Fever Pitch

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In the States, Nick Hornby is best know as the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, two wickedly funny novels about being thirtysomething and going nowhere fast. In Britain he is revered for his status as a fanatical football writer (sorry, fanatical soccer writer), owing to Fever Pitch--which is both an autobiography and a footballing Bible rolled into one. Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasizes that even if a girlfriend "went into labor at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle.

Fever Pitch is not a typical memoir--there are no chapters, just a series of match reports falling into three time frames (childhood, young adulthood, manhood). While watching the May 2, 1972, Reading v. Arsenal match, it became embarrassingly obvious to the then 15-year-old that his white, suburban, middle-class roots made him a wimp with no sense of identity: "Yorkshire men, Lancastrians, Scots, the Irish, blacks, the rich, the poor, even Americans and Australians have something they can sit in pubs and bars and weep about." But a boy from Maidenhead could only dream of coming from a place with "its own tube station and West Indian community and terrible, insoluble social problems."

Fever Pitch reveals the very special intricacies of British football, which readers new to the game will find astonishing, and which Hornby presents with remarkable humor and honesty--the "unique" chants sung at matches, the cold rain-soaked terraces, giant cans of warm beer, the trains known as football specials carrying fans to and from matches in prisonlike conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of policemen waiting in anticipation for the cargo of hooligans. The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornby's life--making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles. --Naomi Gesinger

Customer Reviews:

Insughtful: another Hornby winner!.......2007-09-10

I pretty much hate all forms of football. The fact that I read a book about football (to the British, that is: the rest of the world calls it soccer) from cover to cover, smirking, chuckling and at times laughing out loud, attests, once again, to the talent of Nick Hornby as a wordsmith. This book is witty and clever, incredibly insightful about obsession and definitely worth a read!

Obsessive sports fans need only apply........2007-07-13

A 2007 summer reading list mini review

If you are so passionate, it's scary about sports you must read this book. Many reviewers have said here and elsewhere that a rudimentary understanding of British Football is imperative to enjoying this book. Quite simply, they are wrong. All I knew about soccer in Britain, prior to reading this, was from watching Bend it like Beckham. However,I had no trouble following the book, as obsession translates for itself.

When Hornby tries to take partial credit for Arsenal's championship seasons simply because he attended their games I related. I still feel partially responsible for the White Sox winning the World Series in 2005. The previous 2 seasons the Sox had excellent records at home but were 0-8 when I attended. The sign that states welcome to the ballpark was modified adding except Dave Roller. But that did not stop me. I bought my first and only multi ticket plan and the White Sox went on their winning journey (musical pun intended).

I encourage obsessive fans of any sport to put the lessons of Fever Pitch in their arsenal (again pun intended) of sports literature.

Fever Pitch.......2007-02-16

Great book. An excellent account of what it means to be a loyal fan or supporter.

Great read.......2007-01-06

The only thing keeping me from giving this book 5 stars is my own complete lack of interest in anything soccer-related. Take that personal bias out, and its a great read. The insight into the soccer culture in the UK is frankly frightening, but in a very funny way. Having lived through the Denver Bronco Super-Bowl failures of the 1980's as a kid, I empathized with Hornby as he details his own irrational emotions growing up as a fan.

I think anyone, sports fan or not, will enjoy this book. Sports fans because they empathize, non-fans because it will help explain the mystery.

A great look at sports and life.......2006-10-15

Let me begin by noting that I find soccer/football incredibly dull. Dull, dull, dull! But Hornby's book is a great read.

He gives excellent insights as to sports obsession, one with which many men can identify. He is never sentimental or glorifying of the game or of his own actions, which are sometimes far from noble. He admits to placing his love of Arsenal above his relationships. But he also never comes across as a jerk.

I would love to sit down and have a few pints and watch a game with him.

The one thing I can't understand is how this could be made into a movie about the Red Sox. It just couldn't work, in my opinion.

