Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town
Autor S. L. Priceen Limba Engleză Hardback – 4 oct 2016
Aliquippa, Pennsylvania is famous for two things: the Jones & Laughlin Steel mill, an industrial behemoth that helped win World War II; and football, with a high school team that has produced numerous NFL stars including Mike Ditka and Darrelle Revis. But the mill, once the fourth largest producer in America, closed for good in 2000. What happens to a town when a dream dies? Does it just disappear?
In Playing Through the Whistle, celebrated sports writer S.L. Price tells the story of this remarkable place, its people, its players, and through it, a wider story of American history from the turn of the twentieth century. Aliquippa has been many things—a rigidly controlled company town, a booming racial and ethnic melting pot, and for a brief time, a workers’ paradise. Price expertly traces this history, while also recounting the birth and development of high school sports, from a minor pastime to a source of civic pride, to today, when it sometimes seems like the only way out of a life of poverty, drug abuse, and crime. Playing Through the Whistle is a masterpiece of narrative journalism that will make you cry and cheer in equal measure.
In Playing Through the Whistle, celebrated sports writer S.L. Price tells the story of this remarkable place, its people, its players, and through it, a wider story of American history from the turn of the twentieth century. Aliquippa has been many things—a rigidly controlled company town, a booming racial and ethnic melting pot, and for a brief time, a workers’ paradise. Price expertly traces this history, while also recounting the birth and development of high school sports, from a minor pastime to a source of civic pride, to today, when it sometimes seems like the only way out of a life of poverty, drug abuse, and crime. Playing Through the Whistle is a masterpiece of narrative journalism that will make you cry and cheer in equal measure.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780802125644
ISBN-10: 0802125646
Pagini: 400
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.86 kg
Editura: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Colecția Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN-10: 0802125646
Pagini: 400
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Greutate: 0.86 kg
Editura: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Colecția Atlantic Monthly Press
Recenzii
Advance Praise for Playing Through the Whistle:
“Price thoroughly explores the football saga . . . but this is no mere sports story . . . An artful mix of history, economics, sociology, and athletics . . . Price’s especially touching engravings of ‘promise squandered,’ those chewed up and spit out by Aliquippa’s tough environment, contrast powerfully with the tales of football triumph . . . Price’s football story is really that of America’s Rust Belt in poignant miniature.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Applause to S.L. Price for the mind-blowing research and gorgeous storytelling. Playing Through the Whistle is a sprawling display of Price’s signature prose: sharp, vivid, and particular. You feel the heat of the blast furnace, the turf of the Friday night gridiron. With football as his lens, Price transports you to the glory days of an iconic American steel town, and envelops you in the saga of its ultimate demise.”—Jeanne Marie Laskas, New York Times bestselling author of Concussion and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh
“Playing Through the Whistle is a gut-wrenching portrait of a high school football team that has to embody the American dream for one small town, in large part because everything else that was supposed to do it has fallen apart. I would say this is some of the best sports writing I read this year, except that it’s some of the best writing I’ve read this year.”—David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene
“Among Scott Price’s many interesting and well-crafted sentences is this: ‘Heavy industry and football share the same DNA.’ If so, the progeny of big steel is, in fact, high school football. Even as mill life disappears, football lives remain. With deeply nuanced reporting, and a style that’s both big-hearted and unsentimental, Playing Through the Whistle isn’t merely the history of an American town, but American history itself.”—Mark Kriegel, author of Namath and Pistol
“S.L. Price is hands down the best writer about sports and the meaning of sports in America today, and this is his most ambitious and finest work yet. Playing Through the Whistle is an exhaustively reported and expertly written narrative about the rise and fall of industrial America—and football’s central place in that story.”—Stefan Fatsis, author of A Few Seconds of Panic and Word Freak
“Year after year, some of the best books about the human condition come from sportswriters, and S.L. Price has added another illuminating work to that list. Playing Through the Whistle is about football in the legendary western Pennsylvania steel town of Aliquippa, but so much more. It is an evocative, wistful journey through decades of American struggle and achievement and loss.”—David Maraniss, author of When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi and Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
“S.L. Price’s Playing Through the Whistle is a big book on a tough town. It reminded me of The Wire, which is high praise.”—Roy Blount Jr., author of About Three Bricks Shy of a Load and Save Room for Pie
“Price thoroughly explores the football saga . . . but this is no mere sports story . . . An artful mix of history, economics, sociology, and athletics . . . Price’s especially touching engravings of ‘promise squandered,’ those chewed up and spit out by Aliquippa’s tough environment, contrast powerfully with the tales of football triumph . . . Price’s football story is really that of America’s Rust Belt in poignant miniature.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Applause to S.L. Price for the mind-blowing research and gorgeous storytelling. Playing Through the Whistle is a sprawling display of Price’s signature prose: sharp, vivid, and particular. You feel the heat of the blast furnace, the turf of the Friday night gridiron. With football as his lens, Price transports you to the glory days of an iconic American steel town, and envelops you in the saga of its ultimate demise.”—Jeanne Marie Laskas, New York Times bestselling author of Concussion and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh
“Playing Through the Whistle is a gut-wrenching portrait of a high school football team that has to embody the American dream for one small town, in large part because everything else that was supposed to do it has fallen apart. I would say this is some of the best sports writing I read this year, except that it’s some of the best writing I’ve read this year.”—David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene
“Among Scott Price’s many interesting and well-crafted sentences is this: ‘Heavy industry and football share the same DNA.’ If so, the progeny of big steel is, in fact, high school football. Even as mill life disappears, football lives remain. With deeply nuanced reporting, and a style that’s both big-hearted and unsentimental, Playing Through the Whistle isn’t merely the history of an American town, but American history itself.”—Mark Kriegel, author of Namath and Pistol
“S.L. Price is hands down the best writer about sports and the meaning of sports in America today, and this is his most ambitious and finest work yet. Playing Through the Whistle is an exhaustively reported and expertly written narrative about the rise and fall of industrial America—and football’s central place in that story.”—Stefan Fatsis, author of A Few Seconds of Panic and Word Freak
“Year after year, some of the best books about the human condition come from sportswriters, and S.L. Price has added another illuminating work to that list. Playing Through the Whistle is about football in the legendary western Pennsylvania steel town of Aliquippa, but so much more. It is an evocative, wistful journey through decades of American struggle and achievement and loss.”—David Maraniss, author of When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi and Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
“S.L. Price’s Playing Through the Whistle is a big book on a tough town. It reminded me of The Wire, which is high praise.”—Roy Blount Jr., author of About Three Bricks Shy of a Load and Save Room for Pie
Notă biografică
S. L. Price, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated since 1994, is the author of three previous books: Heart of the Game; Pitching Around Fidel, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Far Afield, which Esquire named one of the top five reads of 2007. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his family.