Donovan, British journalist and author of Replay: The History of Video Games, opens the box on the incredible and often surprising history and psychology of board games. He traces the evolution of the game across cultures, time periods, and continents, from the paranoid Chicago toy genius behind classics like Operation and Mouse Trap, to the role of Monopoly in helping prisoners of war escape the Nazis, and even the scientific use of board games today to teach artificial intelligence how to reason and how to win. With these compelling stories and characters, Donovan ultimately reveals why board games—from chess to Monopoly to Risk and more—have captured hearts and minds all over the world for generations. “Splendid . . . A quick and breezy read, it doesn’t just tell the fascinating stories of the (often struggling) individuals who created our favorite games. It also manages to convey the entire sweep of board game history, from the earliest forms of checkers to modern-day surprise hits like Settlers of Catan.” —Mashable “Artfully weaves together culture, business, and ways games impact society.” —Booklist “A fascinating and insightful discussion not only of games past, but the socioeconomic and historical factors that contributed to their popularity.” —Chicago Review of Books