$Boys Of Summer: Fever Pitch\The Sweet Spot\Sliding Home (Harlequin Blaze)$
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Boys of Summer:Fever Pitch/The Sweet Spot/Sliding Home
Boys and Baseball! Is there anything better?
get your summer started right!

Boys Of Summer: Fever Pitch\The Sweet Spot\Sliding Home (Harlequin Blaze)
Julie Elizabeth Leto , Kimberly Raye , and Leslie Kelly
Manufacturer: Harlequin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0373792689

Book Description

From the back cover:

Baseball. The crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd...and the view of mouthwatering men in tight uniforms!

A sport in which the men are men...and the women like them that way. Join three of Harlequin Blaze's bestselling authors in celebrating the men who indulge in this All-American pastime--and the women who help them indulge in other things. In Fever Pitch, Julie Elizabeth Leto introduces Callie Andrews, a woman who's dying to have one last chance at bat...with her ex-husband!

In Kimberly Raye's The Sweet Spot, Babe Bannister discovers that striking out with a sexy shortstop isn't so bad--especially when it leads to hitting a home run with a delicious coach...

And in Leslie Kelly's Sliding Home, we meet plain Janie Nolan. She's been sitting on the bench so long, she doesn't even realize she's still in the game. That is, until a sexy pitcher tempts her to come up to the plate and take a swing...

Customer Reviews:

Boys of Summer:Fever Pitch/The Sweet Spot/Sliding Home.......2007-08-12

Good Book for the beach. Nice sexy cover. Makes you think up all kinds of interesting scenarios while reading...Mmmmm....I've been a big baseball junkie since growing up in Chicago w/the Cubs & Sox & watching "Bull Durham" at a young impressionable age!! LOL...And while I totally agree w/JEL's statement that "no athlete looks better in tight pants than a baseball player"...her story "Fever Pitch" wasn't really my favorite of the three in this series. Only because I had a hard time figuring out Callie "who hated that her ex-husbands life was ALL BASEBALL, but then themed her restaurant AND bar around the team"...Donovan (the ex hubby) seemed like a genuinely decent guy, they both were on good terms & the chemistry AFTER WHAT--5 YRS...was still hot?!?! Please...how many exes W/O children even live in the same STATE much less socialize, flirt, and deal w/each other on a weekly almost daily basis? Okay, maybe they were young, in love, and too young to figure out "how to make it work"...but I still found the fact that they could each have other relationships...yet fall right back into talking about their honeymoon kinda silly. Real couples just wouldn't do that. Unless you're watching "Real Housewives of Orange County"...lol. It was that and a few other incredulous moments that I found "hard to take"...and kept me from totally losing myself in this story. This review is really more for "The Sweet Spot" about Babe & Brodie...GREAT STORY. About childhood friends...that discover so much more. Babe *thinks* she wants Cody...and when she confides in her friend Brodie...well, he realizes that the idea of Babe w/anyone but him...pisses him off. He offers to let her "practice" her seduction of Cody on him!! Hot stuff!! If you'd read any of my reviews, you know that the "alpha macho male"...does it for me. Even the "older sexy ones"...that aren't as wild & wooly as they used to be...as is Brodie's case. He was just damn sexy!! And Babe was a likeable girl that deserved some really good nookie!! As you can tell, I enjoyed this story immensely. And last but not least is "Sliding Home"...about mousey Janie & hunky Riley. Good story...if you like the whole "caterpillar turning into a butterfly" kinda thing. But like I said...my favorite BY FAR was "The Sweet Spot"...that story alone, is why I gave the whole book 4 stars...

