John Branch – författare

The tragic death of hockey star Derek Boogaard at twenty-eight was front-page news across the country in 2011 and helped shatter the silence about violence and concussions in professional sports. Now, in a gripping work of narrative nonfiction, acclaimed reporter John Branch tells the shocking story of Boogaard's life and heartbreaking death.Boy on Ice is the richly told story of a mountain of a man who made it to the absolute pinnacle of his sport. Widely regarded as the toughest man in the NHL, Boogaard was a gentle man off the ice but a merciless fighter on it. With great narrative drive, Branch recounts Boogaard's unlikely journey from lumbering kid playing pond-hockey on the prairies of Saskatchewan, so big his skates would routinely break beneath his feet; to his teenaged junior hockey days, when one brutal outburst of violence brought Boogaard to the attention of professional scouts; to his days and nights as a star enforcer with the Minnesota Wild and the storied New York Rangers, capable of delivering career-ending punches and intimidating entire teams. But, as Branch reveals, behind the scenes Boogaard's injuries and concussions were mounting and his mental state was deteriorating, culminating in his early death from an overdose of alcohol and painkillers.Based on months of investigation and hundreds of interviews with Boogaard's family, friends, teammates, and coaches, Boy on Ice is a brilliant work for fans of Michael Lewis's The Blind Side or Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights. This is a book that raises deep and disturbing questions about the systemic brutality of contact sports—from peewees to professionals—and the damage that reaches far beyond the game.* A 2014 Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

The tragic death of hockey star Derek Boogaard at twenty-eight was front-page news across the country in 2011 and helped shatter the silence about violence and concussions in professional sports. Now, in a gripping work of narrative nonfiction, acclaimed reporter John Branch tells the shocking story of Boogaard's life and heartbreaking death.  Boy on Ice is the richly told story of a mountain of a man who made it to the absolute pinnacle of his sport. Widely regarded as the toughest man in the NHL, Boogaard was a gentle man off the ice but a merciless fighter on it. With great narrative drive, Branch recounts Boogaard's unlikely journey from lumbering kid playing pond-hockey on the prairies of Saskatchewan, so big his skates would routinely break beneath his feet; to his teenaged junior hockey days, when one brutal outburst of violence brought Boogaard to the attention of professional scouts; to his days and nights as a star enforcer with the Minnesota Wild and the storied New York Rangers, capable of delivering career-ending punches and intimidating entire teams. But, as Branch reveals, behind the scenes Boogaard's injuries and concussions were mounting and his mental state was deteriorating, culminating in his early death from an overdose of alcohol and painkillers.Based on months of investigation and hundreds of interviews with Boogaard's family, friends, teammates, and coaches, Boy on Ice is a brilliant work for fans of Michael Lewis's The Blind Side or Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights. This is a book that raises deep and disturbing questions about the systemic brutality of contact sports—from peewees to professionals—and the damage that reaches far beyond the game.

The Last Cowboys is Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John Branch’s epic tale of one American family struggling to hold on to the fading vestiges of the Old West. For generations, the Wrights of southern Utah have raised cattle and world-champion saddle-bronc riders—many call them the most successful rodeo family in history. Now they find themselves fighting to save their land and livelihood as the West is transformed by urbanization, battered by drought, and rearranged by public-land disputes. Could rodeo, of all things, be the answer? Written with great lyricism and filled with vivid scenes of heartache and broken bones, The Last Cowboys is a powerful testament to the grit and integrity that fuel the American Dream.

