Soccer is the world's favorite pastime, a passion for billions around the globe. In the United States, however, the sport is a distant also-ran behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Why is America an exception? And why, despite America's leading role in popular culture, does most of the world ignore American sports in return? Offside is the first book to explain these peculiarities, taking us on a thoughtful and engaging tour of America's sports culture and connecting it with other fundamental American exceptionalisms. In so doing, it offers a comparative analysis of sports cultures in the industrial societies of North America and Europe. The authors argue that when sports culture developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nativism and nationalism were shaping a distinctly American self-image that clashed with the non-American sport of soccer. Baseball and football crowded out the game. Then poor leadership, among other factors, prevented soccer from competing with basketball and hockey as they grew. By the 1920s, the United States was contentedly isolated from what was fast becoming an international obsession. The book compares soccer's American history to that of the major sports that did catch on. It covers recent developments, including the hoopla surrounding the 1994 soccer World Cup in America, the creation of yet another professional soccer league, and American women's global preeminence in the sport. It concludes by considering the impact of soccer's growing popularity as a recreation, and what the future of sports culture in the country might say about U.S. exceptionalism in general.

“I'm not sure what possessed me to do it. Maybe it was the impossible expectations I faced, maybe it was my own self-loathing. But I just knew I needed something different to happen. I needed someone...something...to derail me from my current path. Otherwise, I would become lost...a hollowed out shell of a man. So I did it. I approached her, then I pursued her, then I made her mine. And my life was saved...” Ryan Burnham is the privileged son of a U.S. Congressman and captain of his university’s hockey team. While he is on the verge of fulfilling his dreams to play in the NHL, his parents want him on a different course. One he is expected to accept for the sake of his family’s public image. Forced to abandon her music career after the heart breaking death of her parents, Danny Cross exists on the opposite side of the tracks from Ryan. She is struggling to make her own way, working two jobs, attending college part time and volunteering in a homeless shelter. She is on a mission to build her own success. With a chance meeting, their vastly different worlds collide, causing each to evaluate whether they are truly on the correct path to self-fulfillment and happiness. Can their relationship survive? Particularly when others are against them every step of the way. A lot can happen in just ten short days... **Note From Sawyer Bennett: This book is part of the Off Series but it can be read as a stand alone book. Nothing in the prior or subsequent books will diminish your understanding of this novel. This is a New Adult, Contemporary Romance. Off Sides – Book #1 Off Limits – Book #2 Off The Record – Book #3 Off Course – Book #4 Off Chance – Book #5

Barcelona’s new soccer star is receiving death threats and Pepe Carvalho, gourmet gumshoe and former political prisoner under Franco, is hired to find out who’s behind it. Pepe Carvalho is set to retire. Content to live out the rest of his days enjoying the best food and wine Catalonia has to offer, his plans are put on hold when an executive from Barcelona's world-famous soccer team pays him a visit. “The center forward will be killed at dusk,” reads the note the executive gives to Carvalho. With that, the detective, former communist, and one-time employee of the CIA, must find out where this note is from. Is the threat real? Is it the work of one person? Or is it one of the real estate moguls tearing Barcelona apart in their battle over the most important properties of Catalonia? Here Montalbán does for the game of soccer what he has done for food. In an exquisite portrait of Spain’s most beloved sport, soccer and politics mix in a gripping mystery about the reckless excesses—and limits—of power.

A New York Times Notable Book: A memoir of the writing life of Jim Harrison, from hardscrabble years to high-profile Hollywood friendships, “as engaging as it is eccentric” (The Washington Post Book World). In this “sprawling, impressionistic memoir”, which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Jim Harrison chronicles his coming-of-age, from a boy drunk with books to a young man making his way among fellow writers he deeply admires—including Peter Matthiessen, Robert Lowell, W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg (The New York Times Book Review). Harrison discusses forthrightly the life-changing experience of becoming a father, and the minor cognitive dissonance that ensued when this boy from the heartland somehow ended up a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. He gives free rein to his seven obsessions—alcohol, food, stripping, hunting and fishing (and the dogs who have accompanied him in both), religion, the road, and our place in the natural world—which he elucidates with earthy wisdom and an elegant sense of connectedness. Off to the Side is a work of great beauty and importance, a triumphant achievement that captures the writing life and brings all of us clues for living. A true masterpiece of memoir from an author whose “writing bears earthy whiffs of wild morels and morals and of booze and botany, as well as hints of William Faulkner, Louise Erdrich, Herman Melville, and Norman Maclean.” (San Francisco Chronicle) “This fine memoir is a worthy capstone to a fascinating career.” —Publishers Weekly

She's about to make a deal with the college bad boy... Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she's carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush's attention, she'll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice...even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date. ...and it's going to be oh so good All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.

I have to be the best. I am the best. I'm quick. I'm strong. I'm smart. I'm the star keeper of my high school soccer team, and I've got major leagues scouting me. As their captain, my teammates will do anything I say - on or off the field. Girls practically beg to be added to my list of conquests. As long as I manage to go pro for the best team in the world, I won't have to worry about my father's wrath. I'm Thomas Malone, and I've seen to it that the world revolves around me. There's a new girl at school, and it's just a matter of time before she gives in to my charm. This one's just a little more stubborn than most - she won't even tell me her name! She's smart, too. Maybe too smart. I can't let her in. I can't let anybody in. I'm not too worried, but even I have to admit she's interfering with my focus on the goal. Dad's not going to be happy about that. Did I mention I love Shakespeare? Yeah, I know. I'm a walking contradiction. According to the Bard - "some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." Somehow, I got all three. Now how is anyone supposed to live up to that?

**One of Sports Illustrated's Best Sports Books of 2017** Controversial hockey star Sean Avery's no-holds-barred memoir of high living and bad behavior in the NHL—coupled with the behind-the-scenes glitter of celebrity and media nightlife in New York and LA. As one of the NHL’s most polarizing players, Sean Avery turned the rules of professional hockey on its head. For thirteen seasons, Avery played for some of the toughest, most storied franchises in the league, including the Detroit Red Wings, the Los Angeles Kings, and the New York Rangers, making his mark in each city as a player that was sometimes loved, often despised, but always controversial. In Ice Capades, Avery takes his trademark candidness about the world of pro hockey and does for it what Jim Bouton's game-changing Ball Four did for baseball. Avery goes deep inside the sport to reveal every aspect of an athlete’s life, from what they do with their money and nights off to how they stay sharp and competitive in the league. While playing the talented villain in the NHL, Avery broke far away from his on-ice character in the off-season, and Ice Capades takes the reader inside the other unexpected and unprecedented roles that Avery inhabited—Vogue intern, fashion model, advertising executive, restauranteur, gay rights advocate, and many more. Love him or hate him, Sean Avery changed the way professional hockey is played today. Rollickingly honest and compelling throughout, Ice Capades transcends the “sports book” genre and offers a rare, unvarnished glimpse into the world of 21st century hockey through the eyes of one of its most original and memorable players.