'Football is not just a matter of life and death: it's much more important than that' - Bill Shankly Bill Shankly was without doubt among the greatest football managers of the post-war era and his life story is an inspiring read for anyone interested in the sport. To football fans everywhere, Bill Shankly was far more than just a manager: he was a folk hero whose legend still dominates the game. Shankly took Liverpool FC from Second Division obscurity and helped create the legend that became the Anfield of Keegan, Hughes, Toshack and Heighway. With his impertinent questions, blunt observations and appreciation of life, Bill Shankly's wit, down-to-earth wisdom and sheer determination set a standard that holds good to this day. This full and frank biography tells his larger-than-life story and is an inspiring tribute to one of football's most enduring heroes.

A New York Times Editors' Choice "[T]he stuff of great literature." —The New York Times | "Red or Dead is a winner." —The Washington Post The place where the swinging sixties started – Liverpool, England, birthplace of the Beatles – wasn’t so swinging. Amid industrial blight and a bad economy, the port town’s shipping industry was going bust and there was widespread unemployment, with no assistance from a government tightening its belt. Even the Beatles moved to London. Into these hard times walked Bill Shankly, a former Scottish coal miner who took over the city’s perpetually last-place soccer team. He had a straightforward work ethic and a favorite song – a silly pop song done by a local band, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Soon he would have entire stadiums singing along, tens of thousands of people all dressed in the team color red . . . as Liverpool began to win . . . And soon, too, there was something else those thousands of people would chant as one: Shank-lee, Shank-lee . . . In Red or Dead, the acclaimed writer David Peace tells the stirring story of the real-life working-class hero who lifted the spirits of an entire city in turbulent times. But Red or Dead is more than a fictional biography of a real man, and more than a thrilling novel about sports. It is an epic novel that transcends those categories, until there’s nothing left to call it but – as many of the world’s leading newspapers already have – a masterpiece.

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING LOOK AT THE BIG BUSINESS AND IMMORAL PRACTICES BEHIND PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BY ACCLAIMED SPORTSWRITER DAVE ZIRIN, HAILED AS THE “CONSCIENCE OF AMERICAN SPORTSWRITING” (THE WASHINGTON POST ) The fastest-growing sector of today’s sports audience is the alienated fan. Complaints abound: from inflated ticket prices, $6 hot dogs, and $9 beers to owners endlessly demanding new multimillion-dollar stadiums funded by public tax dollars. Those sitting in the owners’ boxes are increasingly placing profit over players’ performances and fan loyalty. Bad Sports cuts through the hype and bombast to zero in on tales of abusive, dictatorial owners who move their teams thousands of miles away from their fan base, use their stadiums as religious and political platforms, or hold communities ransom for millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund their gargantuan stadiums. As the multibillion-dollar sports-industrial complex continues to lumber along, Dave Zirin is the voice in the wilderness, speaking out for the common fan with a tough, passionate, and intelligent voice that will remind readers that there is more to sportswriting than glowing athlete profiles.

Arguably the world's most popular sport, soccer has its own colorful lore, still little known in a nation only now beginning to give the game its due. This book offers the perfect opportunity to catch up on soccer's rich historyand to discover some of the funniest, most ironic, outlandish, and tragic stories ever to come out of the world of sports. Taking readers as far afield as the Faeroe Islands, Thailand, Madagascar, Belarus, Bhutan, and the North Pole, the selections inSoccer Storiesrange from the strange (Brazilian players paid in cattle by their cash-strapped club) to the wild (the Mexican prison warden who threw open all the cell doors in celebration of a World Cup victory) to the comical (the referee who ejected himself). Here is the plane crash that wiped out the Italian team on the eve of its fifth straight national championship; the spiteful African club that scored 149 goals against itself in one game; and the youngster who banked a shot into the goal off a passing seagull. As lively as it is informative,Soccer Storieswill engage fans of all levels.

Volume three of a bibliography documenting all that has been written in the English language on the history of sport and physical education in Britain. It lists all secondary source material including reference works, in a classified order to meet the needs of the sports historian.

John Lloyd and John Mitchinson have proven themselves to be masters at digging up obscure facts, abstruse information, and amusing anecdotes and presenting them effortlessly, somewhat slyly, with either great wit or at least a little bit of tongue in cheek. Their gifts are on full display in Quote Interesting, a lively, wonderfully enjoyable anthology of hundreds of quotes you probably have never heard before, arranged thematically from A to Z. From laugh-out-loud-funny bon mots to some real headscratchers, Lloyd and Mitchinson have gathered a universe of star-studded blurbs like: “The Beatles are dying in the wrong order.” —Victor Lewis Smith “When you forget to eat, you know you’re alive.” —Henry James “I think people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.” —Nancy Reagan “You know ‘that look’ women get when they want sex? Me neither.” —Steve Martin

This 20-hour free course introduced some of the key concepts and methods of Religious Studies and explored examples of religious practice and belief.