Boys and Baseball! Is there anything better?.......2006-07-12

I absolutly LOVE this book. I bough it on a whim and it was great. My favorite story was Sliding home with Riley and Janie. Janie is a plain girl who tries to go the the all-star Slammers team leader. Talk about aiming high. It was a great story even though the characters express alot of self-doubt. The other one which was great was The Sweet Spot. Of course looking at this now I could be a person who likes insecure women who find themselves and their man. Sigh. Wonderful stories.

get your summer started right!.......2006-06-25

I don't usually read romance novels, but I absolutely loved this little diversion. The first story by Julie Leto is absolutely wonderful and the other two are all right, too. It's just a lot of fun to read, and because each story is pretty short, you don't get caught up in boring subplots. Go for this even if you hate baseball...you won't be disappointed.

Average customer rating:

Insightful: another Hornby winner
The Heart of the Fan
A great read for football fans
Chick Lit it ain't!

Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140295577

Customer Reviews:

Insightful: another Hornby winner.......2007-09-10

The Heart of the Fan.......2006-07-21

The ground breaking fan book. Hornby pours his heart and mind and foibles out and comes up with the spirit of the game.

You needn't be an Arsenal fan to enjoy this book.

Hornby's observations are still relevant to today's football fan--perhaps even more so as the game continues to put a firmer grip on our lives...

A great read for football fans.......2006-02-25

This memoir has Hornby linking the major events of his life to the fortunes and misfortunes of his beloved Arsenal. What starts as a childhood preoccupation grows into an adult compulsion with him having to schedule personal commitments around the Arse and their fixtures. What's staggering is his ability to recount scores, the scorers, and all the other minutae of a football match from anytime in his life. Who scored an own goal in a dismal, rainy 1-0 loss to Wolves in 1971? Everyone who has ever lived and died with their team will apreciate exactly what Hornby is going through here. It's just a terrific insight into a emotionally vested, long-suffering football fan. It's a love story...between Hornby and the Gunners. And it gives the reader a real fan's feeling of what it's like to follow a football club day in and day out for nearly 30 years. Why they thought they could make a movie (much less two!) of this I'll never know.

Chick Lit it ain't!.......2005-09-22

I love Nick Hornby. I loved the movie Fever Pitch. I was more than prepared to love this book. I'm a woman. I think that's why this book was the most unbelievably boring book I'd read this year. Read anything else he wrote. Remember the the movies are always very loosely based on his books, but they're usually great reads in their own rights, just don't read this one. Yawn.

Average customer rating:

Insightful: another Hornby winner
wonderful
For Any Obessed Fan

Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Soccer | Biographies | Sports | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0140293442

Customer Reviews:

Insightful: another Hornby winner.......2007-09-10

wonderful.......2004-01-12

read the first page and you're hooked-a wonderful time.

For Any Obessed Fan.......2003-04-18

I read this book when living in England - and though I knew little about Arsenal and even less about the games and players Hornby describes - I understood it completely. Its not really a book about Arsenal, or even football per se, but more about the bond with "our" team, and how that is reflected in our other "real world" relationships. No matter where we are or who we are with, the team seems to always be there in the background to bear witness.

A wonderful read - no matter which team is your obession.

Average customer rating:

Kolchalk fans will adore it.

Captures the spirit of the series

Kolchak Night Stalker: Fever Pitch (Kolchak the Nightstalker)
Stuart M. Kaminisky , Christopher Jones , and Barbara Schulz
Manufacturer: Moonstone
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Kolchak The Night Stalker: Pain Without Tears (Kolchak the Nightstalker)

Kolchak The Night Stalker Volume 1

ASIN: 0971012997

Book Description

Kolchak the Night Stalker: Fever Pitch: Moonstone's first all-original Kolchak story! Guts-Mayhem-KOLCHAK! For three nights straight, some poor innocent spontaneously combusts in front of a horrified witness. Like chain links, the previous night's witness is the following evening's victim. But who's behind these deaths? The Wolfman? An Anaconda? A Giant Spider? According to police reports, these three monsters were spotted at the scene. Kolchak, hot with the flu, makes a little report of his own that adds up to some life saving advice-NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON FEAR! Written by award-winning mystery novelist Stuart M. Kaminisky!

