A View from the Sidelines

A View from the Sidelines
Author: Michael Shea
Publisher: Sutton Publishing
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

The great and the good, the powerful and the feared end up, to misquote Enoch Powell, "lonely, bitter and alone at home". In A View from the Sidelines, Michael Shea offers a behind-the-scenes account of his years with presidents, monarchs, captains of industry, film stars, secret agents and their hangers-on.

Off the Sidelines

Off the Sidelines
Author: Kirsten Gillibrand
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2014-09-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0804179085

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand recounts her personal journey in public service and galvanizes women to make a meaningful difference in the world around them. “One of the most helpful, readable, down-to-earth, and truly democratic books ever to come out of the halls of power.”—Gloria Steinem Off the Sidelines is a playbook for women who want to step up, whether in Congress or the boardroom or the local PTA. If women were fully represented in politics, Gillibrand says, national priorities would shift to issues that directly impact them: affordable daycare, paid family medical leave, and equal pay. Pulling back the curtain on Beltway politics, she speaks candidly about her legislative successes (securing federally funded medical care for 9/11 first responders, repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) and her crushing disappointments (failing by five votes to pass a bill protecting survivors of sexual assault in the military). Gillibrand also shares stories of growing up the daughter and granddaughter of two trailblazing feminists in a politically active family in Albany, New York, and retraces her nonlinear path to public office. She lays bare the highs and lows of being a young (pregnant!) woman in Congress, the joys and sacrifices every working mother shares, and the support system she turns to in her darkest moments: her husband, their two little boys, and lots of girlfriends. In Off the Sidelines, Gillibrand is the tough-love older sister and cheerleader every woman needs. She explains why “ambition” is not a dirty word, failure is a gift, listening is the most effective tool, and the debate over women “having it all” is absurd at best and demeaning at worst. In her sharp, honest, and refreshingly relatable voice, she dares us all to tap into our inner strength, find personal fulfillment, and speak up for what we believe in. Praise for Off the Sidelines “Gillibrand has written a handbook for the next generation of women to redefine their role in our world.”—Arianna Huffington “There are moments of immensely appealing self-disclosure that seldom appear in other books of this genre. . . . This isn’t your mother’s political memoir.”—The New York Times Book Review

Waiting on the Sidelines

Waiting on the Sidelines
Author: Ginger Scott
Publisher: Ginger Scott
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2013-04-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0615788742

Nolan Lennox had things figured out. Named after a baseball legend, she enjoyed being the Tomboy, her closet filled with her brother’s hand-me-downs, cut-off jeans and soccer shorts. But when her first trip to high school results in a broken heart from the first boy to ever make her heart flutter and cruel words from an older girl she once thought a family friend, Nolan starts to question the very person she thought she was and wonders if her humble upbringing can compete with the afforded luxuries of her privileged peers. Throughout the next four years, Nolan struggles to maintain herself throughout her path of discovery, learning just how cruel teenagers can be through the pressures of underage drinking, sexuality and class. And despite how life seems to continue to work against her, she still manages to listen to her heart, falling deeper and deeper for the guy the entire town adores, even if he only sees her as a friend. Can Nolan strike a compromise between her own integrity and the boy she loves? And can she make him notice her before it’s too late? Reed Johnson came to Coolidge High School with a lot of fanfare. The son of a hometown football legend and the brother of a local football hero, Reed wore all the pressures of carrying a town without hope into the spotlight. Thankfully, he had the talent to back it up. But when he meets a girl who makes him think twice about exactly what being a hero means, he starts to wonder if following in his brother’s footsteps might be all wrong. Nolan Lennox was everything that was opposite of expected. She didn’t flirt, she didn’t drink and she didn’t sleep around. Nothing about her was easy, but something about her made Reed want to try harder. Though she didn’t look the part, she seemed to be spending a lot of time in Reed’s thoughts, and he wondered if she could be the one who made it all worthwhile. But could Reed handle letting her down? And would breaking her heart break him beyond repair? Waiting on the Sidelines explores young love to its fullest, exposing how real young heartbreak and passion is and how important it is to discover yourself and hold onto your own identity. The story follows two young characters as they deal with mature situations, including the prevalence of bullying and promiscuity in today’s high school setting. Ultimately, Waiting on the Sidelines is a story of hope, honesty and those powerful, first true loves—the ones worth holding onto at any cost.