New York Times reporter John Branch’s riveting, humane pieces about ordinary people doing extraordinary things at the edges of the sporting world have won nearly every major journalism prize. Sidecountry gathers the best of Branch’s work for the first time, featuring 20 of his favorites from the more than 2,000 pieces he has published in the paper.Branch is renowned for covering the offbeat in the sporting world, from alligator hunting to wingsuit flying. Sidecountry features such classic Branch pieces, including “Snow Fall,” about downhill skiers caught in an avalanche in Washington state, and “Dawn Wall,” about rock climbers trying to scale Yosemite’s famed El Capitan. In other articles, Branch introduces people whose dedication and decency transcend their sporting lives, including a revered football coach rebuilding his tornado-devastated town in Iowa and a girls’ basketball team in Tennessee that plays on despite never winning a game. The book culminates with his moving personal pieces, including “Children of the Cube,” about the surprising drama of Rubik’s Cube competitions as seen through the eyes of Branch’s own sports-hating son, and “The Girl in the No. 8 Jersey,” about a mother killed in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting whose daughter happens to play on Branch’s daughter’s soccer team.John Branch has been hailed for writing “American portraiture at its best” (Susan Orlean) and for covering sports “the way Lyle Lovett writes country music—a fresh turn on a time-honored pleasure” (Nicholas Dawidoff). Sidecountry is the work of a master reporter at the top of his game.

Technology-EnhancedLearning in Higher Education is an anthology produced by theinternational association, Learning in Higher Education (LiHE).  LiHE, whose scope includes the activitiesof colleges, universities and other institutions of higher education, has beenone of the leading organisations supporting a shift in the education processfrom a transmission-based philosophy to a student-centred, learning-basedapproach. Traditionally education has been envisaged as a processin which the teacher disseminates knowledge and information to the student,and directs them to perform – instructing, cajoling, encouraging them asappropriate –  despite differentstudents’ abilities. Yet higher education is currently experiencing rapidtransformation, with the introduction of a broad range of technologies whichhave the potential to enhance student learning. This anthology draws upon theexperiences of those practitioners who have been pioneering new applicationsof technology in higher education, highlighting not only the technologiesthemselves but also the impact which they have had on student learning.The anthology illustrates how new technologies – whichare increasingly well-known and accepted by today’s ‘digital natives’undertaking higher education – can be adopted and incorporated. One keyconclusion is that learning remains a social process even intechnology-enhanced learning contexts. So the technology-based proxies weconstruct need to retain and reflect the agency of the teacher.Technology-EnhancedLearning in Higher Education showcases some of the latest pedagogicaltechnologies and their most creative, state-of-the-art applications tolearning in higher education from around the world.  Each of the chapters explorestechnology-enhanced learning in higher education in terms of either policy orpractice. They contain detailed descriptions of approaches taken in verydifferent curriculum areas, and demonstrate clearly that technology may andcan enhance learning only if it is designed with the learning process ofstudents at its core. So the use of technology in education is more linked topedagogy than it is to bits and bytes.

Assessing Learning in Higher Education addresses whatis probably the most time-consuming part of the work of staff in highereducation, and something to the complexity of which many of the recentdevelopments in higher education have added. Getting assessment ‘right’– thatis, designing and implementing appropriate models and methods, can determinethe future lives and careers of students. But, as Professor Phil Race commentsin his excellent and thought-provoking foreword, students entering highereducation often have little idea about how exactly assessment will work, andoften find that the process is very different from anything they havepreviously encountered. Assessing Learning in Higher Education containsinnovative approaches to assessment drawn from many different cultures anddisciplines. The chapter authors argue the need for changing assessment andfeedback processes so that they embrace online collaboration and discussionbetween students as well as between ‘students’ and ‘faculty’.The chaptersdemonstrate that at some points there is a need to be able to measureindividual achievement, and to do this in ways that are valid, transparent,authentic – and above all fair. Assessment and feedback processes need toensure that students are well prepared for this individual assessment, but alsoto take account of collaboration and interaction. The respective chapters of Assessing Learning in Higher Education allof which are complete in themselves, but with very useful links to ideas inother chapters, provide numerous illustrations of how this can beachieved.

