Instant New York Times Bestseller · Winner of the General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation “Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights is an American classic. With The Mosquito Bowl, he is back with a true story even more colorful and profound. This book too is destined to become a classic. I devoured it.” — John Grisham An extraordinary, untold story of the Second World War in the vein of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat, from the author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war – the invasion of Okinawa—their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled: Former All Americans, captains from Wisconsin and Brown and Notre Dame, and nearly twenty men who were either drafted or would ultimately play in the NFL. When the trash-talking between the 4th and 29th over who had the better football team reached a fever pitch, it was decided: The two regiments would play each other in a football game as close to the real thing as you could get in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal. The bruising and bloody game that followed became known as “The Mosquito Bowl.” Within a matter of months, 15 of the 65 players in “The Mosquito Bowl” would be killed at Okinawa, by far the largest number of American athletes ever to die in a single battle. The Mosquito Bowl is the story of these brave and beautiful young men, those who survived and those who did not. It is the story of the families and the landscape that shaped them. It is a story of a far more innocent time in both college athletics and the life of the country, and of the loss of that innocence. Writing with the style and rigor that won him a Pulitzer Prize and have made several of his books modern classics, Buzz Bissinger takes us from the playing fields of America’s campuses where boys played at being Marines, to the final time they were allowed to still be boys on that field of dirt and coral, to the darkest and deadliest days that followed at Okinawa.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 John Jackson McLaughry was a total badass. He wore his brown hair combed forward in the style of Clark Kent, the superhero alter ego of Superman. He had a Clark Kent smile. He could make people feel like they were in the right place at the right time when he was around. He was someone you wanted to be around. He was your older brother. This is how he introduced himself to me: Hi, I’m John. You can call me John. I don’t remember what I said in response. Maybe I was intimidated by his presence, or maybe I was just in awe of this guy who seemed to have it all together and also knew my name and knew it by the first letter. Maybe I was already homesick or just anxious about starting a new chapter of my life away from home and Brown, but my memory is blank. When you are six or seven years old and your parents take you to the theater for the first time, you don’t know what to make of it, so you just sit there and stare at the stage in wonder and maybe a little fear. #2 John McLaughry was a total badass. He introduced himself to me as John, and I was in awe of him. #3 John McLaughry was a total badass. He introduced himself to me as John, and I was in awe of him. He had choices after college, remarkable ones: graduate school in art, an executive training program in business, or a career in pro football. #4 John McLaughlin was a total badass. He introduced himself to me as John, and I was in awe of him. He had choices after college: graduate school in art, an executive training program in business, or a career in pro football.

Filled with stunning photos, this book by the #1 New York Times–bestselling sportswriter tells the story of Mickey Mantle’s legendary career. Mickey Mantle has long been considered one of baseball's most memorable figures—playing his entire eighteen-year baseball career for the New York Yankees (1951-68), winning three American League MVP titles, playing in twenty All-Star games, and winning seven World Series. Today, decades after his retirement, he still holds six World Series records, including most home runs (18). Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August, goes beyond the statistics to bring Mantle to life, and striking photographs by Marvin E. Newman make this book a fitting tribute to Mantle’s career and his lasting impact on the sport of baseball.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Friday Night Lights, the heart-wrenching and hilarious true story of an American city on its knees and a man who will do anything to save it. A Prayer for the City is acclaimed journalist Buzz Bissinger's true epic of Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell, an utterly unique, unorthodox, and idiosyncratic leader willing to go to any length for the sake of his city: take unions head on, personally lobby President Clinton to save 10,000 defense jobs, or wrestle Smiley the Pig on Hot Dog Day—all the while bearing in mind the eternal fickleness of constituents whose favor may hinge on a missed garbage pick-up or an overzealous meter maid. It is also the story of citizens in crisis: a woman fighting ceaselessly to give her great-grandchildren a better life, a father of six who may lose his job at the Navy Shipyard, and a policy analyst whose experiences as a crime victim tempt her to abandon her job and ideals. "Fascinating, humane" (The New Yorker) and alive with detail and insight, A Prayer for the City describes the rare combination of political courage and optimism that may be the only hope for America's urban centers.

The author recounts a father-son road trip during which he gained insight into the worldviews, challenges, and talents of his socially challenged savant son, Zach.

“Impressively researched and reported and powerfully written, Third Down and a War to Go will put you in the huddle, in the front lines, and in a state of profound gratitude--not only to the Badgers and the hundreds of thousands of veterans like them, but to Terry Frei.” --Neal Rubin, The Detroit News On December 11, 1941, All-American football player Dave Schreiner wrote to his parents, “I’m not going to sit here snug as a bug, playing football, when others are giving their lives for their country. . . . If everyone tried to stay out of it, what a fine country we’d have!” Schreiner didn’t stay out of it. Neither did his Wisconsin Badger teammates, including friend and cocaptain Mark “Had” Hoskins and standouts “Crazylegs” Hirsch and Pat Harder. After that legendary 1942 season, the Badgers scattered to serve, fight, and even die around the world. This fully revised edition of the popular hardcover includes follow-up research and updates about many of the ’42 Badgers, plus a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Maraniss. Readers and reviewers agree: Terry Frei’s heart-wrenching story of Schreiner and his band of brothers is much more than one team’s tale. It’s an All-American story. 2005 Honorable Mention in Recreation/Sports from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association

**The instant New York Times bestseller.** *An international bestseller.* Finalist for the Lane Anderson Award Finalist for the RBC Taylor Award “Hugely impressive, a major work.”—NPR A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power. The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village. Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter? Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable. Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito’s reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.