Robert Lipsyte – författare

“You can’t play it safe when you’re the captain.”From celebrated author Robert Lipsyte, this powerful coming-of-age follows high school football player Ronnie "Rhino" Rhinehart after a violent incident at school leaves him questioning everything he ever believed.Ronnie Rhinehart, better known as Rhino on the field, is the captain of his high school team in Woodhaven, a small town obsessed with football. His only goal is to earn a Division I football scholarship so he can escape this town forever. Until the day he punches Josh Kremens in the face.To avoid serious punishment and stay in school, Ronnie is forced to join Group, a cast of misfits who discuss their feelings with a counselor. At the same time, tensions are rising on the football team. Not everyone is happy that Ronnie, a junior, was named captain, especially Cogan and his friends the Berserkers. Other than his best friend, Andy, Ronnie struggles to find solace and support, even at home, where his dad puts pressure on him to maintain his role on the team. Reluctantly, Ronnie finds himself liking aspects of Group, even if he isn’t always a welcome presence to the other members. Then one fateful day, Keith, another Group member, comes to school with a gun . . . and everything changes.Finding Your Voice: For a star athlete used to solving problems with his fists, discovering what he truly believes in is the toughest fight of his life.Toxic Masculinity: On a team where "warriors" are praised and weakness is punished, Rhino must confront the dangerous culture celebrated by his coaches and teammates like Cogan.Teen Mental Health: Forced into a counseling group with the school’s outcasts, Rhino is confronted with the raw struggles of his peers—and the simmering rage that leads one of them to commit an unthinkable act.A Powerful Social Issues Novel: This gripping story tackles the complex issues of gun control, censorship, and social justice, asking what it means to stand up when everyone else wants you to sit down.

Tough and witty, SportsWorld is a well-known commentator’s overview of the most significant form of mass culture in America-sports. It’s a sweaty Oz that has grown in a century from a crucible for character to a complex of capitalism, a place where young people can find both self-fulfillment and cruel exploitation, where families can huddle in a sanctuary of entertainment and be force fed values and where cities and countries can be pillaged by greedy team owners and their paid-for politicians. But this book is not just a screed, it’s a guided visit with such heroes of sports as Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Joe Namath, who the author knew well, and with some he met in passing, like Richard Nixon, who seemed never to have gotten over missing the cut in college varsity football, a major mark of manhood. We see how SportsWorld sensibilities help elect our politicians, judge our children, fight our wars, and oppress our minorities. And now featuring a new introduction by the author,SportsWorld is a book that will provide the foundation for understanding today’s world of sports and the time of Trump. In the America of 2017-where the SuperBowl is worth billions, athletes are penalized or forced out of sports for political and anti-racist activism, and Title IX is constantly questioned and undermined-Robert Lipsyte’s 1975 critique remains startlingly and intensely relevant.