The View from Castle Rock

The View from Castle Rock
Author: Alice Munro
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2006-11-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307266028

A “revelatory” (The Boston Globe), “exhilarating” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of twelve stories that “[redraw] the boundaries between fiction and memoir” (O: The Oprah Magazine), from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro “Munro really does know magic: how to summon the spirits and the emotions that animate our lives.”—The Washington Post Book World A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Rocky Mountain News, New York, The Kanas City Star A young boy, taken to Edinburgh’s Castle Rock to look across the sea to America, catches a glimpse of his father’s dream. Scottish immigrants experience love and loss on a journey that leads them to rural Ontario. Wives, mothers, fathers, and children move through uncertainty, ambivalence, and contemplation in these stories of hopes, adversity, and wonder. The View from Castle Rock reveals what is most essential in Munro’s art: her compassionate understanding of ordinary lives.

The New American Story

The New American Story
Author: Bill Bradley
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2007-03-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 158836626X

“Politics is stuck,” writes Bill Bradley, in this insightful, informative, and provocative book about America at a crossroads, but “idealism isn’t dead. It can be reawakened.” What will it take to make America a better, stronger, truer country? asks the bestselling author, former Knicks star, and onetime presidential candidate. Bill Bradley believes that America is at a teachable moment when we are compelled to reevaluate our political system, our leadership, our agenda as a nation, and ourselves as citizens. With clarity and urgency, Bradley shows why the story we are being told now about who we are as a people is not true. He then offers a new story about our nation, based on America’s rich heritage and his belief in the character of the American people. Bradley explores what changes need to be made in our parties, in our politics, and in citizen activism to ensure America’s future. He asserts that the American people are ready for the truth and suggests that the party that chooses to embrace this new story will be in power for a generation. Writing from his own experience in politics and drawing on his knowledge of history, Bradley shows how the Republican Party has built a solid pyramid structure since the 1970s, at the base of which are money, ideas, and media, whereas the Democratic Party’s structure is an inverted pyramid, with too much emphasis put on the need for a charismatic leader to hold the pyramid up. Each party, for different reasons, fails to deal with the real issues that now confront America. This informed and inspiring call to action is addressed not only to the parties and elected leaders, but to citizens as well. Bradley proposes things every American can do to shape our nation’s future. He points out that if eighty percent of the electorate voted, instead of fifty percent, it would be the most important change in American politics since women got the vote. Now more than ever, he says, we need to embrace an “ethic of connectedness,” a combination of collective action and individual responsibility, to solve our nation’s most pressing problems, and he argues that the fate of all countries is bound together as never before. Writing today with the freedom of a private citizen, Bradley provides this transformative and eye-opening book about the danger and the promise of America’s choice at this crucial moment in the nation’s history.

Sidelines and Bloodlines

Sidelines and Bloodlines
Author: Ryan McGee
Publisher: Triumph Books
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1641254939

"Ryan McGee has been one of my closest friends for nearly half our lives, and my admiration for his storytelling ability is infinite. Sidelines and Bloodlines is his deft storytelling at its best. Fathers and sons and sports—and the impenetrable bonds forged and memories created when they intersect." —Marty Smith, New York Times bestselling author and ESPN reporter Football is a game of lines—on and off the gridiron In Sidelines and Bloodlines, Ryan McGee—co-host of the popular Marty & McGee show on ESPN Radio and SEC Network—teams up with his father and brother to share lessons learned between the white lines, featuring a cast of characters that runs from no-name small college athletes and coaches to one-name legends such as Holtz, Paterno, Tebow, and Bo. The McGees provide a rare and often hilarious glimpse inside the lives of college officials, detailing how a love for the game convinces accomplished professionals from all walks of life to voluntarily endure ceaseless insults and highly public criticism. The book contains memorable stories of brawling high school referees and making awkward small talk with George Lucas and Darth Vader at the Rose Bowl to the heart-tugging story of young sons in the stands on a Saturday as a stream profanity-laden insults directed at their father drowns out the marching band. Sidelines and Bloodlines delivers laughs, tears, and a deeper understanding of a life in stripes.

