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Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports
Power Plays Politics Football and Other Blood Sports Author:John M. Barry The Washington Post has said that the work of John M. Barry, author of the award-winning Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, has "the potential to change the way we think." Now in his new book, Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports, Barry once again makes us see the world differently, as... more » he examines power from different and striking angles. Barry tells the compelling inside story of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's rise to power, and the subsequent fall of Speaker Jim Wright. Vice President Dick Cheney, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, and House Democratic whip David Bonior all play major roles in this story. Barry, a former Washington journalist who has written for the New York Times and the Washington Post, offers a deep and original analysis of the media as well, providing a provocative view of its inner workings and of the pressures on journalists and on all those who compete. But Barry also sees power in broader terms. In chapters that range from the isolating triumphs of world record-holding hurdler Renaldo Nehemiah, to the raw physical might of an Olympic weightlifter, to the weight of a culture bearing down upon a young man sent to Vietnam, Barry looks at individuals struggling against both the world and themselves. Based on his own experiences as a major college football coach, he also profiles players he coached who pursued their dreams of succeeding in the National Football League. His is an uncommon perspective on sport and on the price of winning and losing.« less