Since Pauline Konga’s breakthrough performance at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, the world has become accustomed to seeing Kenyan women medal at major championships, sweep marathons, and set world records. Yet little is known about the pioneer generation of women who paved the way for Kenya’s reputation as an international powerhouse in women’s track and field. In Kenya’s Running Women: A History, historian and former professional runner Michelle M. Sikes details the triumphs and many challenges these women faced, from the advent of Kenya’s athletics program in the colonial era through the professionalization of running in the 1980s and 1990s. Sikes reveals how over time running became a vehicle for Kenyan women to expand the boundaries of acceptable female behavior. Kenya’s Running Women demonstrates the necessity of including women in histories of African sport, and of incorporating sport into studies of African gender and nation-building.

Since Pauline Konga’s breakthrough performance at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, the world has become accustomed to seeing Kenyan women medal at major championships, sweep marathons, and set world records. Yet little is known about the pioneer generation of women who paved the way for Kenya’s reputation as an international powerhouse in women’s track and field. In Kenya’s Running Women: A History, historian and former professional runner Michelle M. Sikes details the triumphs and many challenges these women faced, from the advent of Kenya’s athletics program in the colonial era through the professionalization of running in the 1980s and 1990s. Sikes reveals how over time running became a vehicle for Kenyan women to expand the boundaries of acceptable female behavior. Kenya’s Running Women demonstrates the necessity of including women in histories of African sport, and of incorporating sport into studies of African gender and nation-building.

What makes East African middle and long distance runners the best in the world? How should contemporary academia approach this question? The success of East African distance runners has generated a plethora of studies but much of the 'evidence' presented to support hypotheses is anecdotal, arguments being led by non-academics who use popular media as their medium rather than relying on scientific publications. This has resulted in many stereotypical arguments being advocated. Within the academic community, research has also been restricted by its isolation within either the natural science or social science communities. East African Running: Towards a Cross Disciplinary Perspective, presents a rare collaboration between researchers from the sports sciences and social sciences to explore the questions raised by the phenomena of East African success on the track. The text includes: psycho-social and economic explanations physiological and genetic explanations attempts to provide unified theories bringing together ideas from natural and social sciences Includes contributions from John Bale, Jim Denison, Timothy D. Noakes and Craig Sharp.

Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award Winner - Best New Writer at the British Sports Book Awards After years of watching Kenyan athletes win the world's biggest races, from the Olympics to big city marathons, Runner's World contributor Adharanand Finn set out to discover just what it was that made them so fast - and to see if he could keep up. Packing up his family (and his running shoes), he moved from Devon to the small town of Iten, in Kenya, home to hundreds of the country's best athletes. Once there he laced up his shoes and ventured out onto the dirt tracks, running side by side with Olympic champions, young hopefuls and barefoot schoolchildren. He ate their food, slept in their training camps, interviewed their coaches, and his children went to their schools. And at the end of it all, there was his dream, to join the best of the Kenyan athletes in his first marathon, an epic race through lion country across the Kenyan plains.

"Within only a few decades, Kenya has established itself as the running nation No. 1. Today, Kenyan athletes dominate the world rankings in all distances between the 800m and the marathon. How did they do this? "Run to win" describes the development of running in Kenya from the time of the British influence until nowadays. It lets coaches, who have strongly influenced the rise of the East-African nation to a world power in sports, speak in their own words, and it shows how running has also become a big business. The reader will learn about the training secrets of the stars and will also receive valuable tips for his own career or sports life, be it as an amateur jogger or an ambitious runner. This book is a must-have for all running coaches and runners, and also for all those who want to learn more about the backgrounds and secrets of the Kenyan success story. The features include: a must-have for all running coaches and runners; learn the training secrets of the stars; and lots of valuable tips for the amateur jogger to the ambitious runner."--BOOK JACKET.

Is more government aid needed? Who will pay for care of aging baby boomers? Will all Americans finally get health insurance? These are just some of the topics covered in Issues for Debate in Social Policy. Engaging and reader-friendly articles encourage students to think critically about some of the most pressing social policy issues of our time. Classroom discussions will sparkle as a result! About CQ Researcher Readers In the tradition of nonpartisanship and current analysis that is the hallmark of CQ Press, readers investigate important and controversial policy issues. Offer your students the balanced reporting, complete overviews, and engaging writing that has consistently provided for more than 80 years. Each article gives substantial background andanalysis of a particular issue as well as useful pedagogical features to inspire critical thinking andto help students grasp and review key material: A Pro/Con box that examines two competing sides of a single question A detailed chronology of key dates and events An annotated bibliography and Web resources Outlook sections that address possible regulation and initiatives from Capitol Hill and the White House over the next 5 to 10 years Photos, charts, graphs, and maps

These volumes offer a one-stop resource for researching the lives, customs, and cultures of Africa's nations and peoples. Unparalleled in its coverage of contemporary customs in all of Africa, this multivolume set is perfect for both high school and public library shelves. The three-volume encyclopedia will provide readers with an overview of contemporary customs and life in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa through discussions of key concepts and topics that touch everyday life among the nations' peoples. While this encyclopedia places emphasis on the customs and cultural practices of each state, history, politics, and economics are also addressed. Because entries average 14,000 to 15,000 words each, contributors are able to expound more extensively on each country than in similar encyclopedic works with shorter entries. As a result, readers will gain a more complete understanding of what life is like in Africa's 54 nations and territories, and will be better able to draw cross-cultural comparisons based on their reading.

Barack Obama, via Facebook: “A compelling story of how the transformative events of history weigh on individual lives and relationships.” The Nobel Prize–nominated Kenyan writer’s best-known novel, featuring an introduction by Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Olympic Games is undoubtedly the greatest sporting event in the world, with over 200 countries competing for success. This important new study of the Olympics investigates why some countries are more successful than others. Which factors determine their failure or success? What is the relationship between these factors? And how can these factors be manipulated to influence a country’s performance in sport? This book addresses these questions and discusses the theoretical concepts that explain why national sporting success has become a policy priority around the globe. Danyel Reiche reassesses our understanding of success in sport and challenges the conventional explanations that population size and economic strength are the main determinants for a country’s Olympic achievements. He presents a theory of countries’ success and failure, based on detailed investigations of the relationships between a wide variety of factors that influence a country’s position in the Olympic medals table, including geography, ideology, policies such as focusing on medal promising sports, home advantage and the promotion of women. This book fills a long-standing gap in literature on the Olympics and will provide valuable insights for all students, scholars, policy makers and journalists interested in the Olympic Games and the wider relationship between sport, politics, and nationalism.

Covers the background information to the ILO-African Development Bank country-level studies on the subject and presents the findings and recommendations resulting from the application of the analytical integrated framework in the three countries.