This book vividly describes the life of Adrian Peterson, an NFL running back who struggles with a disability. Adrain grew up with a major speech impediment that blocked his voice from ever being clearly understood. But by the grace of GOD he honed his talents and abilities all the way to the Superbowl. This triumph in life will inspire us all to glare into our own mirrors and tell the self-doubt that lives within us Don't Dis My Abilities.

Looks at the life and accomplishments of the star running back of the Minnesota Vikings.

"An elementary introduction to the life, work, and popularity of Adrian Peterson, a professional football star who became the all-time leading rusher for the Minnesota Vikings"--Provided by publisher.

People who are close to the NFL’s Adrian Peterson call him A.D., a nickname his father gave him because he could run All Day. From an early age, A.D.’s athletic talent was obvious to everyone who saw him play. He overcame painful losses during his childhood to become the nation’s top high school football player. Peterson then went on to break college football rushing records at the University of Oklahoma before becoming a top NFL draft pick for the Minnesota Vikings. Rushing titles, MVP awards, and Pro Bowl honors have all been part of his stellar professional football career.

Anywhere football is played, Texas is the force to reckon with. Its powerhouse programs produce the best football players in America. In The Republic of Football, Chad S. Conine vividly captures Texas’s impact on the game with action-filled stories about legendary high school players, coaches, and teams from around the state and across seven decades. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Conine offers rare glimpses of the early days of some of football’s biggest stars. He reveals that some players took time to achieve greatness—LaDainian Tomlinson wasn’t even the featured running back on his high school team until a breakthrough game in his senior season vaulted him to the highest level of the sport—while others, like Colt McCoy, showed their first flashes of brilliance in middle school. In telling these and many other stories of players and coaches, including Hayden Fry, Spike Dykes, Bob McQueen, Lovie Smith, Art Briles, Lawrence Elkins, Warren McVea, Ray Rhodes, Dat Nguyen, Zach Thomas, Drew Brees, and Adrian Peterson, Conine spotlights the decisive moments when players caught fire and teams such as Celina, Southlake Carroll, and Converse Judson turned into Texas dynasties. Packed with never-before-told anecdotes, as well as fresh takes on the games everyone remembers, The Republic of Football is a must-read for all fans of Friday night lights.

The Times (UK) book of the year! Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? In The Aristocracy of Talent, esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities, and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system. Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.

A biography on Adrian Peterson, the running back who set the all-time NFL record for the most rushing yards in a game during his first season.

As a preteen Black male growing up in Mount Vernon, New York, there were a series of moments, incidents and wounds that caused me to retreat inward in despair and escape into a world of imagination. For five years I protected my family secrets from authority figures, affluent Whites and middle class Blacks while attending an unforgiving gifted-track magnet school program that itself was embroiled in suburban drama. It was my imagination that shielded me from the slights of others, that enabled my survival and academic success. It took everything I had to get myself into college and out to Pittsburgh, but more was in store before I could finally begin to break from my past. "Boy @ The Window" is a coming-of-age story about the universal search for understanding on how any one of us becomes the person they are despite-or because of-the odds. It's a memoir intertwined with my own search for redemption, trust, love, success-for a life worth living. "Boy @ The Window" is about one of the most important lessons of all: what it takes to overcome inhumanity in order to become whole and human again.

My Road Back. A soulful account of a Vietnam Vet's tour of duty, a time that included the Tet Offensive and assassination of Martin Luther King, coming home in 1968, and the years of struggle that followed, culminating in a reconciliation return to Vietnam in 2015. The memoir centers on the author's naïveté as a nineteen-year-old draftee, the trauma of war and its effects on his health, his return to the US and the attempts to adapt, followed by longer term impacts on married life, employability and education until therapeutic intervention made possible a return to health and a Reconciliation Journey to Vietnam in 2015 with Dr. Ed Tick.

Which quarterback would you rather have running your offense, Peyton Manning or Dan Marino? Does Adrian Peterson have the moves to keep up with the legendary Walter Payton? Who is the more fearsome player from the defensive line, J.J. Watt or Reggie White? See how the players match up in this side-by-side look at football's stars. Produced in partnership with Sports Illustrated KIDS.