buffalo

"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"--.

"Beyond the X's and O's is the previously unpublished story of how a long-term stadium lease was negotiated and signed by New York's Erie County, the state, and the Buffalo Bills football team. Told by Mark C. Poloncarz, the elected executive of the community that owned the stadium, we are given a rare glimpse into the long, difficult, but ultimately rewarding effort to successfully conclude negotiations between an NFL franchise, the National Football League, and a multitude of players from the political arena including Governor Andrew Cuomo and US Senator Chuck Schumer. Poloncarz discusses the financial side of sports and reveals how the county was able to navigate what proved to be often turbulent waters. Complicating negotiations was an on-going frenzy in the local news media, hungry for any news about the new lease, and Bills team owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr., who was 92 and had said the team would be sold upon his death. In the end a new lease was signed and the Bill remained in Buffalo at time when a number of other cities watched their teams relocate to other cities"--.

"Beyond the X's and O's is the previously unpublished story of how a long-term stadium lease was negotiated and signed by New York's Erie County, the state, and the Buffalo Bills football team. Told by Mark C. Poloncarz, the elected executive of the community that owned the stadium, we are given a rare glimpse into the long, difficult, but ultimately rewarding effort to successfully conclude negotiations between an NFL franchise, the National Football League, and a multitude of players from the political arena including Governor Andrew Cuomo and US Senator Chuck Schumer. Poloncarz discusses the financial side of sports and reveals how the county was able to navigate what proved to be often turbulent waters. Complicating negotiations was an on-going frenzy in the local news media, hungry for any news about the new lease, and Bills team owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr., who was 92 and had said the team would be sold upon his death. In the end a new lease was signed and the Bill remained in Buffalo at time when a number of other cities watched their teams relocate to other cities"--.

"A collection of personal essays written by twenty-four students coming from fifteen different countries, and five coming from Puerto Rico."--Provided by publisher.

"Fearful of violating Indiana's anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's black father and white mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry. Johnson searched her father's black genealogy and then was amazed to suddenly realize that her mother's whole white side was missing in family history. Johnson went searching for the white family who did not know she existed. When she found them, it's not just their shock and her mother's shame that have to be overcome, but her own fraught experiences with whites."--.

Tasha, a fifteen-year-old mother, is proud of her baby girl and is determined to be a good parent to her child, but she must draw upon her newfound faith to go on when tragedy strikes.

"The 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, meant to herald the twentieth century, went tragically, spectacularly, awry. In 1901, Buffalo, New York, the eighth biggest city in America, wanted to launch the new century with the Pan American Exposition. It would showcase the Western hemisphere and bring millions of people to western New York. With Niagara Falls as a drawing card and with stunning colors and electric lights, promoters believed it would be bigger, better, and--literally--more brilliant than Chicago's White City of 1893. Weaving together narratives of both notorious and forgotten figures, Margaret Creighton unveils the fair's big tragedy and its lesser-known scandals. From a deranged laborer who stalked and shot President William McKinley to a sixty-year-old woman who rode a barrel over Niagara Falls, to two astonishing acts--a little person and an elephant--who turned the tables on their duplicitous manager, Creighton reveals the myriad power struggles that would personify modern America. The Buffalo fair announced the new century, but in ways nobody expected"--Provided by publisher.

The book was donated by the author in 2013 and is a memoir of Edward "Skip" Swain about his personal experiences in Vietnam as an enlisted man.