This follow-up to Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer is “an enchanting love letter to English football” (The Daily Telegraph). In this playful, witty, and highly original look at English soccer, David Winner, author of the acclaimed Brilliant Orange, journeys to the heart of an essential English pastime and sheds new light on the true nature of a rapidly changing game that was never really meant to be beautiful. With the same insightful eye he brought to his bestselling study of Dutch soccer, Winner shows how Victorian sexual anxiety underlies England’s many World Cup failures. He reveals the connection between Roy Keane and a soldier who never lived but died in the “Charge of the Light Brigade.” And he demonstrates how thick mud and wet leather shaped the contours of the English soul. “It’s neither a history of the game nor a memoir, instead exploring the interplay between sport, history, and national character . . . For thinking fans of the game, this is exquisitely pleasurable reading . . . As [Winner] finds acceptance, and even fondness, for the English game, his insight, humor, warmth, and enthusiasm place him in the top echelon of soccer writers.” —Booklist (starred review) “Thank God for David Winner . . . With an easy wit, Winner traces the game back to its roots and the results are as intriguing as they are amusing . . . A marvelous book.” —Duncan White, FourFourTwo

A comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible overview of the history of Christianity in England from its earliest days to the present. The ideal gift for all who want to understand what it means to be Christian in England.

Adventure, danger and mystery from the award-winning Ted Dawe. ‘The year mum died and Dad went mad I was packed off to a farm for a while.’ The first sentence sets the scene for this tender and dramatic story. But this is no ordinary farm: our narrator’s Aunt Lorna, Uncle Frank and five cousins belong to the Jerusalem League, a William Blake cult. Their house is unusual, in that the rooms are hexagons – six-sided – as are the doors and windows, the dinner table and plates. And you guessed it; they’re bee-keepers. Our young narrator takes us through his initiation to farm life: chores and more chores, which he doesn’t mind really, starting a new school and coping with the local bully, Noel Cudby, finding the perfect place: a swimming hole hidden in the bush, and making friends with Pimpernickle, the resident pig. It’s here with Pimpernickle when we become aware of his loneliness: ‘That pig is sure smart. I reckon he can tell my moods. When I’m feeling depressed, which is quite often to tell the truth, he comes over and stands next to me real close.’ But when our storyteller goes off to school camp things turn from wet to wetter. Noah’s flood is served up with a good serving of wind: the river rises and floods and the sorry lot of wet kids and a few parents are forced to head for higher ground. How will they cross the river and reach safe ground? Just what happens when they’re rescued? A tender story told with humour and insight.

Who knew feet were so interesting--and fun! In a lively guessing game format, find out why the feet of tree frogs, and those of eight other animals, are perfectly adapted to their habitats. Illustrated with brightly detailed paintings, this simple, informative text will have children looking at feet in a whole new way.

Reprint of the original.

"Two leading experts walk you through everything you need to know about how to take care of your foot, ankle, and toenails and handle problems that may come up. This book provides guidance on how to recognize and care for issues, including medications, exercises, inserts (orthotics), and surgery"--

A moving and powerful novel about the lives of the men, women, and children who endure a second-class existence and labor under dangerous conditions as migrant workers in California’s fields. “Viramontes depicts this world with sensuous physicality...working firmly in the social-realist vein of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.”—Publishers Weekly At the center of this powerful tale is Estrella, a girl about to cross the perilous border to womanhood. What she knows of life comes from her mother, who has survived abandonment by her husband in a land that treats her as if she were invisible, even though she and her children pick the crops of the farms that feed its people. But within Estrella, seeds of growth and change are stirring. And in the arms of Alejo, they burst into a full, fierce flower as she tastes the joy and pain of first love. Pushed to the margins of society, she learns to fight back and is able to help the young farmworker she loves when his ambitions and very life are threatened in a harvest of death. Infused with the beauty of the California landscape and shifting splendors of the passing seasons juxtaposed with the bleakness of poverty, this vividly imagined novel is worthy of the people it celebrates and whose story it tells so magnificently. The simple lyrical beauty of Viramontes’ prose, her haunting use of image and metaphor, and the urgency of her themes all announce Under the Feet of Jesus as a landmark work of American fiction. Winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature Selected as the Univesity of Oregon's 2019 Common Reading book