history

"Every few years a talent comes along that disrupts everything we think we know about how the NBA should work. Whether it's scoring, playmaking, or shooting, these are players and tactics that fundamentally challenge how the game is played and what greatness looks like on a basketball court. For a period of time, these players each become an "Atlas" for the league, carrying the weight of the NBA on their shoulders, but also providing the roadmap that points the way to the future of the sport. In tandem, they map out the modern NBA's creation. Goldsberry returns with a highly visual, electrifying tour through the last three decades of NBA history, showing the "Atlas" players that have led us out of the brutishness of 90s hoops and into the wide open spaces of the most skilled era in NBA history. Charting the course from Jordan to Jokic-with plenty of stops along the way for Iverson, Kobe, Curry, and of course Lebron-Goldsberry, who was instrumental in helping spur the NBA's statistical revolution, has designed a vibrant new way to compare and debate the contributions of the best NBA players of all-time. Masterfully connecting NBA past and present through incisive writing and stunning visual statistical analyses, he shows how we've come to this unprecedented moment, a time when offensive efficiency and shooting percentages are higher than ever. Using beautifully designed, four-color shot maps and illustrations, Goldsberry offers a graphic journey through the last thirty years of the NBA that covers up to the 2023 season and is as much fun to look at as it is to read. The end result offers stories and analyses of a select group of NBA superstars that open up lively debates, reveal just how singular their talents truly are, and characterize the dramatic 21st-century metamorphosis of the best basketball league in the world"--.

For more than two centuries, the White House in Washington, DC, has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history. Its walls and portraits have witnessed fierce power struggles, world-altering decisions, shocking scandals, and unforgettable meetings. In the signature style of the popular American History Tellers podcast, A View from the White House places listeners in the point of view of the historical figures-power brokers and everyday Americans, alike, who lived through such pivotal events as: Andrew Jackson's disastrous 1829 inauguration, when a populist mob overran and trashed the White House; Woodrow Wilson's stroke, which led to his wife Edith serving as a shadow president during the final months of his administration; Abraham Lincoln's clandestine journey to Washington to dodge an assassination plot on the eve of the Civil War; Winston Churchill's wartime sojourn at the White House, during which he and FDR developed plans to defeat Germany; and Barack Obama's decision to green-light the daring Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

"Soccer has been the world's most popular sport for the last century and an irresistible game for political and social leaders seeking shortcuts to the hearts of their people. Some of the prime movers of the twentieth-century, including Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Evita and Juan Per?n, Augusto Pinochet, and the drug lord Pablo Escobar, have found in soccer a magnificent partner for enflaming patriotism, manipulating the masses, prolonging their stays on the throne, justifying aberrant acts, or simply recreating the old Roman 'bread and circuses' (in many cases without the bread). They have tried to turn the beautiful game into something useful. Sometimes it worked, momentarily, but as renowned sports journalist Luciano Wernicke writes in this fascinating and original book, the game and its glories have survived them all"--Provided by publisher.

"[This book] transports readers around the world (and beyond)--to a jazz performance in Genoa, an instrument lab in London, a Tokyo taiko dojo, a New York City beatbox battle, and even a film scoring session aboard the Starship Enterprise, to name a few. Along the way, it spotlights artists whose work spans musical genres and industry roles, including composing and songwriting, performing and conducting, audio engineering, producing, and rock photography. In [this book], 15 . . . women reveal how they turned their passions into platforms and how they use their power to uplift others"--Amazon.

"Buffalo has NEVER won a universally recognized championship in any of the major professional sports leagues. Most sports fans are familiar with three events in Buffalo sports history that went against Buffalo, "Wide Right," "No Goal," and "Home Run Throwback." But these events only highlight a deeply engrained "Buffalo Sports Curse." Through meticulous research, the book identifies that a "Curse" of Buffalo professional sports definitely exists, and it goes all the way back to 1901. The book delves into the history of each major professional Buffalo sports team back to the beginning of the 20th century. The book outlines 27 specific events in Buffalo sports history that portray the significance and expansiveness of the "Buffalo Sports Curse." The "Curse" has affected every professional team in Buffalo sports history. The book analyzes the close calls, blown calls, injuries, deaths, nefarious back office dealings, maladies and weird happenings that have occurred at just the wrong time to keep Buffalo from winning that elusive championship. A "Curse" is just too pronounced to ignore and now this book brings it to life"--.

The star of NCIS along with a former Special Agent share the duelling stories of the cat-and-mouse games played between a real-life Japanese American naval intelligence officer and a Japanese spy in Pearl Harbor posing as a diplomat.

"When a major Hollywood studio released Five Fingers of Death to thrill-seeking Times Square moviegoers on March 21, 1973, only a handful of Black and Asian American audience members knew the difference between an Iron Fist and an Eagle's Claw. That changed overnight as kung fu movies kicked off a craze that would earn millions at the box office, send TV ratings soaring, sell hundreds of thousands of video tapes, influence the birth of hip hop, reshape the style of action we see in movies today, and introduce America to some of the biggest non-white stars to ever hit motion picture screens. This lavishly illustrated book tells the bone-blasting, spine-shattering story of how these films of fury -- spawned in anti-colonial protests on the streets of Hong Kong -- came to America and raised hell for 15 years before greed, infomercials, and racist fearmongering shut them down. It's about an 11-year-old boy who not only created the first fan edit but somehow turned it into a worldwide moneymaker, CIA agents secretly funding a karate movie, the New York Times fabricating a fear campaign about black "karate gangs" out to kill white people, the history of black martial arts in America ("Why does judo or karate suddenly get so ominous because black men study it?," wondered Malcolm X), the death of Bruce Lee and the onslaught of imitators that followed, and how a fight that started in Japanese internment camps during World War II ended in a ninja movie some 40 years later. It's a battle for recognition and respect that started a long, long time ago and continues today in movies like The Matrix, Kill Bill, and Black Panther and here, for the first time, is the full uncensored story."--Back cover.

"Packed with . . . photography, Train catalogues the development of trains from early steam to diesel engines and electric locomotives, explores in detail iconic trains such as the Palace on Wheels and the Orient Express, and chronicles the social, political, and cultural backdrop against which railways were built the world over. Profiling the best loved railways and rail journeys of all time - from the Union-Pacific Railroad to the Trans-Siberian Railway - and the pioneers of train and track - from 'Father of the Railways' George Stephenson to engineering legend Isambard Kingdom Brunel and M?tro-maestro Fulgence Bienven?e"-- Provided by publisher.

"To Infinity and Beyond. Journey through the U.S. space program's fascinating pictorial history. On October 1, 1958, the world's first civilian space agency opened for business as an emergency response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik a year earlier. Within a decade, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, universally known as NASA, had evolved from modest research teams experimenting with small converted rockets into one of the greatest technological and managerial enterprises ever known, capable of sending men to the moon"--.

"Dao, a red panda, guides Ethan and Emma, two school children, back into time to discover how chess was created and became popular worldwide"--Provided by publisher.