Ever since he was a child, Keith O’Neil wanted to play football. Born on the same day that his father, Ed O’Neil, was cut from the New England Patriots, football was all Keith could think about...aside from his anxiety. Offered a scholarship to Northern Arizona University, O’Neil jumped at the chance to prove himself. Though it wasn’t a Division I-A school, he brought his all and was a natural on the field, achieving first-team All-Big Sky choice as a junior and senior, as well as earning All-American honors. Going undrafted, luck came from the Dallas Cowboys, who offered O’Neil an invite to rookie mini-camp. But while trying to learn the playbook, his anxiety and insomnia returned. Even so, he made the team as an undrafted free agent. His dream had come true. While proving himself as a hard-nosed special teamer, sleepless nights, constant anxiety, and suicidal thoughts clouded his mind. O’Neil considered stepping away from the game multiple times, even speaking to his coach, Bill Parcells. Parcells gave him the wisdom that “Everyone has a demon in their head, and we have to beat that demon. Beat the demon!” After being released from the Cowboys, O’Neil spent time with the Colts and Giants, but still could not escape his inner demons. He asked for help but never received the attention he needed. In fact, for suicidal thoughts was given a CD to help him relax—Enya. It finally became too much for him to handle, and the final decision was made to walk away from the game. It wasn’t until sometime later that was finally diagnosed: Bipolar I disorder. Finally, everything made sense. Under My Helmet is the personal story of a man working every day to prove his worth while struggling with a debilitating—and undiagnosed—mental illness. O’Neil’s voice is honest and open as he shares his battles and the steps he’s taken to overcome adversity.

Helmet for My Pillow is a gripping memoir that transports readers to the frontlines of World War II through the eyes of Robert Leckie, a young Marine who fought in some of the most brutal battles of the Pacific Theater. With raw honesty and vivid prose, Leckie recounts his experiences from boot camp to the bloody battles of Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and Peleliu, offering a deeply personal perspective on the sacrifices, camaraderie, and horrors of war. This powerful narrative serves as a testament to the courage and resilience of the men who fought and died in the Pacific, making it an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the realities of combat and the human cost of war.

Strahan, one of the NFL's most talented players--and one of the game's most vocal personalities--pens a no-holds-barred, hard-hitting account of what life is "really" like behind America's most popular sport. 8-page photo insert.

Dispatches from the new front lines of parenthood When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, "among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to sixty-nine children in eighteenth-century Russia." Greene is best known for her books on the civil rights movement and the African HIV/AIDS pandemic. She's been praised for her "historian's urge for accuracy," her "sociologist's sense of social nuance," and her "writerly passion for the beauty of language." But Melissa and her husband have also pursued a more private vocation: parenthood. "We so loved raising our four children by birth, we didn't want to stop. When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers." When the number of children hit nine, Greene took a break from reporting. She trained her journalist's eye upon events at home. Fisseha was riding a bike down the basement stairs; out on the porch, a squirrel was sitting on Jesse's head; vulgar posters had erupted on bedroom walls; the insult niftam (the Amharic word for "snot") had led to fistfights; and four non-native-English-speaking teenage boys were researching, on Mom's computer, the subject of "saxing." "At first I thought one of our trombone players was considering a change of instrument," writes Greene. "Then I remembered: they can't spell." Using the tools of her trade, she uncovered the true subject of the "saxing" investigation, inspiring the chapter "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Couldn't Spell." A celebration of parenthood; an ingathering of children, through birth and out of loss and bereavement; a relishing of moments hilarious and enlightening—No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a loving portrait of a unique twenty first-century family as it wobbles between disaster and joy.

The man who led the salvage efforts to raise a sunken US Navy submarine recounts the mission in a tale “that will surely rank among the epics of the sea” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). The sinking of the submarine S-51 was one of the greatest tragedies in American naval history. Due to a miscommunication and subsequent collision between the sub and a passing steamship on a September night, the S-51, including thirty-three of its crew of thirty-six, sank to the ocean depths. The tragedy of the S-51 captivated the nation, and was a fixture in the pages of American newspapers. The story took on a whole new dimension when the navy decided to take over the salvage of the thousand-ton behemoth from a civilian company. Heading the crew tasked with this impossible feat was Edward Ellsberg, at the time a lieutenant commander. On the Bottom is Ellsberg’s account of the successes and failures he and his men experienced as they attempted an astonishing feat of engineering and bravery: the first salvage of a submarine from the open ocean.

The 1992–1995 battle for Sarajevo was the longest siege in modern history. It was also the most internationalized, attracting a vast contingent of aid workers, UN soldiers, journalists, smugglers, and embargo-busters. The city took center stage under an intense global media spotlight, becoming the most visible face of post-Cold War conflict and humanitarian intervention. However, some critical activities took place backstage, away from the cameras, including extensive clandestine trading across the siege lines, theft and diversion of aid, and complicity in the black market by peacekeeping forces. In Blue Helmets and Black Markets, Peter Andreas traces the interaction between these formal front-stage and informal backstage activities, arguing that this created and sustained a criminalized war economy and prolonged the conflict in a manner that served various interests on all sides. Although the vast majority of Sarajevans struggled for daily survival and lived in a state of terror, the siege was highly rewarding for some key local and international players. This situation also left a powerful legacy for postwar reconstruction: new elites emerged via war profiteering and an illicit economy flourished partly based on the smuggling networks built up during wartime. Andreas shows how and why the internationalization of the siege changed the repertoires of siege-craft and siege defenses and altered the strategic calculations of both the besiegers and the besieged. The Sarajevo experience dramatically illustrates that just as changes in weapons technologies transformed siege warfare through the ages, so too has the arrival of CNN, NGOs, satellite phones, UN peacekeepers, and aid convoys. Drawing on interviews, reportage, diaries, memoirs, and other sources, Andreas documents the business of survival in wartime Sarajevo and the limits, contradictions, and unintended consequences of international intervention. Concluding with a comparison of the battle for Sarajevo with the sieges of Leningrad, Grozny, and Srebrenica, and, more recently, Falluja, Blue Helmets and Black Markets is a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary urban warfare, war economies, and the political repercussions of humanitarian action.

Headset to Helmet ‑ the groundbreaking book for the R4 System ­- explores a revolutionary approach to coaching quarterbacks by providing a unique perspective that allows the coach to see the game through the QB's eyes. The R4 System serves as a powerful communication tool, simplifying the intricate variables involved in quarterback decision-making, from coverage recognition to throw placement in hostile spaces. This innovative operating platform is hailed as the most effective solution for simplifying complex passing game structures, offering easy-to-understand logic and common-sense principles. Dive into this expert system to transform your understanding of pass play design, reduce installation confusion, and empower quarterbacks to "Self-Correct Not Self-Destruct" under pressure. In this book you will learn 4-word process that will: · Guide every decision a quarterback makes for every pass play in your existing scheme. · Reduce the burden on pass protection. · Discipline quarterback footwork once and for all. · Increase the sense of urgency for every receiver in a route package. · Significantly reduce “if-thens” for every pass play. · Generate manageable “full field” quarterback reads post snap. That’s just a sample of what the R4 System will do for your offense.