There are two kinds of football in France. American football was first played in France in 1909 during the cruise of the Great White Fleet. Then, during World War I, the American military shipped footballs, helmets, and shoulder pads alongside rifles and ammunition to the western front. A 1938 tour of two teams lead by Jim Crowley of Fordham University maintained the game until World War II, when the arrival of millions of young Americans in France motivated the U.S. military to sponsor several bowl games. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the United States occupied bases in France during the Cold War, American soldiers, sailors, and airmen played more than a thousand football games. When France withdrew from NATO, however, American bases were forced to close, leaving American football without a natural home on Gallic shores. In the 1970s American college and semi-pro teams tried once more to generate interest in the game among French nationals through a series of tours, but until a French physical education instructor vacationed in Colorado and brought equipment back to France, there was little local enthusiasm for the sport. On the back of that vacation, and from one team in Paris, organized American football in France grew to more than 215 teams with more than 22,000 active players today. Le Football tackles the struggles and successes of American football in France and discusses how, unlike baseball and basketball, football has never been an overt instrument of American cultural influence. Russ Crawford keeps the chains moving as he shows how the modern, homegrown sport developed largely independent of American encouragement into a small but successful culture.

These poems were written by a retired physician who had never had any experience as a professional writer. He had always had a love of poetry, but didn't have the time to pursue this endeavor. He learned early on that he had an aptitude for poetic writing. He was encouraged by his wife and many close friends who read some of his first poems. These poems cover a large range of events which could be encountered in life. The poems are encompassing enough that people from many cultural and ethnic backgrounds should be able to find them quite interesting. They are not based in totality on any specific occurrences which the author encountered. His life as an Afro- American, growing up in the South during the era of Segregation and during the Great Depression did have a great influence on his writing.

London L. Gore is a World War II veteran serving front-line duty in a Sherman tank with the 5th Armored Division after the Utah Beach landing. Living through the shelling on the battlefield was like being in a never-ending thunderstorm surrounded by unrelenting lightning strikes. After the war, London returned to the Carolinas and worked at timbering and right-of-way clearing. He met and married Ellen and settled in Sumter, South Carolina. Their marriage of fi fty-one years produced two wonderful daughters, four grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Ellen passed in 2003 of natural causes. London remarried and he and his current wife, Mary, reside in Shallotte, a small community in southeastern North Carolina. In this book, he shares a lifetime of memories from childhood to present to include many of his wartime experiences of World War II.

THE EARTHENS is an allegorical novel with nature descriptions and philosophical speculations woven into the following story: Mandy Jamison has been called to Chicago after the apparent disappearance of her long-time friend, Beth Montell, the world's leading psychic healer. Mandy is taken to the North Woods retreat where Beth is hiding, and there Mandy writes Beth's biography, describing her struggles between normal, vulnerable human attachments and her great psychic abilities, expressed through art and healing, guided by Higher Powers known as The Earthens. Eventually, after her life story is published, Beth comes out of isolation and announces a message from The Earthens. Her message is largely ignored by those in power, until massive planetary changes begin. The Earthens is at once a sensual love story and spiritual exploration, appealing to a great variety of readers.

Timmy and his friends from their club Wolf Pack have many adventures while his mother decided if Kentucky is really the place for them to continue living.

This book has been a labor of love that, in retrospect, came easy to me. I drew from sixteen years of daily contact with Coach Carpenter. I also garnered the thoughts of his friends, players, and opponents. We laughed long and hard almost every day. We passed along inside jokes that only he and I understood, most of which I cannot repeat in the interest of decorum.We traveled the world. We won and lost and suffered the outrageous slings and arrows of disgruntled fans. We tasted the sweet wine of victory and we left an indelible mark in the annals of small college football that is remarkable. He was, in the vernacular of my south Georgia upbringing, "much of a man!"