Customer Reviews:

Kolchalk fans will adore it........2004-01-21

This entry in the reborn Kolchak: The Night Stalker starts off with a bang, literally. An old woman steps into an ice cream shop and promptly explodes in front of the owner, who turns away because he then sees a werewolf leaping out of the woman. No surprise that that little tidbit snatches the attention of reporter Carl Kolchak, who happens upon the scene. The mystery becomes more gruesome when the ice cream shop owner explodes in front of someone a day or so later. Obviously something very odd is happening around Los Angeles.

Fever Pitch does a credible job of capturing the flavor of the cult TV show (and it follows the contemporizing that Mark Dawdiziak did in his Kolchak novel Grave Secrets - placing the series characters in Los Angeles). Kolchak still has a hard time making those around him believe the outlandish stories he runs across with regularity and the humor of the show is retained. My only complaint is that the monster is poorly thought out and the explanation given (while certainly unique) is nowhere near clear enough to satisfy. Nonetheless, the characters still look and act the way they did on the show and fans will certainly want this in their collections. I know I did. Kolchak lives!

Captures the spirit of the series.......2003-11-02

A gory story of exploding bodies with the witness of the phenomena becoming the next victim has Kolchak on the case. This graphic novel (basically a comic book with professional graphics and high quality paper) recaptures the spirit of the original series, including its humor. The running gag has Carl with a cold receiving advice from everyone he encounters about the best treatment. The main story is well told and paced with the ending being just a bit loose. Fans should know that this issue, and I believe the others in the Moonstone series, do place Carl in a contemporary setting. So while Carl and the rest of the cast look like they did in the 1970s TV show, the 21st century Carl writes his reports on a computer not his familiar typewriter from the series. Overall, I believe fans of the show, and even those unfamiliar with it, will enjoy this read.

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At Fever Pitch
David Caute
Manufacturer: Andre Deutsch, London
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0000CK6VM

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The Best of Fever Pitch (Volume 1)
Brad Foster
Manufacturer: Jabberwocky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000UPL5S6

Product Description

100 pages of adult comic B&W illustrations.

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Cricket at Fever Pitch
Khalid A-H Ansari
Manufacturer: Popular Prakashan (P) Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 8179912574

Double A-side: 'Fever Pitch', 'High Fidelity'

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Double A-side: 'Fever Pitch', 'High Fidelity'
Nick Hornby
Manufacturer: Indigo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PDIC3O

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FEVER PITCH
NICK HORNBY
Manufacturer: Riverhead Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0753810271

Book Description

Despite his absence from most Civil War histories, Union General James Gilpatrick Blunt was an immensely successful leader. He and John Brown helped escaped slaves reach Canada; he led the defeat of Confederate troops at Fort Wayne, Prairie Grove, and Cane Hill. Though his successful military campaigns were well-reported and he was viewed as a hero, Blunt was also accused of corruption, womanizing, and was known for his egotistical tirades throughout his military career. This biography gives perspective on the western frontier of the Civil War, along with some insight into the behavior of an important general in the West.

General James G. Blunt: Tarnished Glory.(Book review): An article from: Journal of Southern History

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General James G. Blunt: Tarnished Glory.(Book review): An article from: Journal of Southern History
William K. McDaid
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000L437NW
Release Date: 2006-11-27

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Southern History, published by Thomson Gale on November 1, 2006. The length of the article is 508 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: General James G. Blunt: Tarnished Glory.(Book review)
Author: William K. McDaid
Publication: Journal of Southern History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 72 Issue: 4 Page: 949(2)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Essential Reading

magisterial political philosophy

Deep survey of political thought in the West

Visionary

Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought
Sheldon S. Wolin
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Political | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought)