This latest volume in theLearning in Higher Education series, InnovativeTeaching and Learning in Higher Education, brings together examples ofteaching and learning innovations, within the domain of higher education. Theanthology is diverse in nature and showcases concrete examples of innovativeteaching and learning practices in higher education from around the world. Thecontributions come from all scientific disciplines and in all teaching andlearning contexts. The twenty-eight inspiringexamples in this volume show considerable diversity in their approaches toteaching and learning practices; at the same time they improve both studentengagement and student learning outcomes. All the authors argue that theirinnovative approach has helped students to learn differently, better, and more.For those involved in higher education, there is a lot to be gained fromreading these narrative accounts of innovative teaching and learning.

For many years, it has been thegeneral view that entrepreneurs are simply born that way – thatentrepreneurship is innate and therefore cannot be taught (or learned), and istherefore a subject unsuited to higher education. The logic seemed to follow:an entrepreneur is just naturally an entrepreneur, and studyingentrepreneurship, therefore, is a meaningless enterprise. Borrowing Nike’sslogan, entrepreneurs just do it.But in recent years, a completereversal of thinking in higher education has occurred. Indeed, entrepreneurs,it is claimed, are made, not born. In other words, entrepreneurship can belearned. Subsequently, institutions of higher education, in most countriesaround the world, have embraced the teaching and learning of entrepreneurshipwith fervour, as demonstrated by the growth of entrepreneurship centres, newventure incubators, and business plan competitions on college and universitycampuses.Teaching andLearning Entrepreneurship in Higher Education embraces this ifto how reversal, by exploring entrepreneurship activities atdifferent universities around the world from three primary perspectives:policy, practice, and mindset. Its twelve chapters demonstrate that there is no‘one-size-fits-all’ model for teaching and learning entrepreneurship in highereducation. Despite their differences, however, the twelve also share a commondesire to develop and nurture entrepreneurship, and will inspire anyone with aninterest in teaching and learning entrepreneurship in higher education.

Thislatest volume in the Learning in Higher Education series, New Innovations inTeaching and Learning in Higher Educationpresents primary examples of innovative teaching and learning practicesin higher education. The authors – scholars of teaching and learning fromuniversities across the globe – all share the ambition to develop educationalprovisions to become much more learning-centred. Such learning-centredness iskey to quality enhancement of contemporary higher education and may be achievedwith a variety of methods. The chapters document innovative teaching andlearning practices within six areas:Engaging Students through Practice – Student-Centred e-Learning –Technology for Learning – Simulation – Effective Transformation – CurriculumInnovationsThe book is trulyinternational, containing contributions from Australia, Denmark, England, HongKong, Switzerland, Qatar, Scotland, South Africa, Tasmania, Vietnam, and theUSA. Although the educational contexts are very different across thesecountries, there appears to be a striking similarity in the approach toinnovative teaching and learning – a similarity which also runs through the sixareas of the book. Whether scholars of teaching and learning engage insimulations, e-learning, transformation or use of modern technologies, theywork to empower students.

Thislatest volume in the Learning in Higher Education series, Learning-Centred Curriculum Design in Higher Education is written to inspire and empower university teachersto engage in curriculum design processes that centre both the learning processand the learning outcomes of students. The book is structured by a centralmodel of curriculum design, which links together learning (how students learn versus whatstudents learn) and curriculum design (theprocess by which we design versus whatwe design). The book holds ten illustrative examples of learning-centredcurriculum design spanning four distinct approaches.The chapter authors are allpioneering learning-centred activities in their respective curricula. The bookis truly international, with authors from Denmark, England, Northern Ireland,South Africa, Turkey, and the USA.The beauty of this book isthat it was written by reflective curriculum design practitioners, as they haveexperienced personal success with their curriculum (re)design processes. Allchapters have been written with a “Yes, we did it!” attitude. The book aims toinspire university teachers and encourage investment in designing a morelearning-centred curriculum. As the evidence from these examples shows, thereare great benefits for students’ engagement, motivation, self-efficacy,learning outcomes, and employability.