On the Sidelines

On the Sidelines
Author: Guy Harrison (College teacher)
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1496227409

2022 Outstanding Book Award in the Communication and Sport Division from the National Communication Association When sports fans turn on the television or radio today, they undoubtedly find more women on the air than ever before. Nevertheless, women sportscasters are still subjected to gendered and racialized mistreatment in the workplace and online and are largely confined to anchor and sideline reporter positions in coverage of high-profile men's sports. In On the Sidelines Guy Harrison weaves in-depth interviews with women sportscasters, focus groups with sports fans, and a collection of media products to argue that gendered neoliberalism--a cluster of exclusionary twenty-first-century feminisms--maintains this status quo. Spinning a cohesive narrative, Harrison shows how sportscasting's dependence on gendered neoliberalism broadly places the onus on women for their own success despite systemic sexism and racism. As a result, women in the industry are left to their own devices to navigate double standards, bias in hiring and development for certain on-air positions, harassment, and emotional labor. Through the lens of gendered neoliberalism, On the Sidelines examines each of these challenges and analyzes how they have been reshaped and maintained to construct a narrow portrait of the ideal neoliberal female sportscaster. Consequently, these challenges are taken for granted as "natural," sustaining women's marginalization in the sportscasting industry.

Man Out

Man Out
Author: Andrew L. Yarrow
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2018-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815732759

The story of men who are hurting—and hurting America by their absence Man Out describes the millions of men on the sidelines of life in the United States. Many of them have been pushed out of the mainstream because of an economy and society where the odds are stacked against them; others have chosen to be on the outskirts of twenty-first-century America. These men are disconnected from work, personal relationships, family and children, and civic and community life. They may be angry at government, employers, women, and "the system" in general—and millions of them have done time in prison and have cast aside many social norms. Sadly, too many of these men are unsure what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Wives or partners reject them; children are estranged from them; and family, friends, and neighbors are embarrassed by them. Many have disappeared into a netherworld of drugs, alcohol, poor health, loneliness, misogyny, economic insecurity, online gaming, pornography, other off-the-grid corners of the internet, and a fantasy world of starting their own business or even writing the Great American novel. Most of the men described in this book are poorly educated, with low incomes and often with very few prospects for rewarding employment. They are also disproportionately found among millennials, those over 50, and African American men. Increasingly, however, these lost men are discovered even in tony suburbs and throughout the nation. It is a myth that men on the outer corners of society are only lower-middle-class white men dislocated by technology and globalization. Unlike those who primarily blame an unjust economy, government policies, or a culture sanctioning "laziness," Man Out explores the complex interplay between economics and culture. It rejects the politically charged dichotomy of seeing such men as either victims or culprits. These men are hurting, and in turn they are hurting families and hurting America. It is essential to address their problems. Man Out draws on a wide range of data and existing research as well as interviews with several hundred men, women, and a wide variety of economists and other social scientists, social service providers and physicians, and with employers, through a national online survey and in-depth fieldwork in several communities.

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing
Author: Lauren Hough
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593080777

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "A memoir in essays about so many things—growing up in an abusive cult, coming of age as a lesbian in the military, forced out by homophobia, living on the margins as a working class woman and what it’s like to grow into the person you are meant to be. Hough’s writing will break your heart." —Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist Searing and extremely personal essays, shot through with the darkest elements America can manifest, while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners. As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe--to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile—but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond "The Family." Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. She's taken pilgrimages to the sights of her youth, been kept in solitary confinement, dated a lot of women, dabbled in drugs, and eventually found herself as what she always wanted to be: a writer. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America—relying on friends, family, and strangers alike—she begins to excavate a new identity even as her past continues to trail her and color her world, relationships, and perceptions of self. At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one's past when carving out a future. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

The View From Breast Pocket Mountain

The View From Breast Pocket Mountain
Author: Karen Hill Anton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2020-09-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780578696607

On a journey from NYC to mountainside Japan, the reader will first experience Iran and Afghanistan. Serendipitous encounters with famous people add color to this unusual story. Interactions with everyday folk, shared experiences of love, hope and tragedy, highlight our interconnectedness and humanity.