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ASIN: 0691126275

Book Description

This is a significantly expanded edition of one of the greatest works of modern political theory. Sheldon Wolin's Politics and Vision inspired and instructed two generations of political theorists after its appearance in 1960. This new edition retains intact the original ten chapters about political thinkers from Plato to Mill, and adds seven chapters about theorists from Marx and Nietzsche to Rawls and the postmodernists. The new chapters, which show how thinkers have grappled with the immense possibilities and dangers of modern power, are themselves a major theoretical statement. They culminate in Wolin's remarkable argument that the United States has invented a new political form, "inverted totalitarianism," in which economic rather than political power is dangerously dominant. In this new edition, the book that helped to define political theory in the late twentieth century should energize, enlighten, and provoke generations of scholars to come.

Wolin originally wrote Politics and Vision to challenge the idea that political analysis should consist simply of the neutral observation of objective reality. He argues that political thinkers must also rely on creative vision. Wolin shows that great theorists have been driven to shape politics to some vision of the Good that lies outside the existing political order. As he tells it, the history of theory is thus, in part, the story of changing assumptions about the Good.

In the new chapters, Wolin displays all the energy and flair, the command of detail and of grand historical developments, that he brought to this story forty years ago. This is a work of immense talent and intense thought, an intellectual achievement that will endure.

Customer Reviews:

Essential Reading.......2007-09-25

This eminently readable work can be picked up and put down as time permits--no small virtue in a busy time, and essential for a proper education in political ideas that still very much shape our world. Without making many explicit comparisons or contrasts, Wolin somehow manages to suggest numerous points of intersection between our political dilemmas today and those that beset people thousands of years ago. This is an erudite, witty, accessible book. It should be required reading for all Americans--especially for those of us who like to shoot our mouths off about liberals, conservatives, and other such oddities in the common bestiary. I wouldn't let my copy go for five times what I paid for it.

magisterial political philosophy.......2006-02-23

This is an exemplary work that engages the entire history of political thought in the Western tradition. Wolin has added four significant chapters to the original 1960 book and one addresses postmodernism looking at the Nietzschean background to our epoch. For any one doing serious scholarly work in political thoery, philosophy, critical theory, history this book is a necessary possession. For the rest, probably the best general work of Western political thought available.

Deep survey of political thought in the West.......2004-12-12

This book is so rich and it is about so many things that it is difficult to praise in a brief blurb, but suffice it to say that it presents the development of political thinking since Plato to Roman political thought in the age of the Empire to the rise of the Catholic Church to the Reformation, to the reawakening of Classical theory in Machiavelli and onward to the development of modern ideas of the state, of order and security, representation of the polity, democracy, and authoritarianism. Each chapter is written like an individual essay, but with a depth unmatched my most other books on the subject. Perhaps Q. Skinner's development of western political thought is an approximation.

This book is not just a brief summary of the major figures and ideas; it is a discursis of THE tradition, THE language, THE development of theories AND praxis of human beings applying reason to organize themselves into groups for better protection against scarcity and death. Sexy, hmm?!

It would be interesting to read an equivalent book on the Eastern political tradition, as China is not covered here.

But otherwise, I cannot praise this book more highly. It is one to reread every year or so. When you have some free time that is. And after you reread Hamlet. Or maybe you're better off rereading Robinson Crusoe. Same question, different answer, anyhow.

Visionary.......2001-09-19

That there are people waiting to buy our used copies of this book is a testiment in itself: this is simply a classic of political thought, one which has enriched political theorizing and instructed many a pupil in our traditions over the years. However, Wolin is working on a new edition which will (according to him), "repair" an "error" in this text, whatever it is.

Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought

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Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought
Sheldeon S. Wolin
Manufacturer: Little Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OSHJXY

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Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought
Sheldon S. Wolin
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OCT18G

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Politics and vision Continuity and innovation in WEstern Political thought
sheldon s wolin
Manufacturer: Allen & Unwin London
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0000CL2W3

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Politics and Vision; Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought.
Sheldon S. Wolin
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OUG5GE

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