Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa–the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true.
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The #1 New York Times–bestselling story about American Olympic triumph in Nazi Germany
For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.
It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain,
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Before she turned twenty, Lynne Cox had broken the men’s and women’s world records for swimming the English Channel, swum from Catalina Island to the California mainland, and braved the dangerous Cook Strait between New Zealand’s North and South Islands. But that was just the beginning.
Capturing the thrill of a life dedicated to excellence, Swimming to Antarctica tells the remarkable stories behind Lynne”s victories, which went on to include swimming across the Bering Strait-a feat that, according to Mikhail Gorbachev, helped diminish tensions between “Thrilling, vivid, and lyrical, an inspiring account of a life of aspiration and adventure.”-the U.S.S.R.
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A ball can start a revolution.
Born in Kabul, Awista Ayub escaped with her family to Connecticut in 1981, when she was two years old, but her connection to her heritage remained strong. An athlete her whole life, she was inspired to start the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange after September 11, 2001, as a way of uniting girls of Afghanistan and giving them hope for their future. She chose soccer because little more than a ball and a field is needed to play; however, the courage it would take for girls in Afghanistan to do this would have to be tremendous—and the social change it could bring about by making a loud and clear statement for Afghan women was enough to convince Awista that it was possible,
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