Magic Johnson may be the enduring face of Michigan State basketball. Mateen Cleaves came to represent its heart while leading the Spartans to the 2000 national championship. Gregory Kelser, however, personifies the soul of the program. Kelser collaborated with Johnson to lead MSU to its first NCAA title in 1979. Here he discusses his role in the Spartans' victory over Indiana State and Larry Bird and how that game triggered college basketball's surge of popularity that continues to this day. He also provides insight and opinion on the successes, failures, players, personalities, and coaches who came before and after him at Michigan State, including Jud Heathcote, Tom Izzo, Scott Skiles, and Steve Smith.

The fifth edition of Michigan: A History of the Great Lakes State presents an update of the best college-level survey of Michigan history, covering the pre-Columbian period to the present. Represents the best-selling survey history of Michigan Includes updates and enhancements reflecting the latest historic scholarship, along with the new chapter ‘Reinventing Michigan’ Expanded coverage includes the socio-economic impact of tribal casino gaming on Michigan’s Native American population; environmental, agricultural, and educational issues; recent developments in the Jimmy Hoffa mystery, and collegiate and professional sports Delivered in an accessible narrative style that is entertaining as well as informative, with ample illustrations, photos, and maps Now available in digital formats as well as print

When African-American Quarterback Jimmy Raye enrolled at Michigan State University in 1964, he was much more than a student athlete: he was part of a groundbreaking movement that changed college football forever. The Michigan State team with a progressive head coach, a pioneer black quarterback, and the first fully integrated roster in college football is the subject of this engrossing new book by award-winning author Tom Shanahan.Michigan State was a world away from Raye's hometown of Fayetteville, N.C. -- both in miles and culture. In his junior season in 1966, Raye was Michigan State's first black starting quarterback and the first black quarterback from the South to win a national title. The story of Raye's journey, as well as those of his Spartan teammates and coach Duffy Daugherty, is told in Raye of Light: the first book to fully explain Duffy Daugherty's Underground Railroad and its impact on college football.

The Great Lakes—containing one-fifth of the standing freshwater on earth, covering some 94,250 square miles with a combined 10,210 miles of shoreline—have suffered greatly from human use and abuse since the advent of the commercial fur trade in the late 1600s. Logging destroys or degrades habitats, urbanization and industrialization pour human and industrial wastes into the water, fertilizers flowing off farm fields feed algae that suffocate other creatures, and ships bring in exotic species that decimate the lakes’ biodiversity. In 1985 when the International Joint Commission identified more than forty pollution hotspots around the lakes, few people had faith the Areas of Concern would be cleaned up in their lifetime. Indeed, aquatic ecosystem restoration is extremely difficult: only nine of these hotspots have been removed from the infamous list. But progress is being made, and at the helm are local champions, people with a profound love of the region who lead by example and build broad, diverse coalitions in order to realize a common vision. The stories of fourteen of these champions are told here to inspire necessary action to care for the place they call home, so it may be a home to many living creatures for ages yet to come.

Some of greatest untold stories from Michigan’s football program are shared in this book based on intimate interviews with former players and coaches. Due to his long history covering Michigan football, author Steve Kornacki was given open-door access to Lloyd Carr, Bo Schembelcher, and Gary Moeller, all of whom provided hours of their time sharing their personal accounts and of occurrences during their coaching tenures; the stuff that legends are made of. Stories include being in the Michigan locker room after Bo Schembechler’s last game in the Big House and hearing his rousing speech leading the team in “The Victors” as they punctuated each verse by thrusting red roses toward the ceiling. Coach Carr tells about riding in a limousine through New York on the eve of the Heisman Trophy presentation with Desmond Howard en route to a meeting at NBC Studios with Tom Brokaw and a night in the green room at Late Night with David Letterman. A more heartfelt yarn is the “American Dream” tale of quarterback Elvis Grbac’s Croatian family and the story of center Steve Everitt’s family surviving Hurricane Andrew in a bathtub with the family dog and his 1990 Gator Bowl MVP trophy. Go Blue! reaches back to those special places in time in the program’s history in addition to sharing heartwarming anecdotes. This collection is something no Michigan football fan will want to be without.

Michigan’s location among the Great Lakes has positioned it at the crossroads of many worlds. Its first hunters arrived ten thousand years ago, its first farmers arrived about six thousand years after that, and three hundred years ago the French expanded into the territory. This book is a small sample of the words of Michigan’s people—a collection of stories, letters, diary entries, news reports, and other documents—that give personal insights into important aspects of Michigan’s history. Designed to provoke thought and discussion about Michigan’s past, the documents in this reader are expressions of past ideas, markers of change, and windows into the lives of the people who lived during well-known events in Michigan history.

The first book of its kind to explore this magnificent creature, this collected volume captures many aspects of the remarkable Great Lakes sturgeon, from the mythical to the critically real. Lake sturgeon are sacred to some, impressive to many, and endangered in the Great Lakes. A fish whose ancestry reaches back millions of years and that can live over a century and grow to six feet or more, the Great Lakes lake sturgeon was once considered useless, then overfished nearly to extinction. Though the fish is slowly making a comeback thanks to the awareness-raising efforts of Native Americans, biologists, and sturgeon supporters, it remains to be seen if conservation and stewardship will continue to the degree this remarkable animal deserves. Blending history, biology, folklore, environmental science, and policy, this accessible book seeks to reach a broad audience and tell the story of the Great Lakes lake sturgeon in a manner as diverse as its subject.

As the new chief of the Michigan Department of Conservation’s Fish Division in 1964, Howard A. Tanner was challenged to “do something . . . spectacular.” He met that challenge by leading the successful introduction of coho salmon into the Michigan waters of the Great Lakes. This volume illustrates how Tanner was able to accomplish this feat: from a detailed account of his personal and professional background that provided a foundation for success; the historical and contemporary context in which the Fish Division undertook this bold step to reorient the state’s fishery from commercial to sport; the challenges, such as resistance from existing government institutions and finding funding, that he and his colleagues faced; the risks they took by introducing a nonnative species; the surprises they experienced in the first season’s catch; to, finally, the success they achieved in establishing a world-renowned, biologically and financially beneficial sport fishery in the Great Lakes. Tanner provides an engaging history of successfully introducing Pacific salmon into the lakes from the perspective of an ultimate insider.