This is a story about a kid that was raised during the Great Depression when the word welfare was virtually unspoken. He had deep loyalties for God, country, and family. It was the custom in those days to salute the flag each school day. He attended weekday church school every Wednesday afternoon during his elementary school years. His family was poor but proud and self-reliant. Lloyd learned early in life that if he wanted something, he had to work for it. His loyalty to his country was reflected in his leaving high school and volunteering for the navy the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It’s about the struggle of two high school dropouts that fell in love. They started life together on the bottom rung, and it never occurred to them to feel sorry for themselves. They were happy in their stroll together down the rough and rocky road that lay ahead. Theirs was a love affair that lasted fifty-seven years. They were both from broken homes and determined that their children would not suffer a similar fate. It is the story of two kids willing to work hard, to study and learn, to save a penny wherever possible. It is a story of survival. They ate weeds, as some people might call them. They liked to call them spring greens. He hunted rabbit, squirrel, and quail in winter and fished during the summer. It all went into the larder. Inch by inch they elevated their lot in life, not unlike a waterlogged timber that might slowly rise to the surface and into the sunshine. They grabbed snatches of education wherever they could. Esther took typing, shorthand, and secretarial courses and later a school of cosmetology. Lloyd finished high school, took college courses, and acquired a little more than the equivalent of two years of college when the air force selected him for an engineering course at the University of Colorado. It’s about the search for Valhalla, a place and the means to retire, after a lifelong struggle by two kids so unlikely to succeed in life. Together they proved the truth of the old adage “If there is a will, there is a way.”

Roger L. Youmans, MD grew up in Kansas City, Kansas and attended the University of Kansas with a Summerfield and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity for "excellence in scholarship." He married Mary "Winkie" Stewart after his first year in the University of Kansas School of Medicine. Following his graduation and internship he became a resident in General Surgery, but after one year he took his family with him to Congo where he staffed a rural hospital for six months during the riots that followed Congo's Independence from Belgium. He completed his surgical residence at the University of Kansas Medical Center, passed his Surgical Boards, Missionary Orientation Course, and studied French and completed the course in Tropical Medicine in the Princess Astrid School of Tropical Medicine in Belgium, with distinction, before returning to Congo with his family under the Board of Missions of the United Methodist Church. He spent his adult life practicing and teaching surgery and tropical medicine in various medical schools in America and Africa. He was named the outstanding teacher at the Oral Roberts University School of Medicine in 1972 and again in 1974, and received the Distinguished Service Citation from the University of Kansas in 2008.

This is the first full-length biography of Kid Nichols (1869-1953), who won 30 or more games a record seven times and was the youngest pitcher to reach 300 career victories. Much new light is shed on Nichols' early life in Madison, Wisconsin, along with important influences and experiences as a teenager living in Kansas City. Nichols' professional career is documented by drawing heavily from publications of the era and his own words. The high regard in which he was held by fans, teammates and even opponents is contrasted with his contentious relationship with team owners. Nichols' period of restlessness, ambition and risk-taking following his long stint with Boston's National League team is detailed, as is the campaign to get him into the Hall of Fame. The book includes previously unpublished photos from his descendants' archives, many more than a century old.

In Mexican American communities in the central United States, the modern tradition of playing fastpitch softball has been passed from generation to generation. This ethnic sporting practice is kept alive through annual tournaments, the longest-running of which were founded in the 1940s, when softball was a ubiquitous form of recreation, and the so-called "Mexican American generation" born to immigrant parents was coming of age. Carrying on with fastpitch into the second or third generation of players even as wider interest in the sport has waned, these historically Mexican American tournaments now function as reunions that allow people to maintain ties to a shared past, and to remember the decades of segregation when Mexican Americans' citizenship was unfairly questioned. In this multi-sited ethnography, Ben Chappell conveys the importance of fastpitch in the ordinary yearly life of Mexican American communities from Kansas City to Houston. Traveling to tournaments, he interviews players and fans, strikes up conversations in the bleachers, takes in the atmosphere in the heat of competition, and combs through local and personal archives. Recognizing fastpitch as a practice of cultural citizenship, Chappell situates the sport within a history marked by migration, marginalization, solidarity, and struggle, through which Mexican Americans have navigated complex negotiations of cultural, national, and local identities.