For fans, Boxer is a profound personal meditation. Life decisions have been based on it. Relationships have been created and dissolved by it. For the band that recorded it, Boxer symbolizes a do-or-die moment; a final, give-it-everything-you've-got effort to make it work. Released in May 2007, The National's fourth full-length is the album that saved them. It's where the Ohio-via-Brooklyn five-piece found the sound, success, and spiritual growth to become one of the most critically acclaimed bands of their time. Obsessively researched and featuring intimate interviews with the fighters who were there in the ring, Ryan Pinkard captures a transformative chapter in The National's story, revealing how their breakthrough album is deeply intertwined with their personal lives, the New York indie rock renaissance of the early aughts, and a generational experience in America.

Boxing is no cakewalk! Azumah ‘Ring Professor’ Nelson in the Social History of Ghanaian Boxingexplores the social history of boxing in Ghana and its interesting nexus with the biography of Azumah Nelson, unquestionably Ghana’s most celebrated boxer. The book posits that sports constitute more than mere games that people play. They are endowed with enormous political, cultural, economic and social power that can influence people’s lives in various ways. Boxing is no cakewalk! interrogates the social meaning and impact of boxing within the colonial and postcolonial milieux of popular culture in Ghana. Consequently, it reconsiders the prevailing conception of boxing as adversative to ‘enlightened’ human culture by arguing that it is a positive formulator of individual and national identities. The historicising of sports and the lives of sportspersons in Ghana provides an eloquent backdrop for an understanding of the past social dynamics and their effect in the present. The book’s analytical narrative offers an intellectual contribution to the promising areas of social and cultural history in Ghana’s historiography and the scholarly discourse on identity formation and social empowerment through the popular culture of sports.

The benefits of this book is to inform the public how General Motors treat their black employees that files a Civil Rights complaint and lawsuit against them. They will commit fraud and conspiracy before the courts. This has been going on since August 19, 1983 to the present. This book is about all the pain and hardship I have to go through as a result of this ordeal. This will inform the blacks of what to do and say. And how they can be victorious against a large Corporation. I have experience everything that I am talking about for twenty years and still trying to get some closure from this ordeal. I have experience seeing a psychiatrist and psychologist since May 15, 1985. I was taken off work in July of 1992 and was placed on total and permanent disability with Social Security. This also tells about me leaving home and moving south to Arkansas and having to go to a all black school. I also had to plow the white man field with two mules and a plow. I also won several titles in Golden Gloves Boxing and was the number one boxer at one hundred and twenty six pounds featherweight here and I was nominated for all Army boxing. I would say to pursue your goals until you get the justice you so deserve.

“Brave and ballsy . . . the internal chaos that prompts Sekules’ rage and desire to retaliate is a more original, fascinating place to visit than any gym.” —Salon.com The Boxer’s Heart is a brilliantly candid memoir of the world of women’s boxing, now updated and with a new afterword. Written in raw and vivid style, it tells the story of how a young everywoman moves to New York City to write and, through struggles and disappointments in her personal life, rises through the ranks at the famed Gleason’s Gym to box professionally. Sekules’s account unfolds with the pace and depth of a great novel, crammed with larger-than-life characters and piercing observations. Any woman who has grappled with anger and trust in her relationships, been nagged by insecurity at the gym, or wondered what it feels like to throw a punch will identify with this witty and honest account of “ the sweet science of bruising.” “It’s a knockout, folks . . . The Boxer’s Heart is a winner, on all cards.” —Newsweek “What is most captivating about Sekules’ love letter to boxing is how she reconciles the feminine proclivity for tenderness and nurturing with their simultaneous ability to knock one another out, to unleash fury in a controlled and respectful way.” —Oprah.com “Sekules . . . is appealingly self-aware . . . [and] gives us a sense of women’s boxing as a thriving movement.” —The New York Times Book Review “This is a story of self-discovery, about finding out what you love, and then doing it—with passion, with a boxer’s heart.” —Kirkus Reviews

This book reveals how boxing and boxers became sources of national pride and sparked debates on what it meant to be Mexican, masculine, and modern.

Seven young women, all murdered in the most disgusting manner imaginable. Unimaginable, in fact: a first of its kind, and never before explicitly revealed. All the victims were prostitutes. All were dumped naked after having been stored by their killer as sex toys. Some of them were mothers. Each was someone’s daughter. And for more than fifty years the author has lived with the haunting secret that he was once suspected by Scotland Yard of being a serial killer more depraved and dangerous than Jack the Ripper. In the killing-spree that lasted more than a year, the author had a mole deep inside Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad, similar to ‘Deep Throat’ from the Watergate scandal, who was drip-feeding him the step-by-step ploys to snare the monster who brought terror to the streets of West London. Hundreds of policewomen, posing as prostitutes, flooded the red-light districts, hoping to be selected by the killer – more hopeful, though, that the back-up would swoop to the rescue in time. At one point, Scotland Yard feared that a prostitute, missing for more than a fortnight, had become the eighth victim and appealed to the public for help. It took the author just eleven hours to track her down and hand her alive and well to the Murder Squad. When the killings stopped, the most senior member of the Murder Squad claimed that the serial killer had committed suicide and an innocent man was named in a deceitful cover-up. The author fingers the real serial killer, a celebrity and national treasure who died in circumstances arguably even more bizarre than the manner in which he murdered his victims.

Boxing - Training, Skills and Techniques is essential reading for both recreational and competitive boxers, and all those who wish to take up amateur boxing, or participate in a boxing-based programme. It offers practical advice on the many crucial factors that need to be taken into account if the boxer is to maximize his, or her, performance and potential. Topics include: an overview of the history of boxing; the amateur code; boxing weights; recreational boxing; equipment and attire; a detailed consideration of both basic and advanced techniques; the role of the coach; fitness training; gym work; running; conditioning; speed and agility training; making the weight and nutrition; planning the season, and much more.