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People generally think they understand the environment and how humans use natural resources, but these ideas are often understood only superficially. Instead of thinking, I should turn off the light, we should be asking, “Why should I turn off the light?” Using case studies and defining key concepts, Environmental Geography explains exactly how individuals and society as a whole impact the earth.A flick of a light switch affects the demand for electricity, which is then related to sources of energy, policies about renewable energy sources, and ultimately environmental degradation and climate change. Likewise, a person’s decision to eat a cheeseburger versus a salad also affects the earth, though most of us don’t think about how our daily choices impact the earth.Leslie A. Duram provides meaningful examples from around the world that demonstrate both the devastating impacts that humans have on the environment and the increasing awareness of these consequences that is bringing hope for a more sustainable future. Likewise, she examines the widening rift of economic inequality, with examples of how poorer people are significantly more vulnerable than richer people to natural disasters such as floods, droughts, and the effects of climate change. Environmental Geography provides concrete information that shows readers how they can learn, advocate, and take action to bring about a more sustainable future.

Mysteries of the Jaguar Shamans of the Northwest Amazon tells the life story of Mandu da Silva, the last living jaguar shaman among the Baniwa people in the Northwest Amazon. In this original and engaging work, Robin M. Wright, who has known and worked with Silva for more than thirty years, weaves the story of Silva’s life together with the Baniwas’ broader society, history, mythology, cosmology, and jaguar shaman traditions. The jaguar shamans are key players in what Wright calls “a nexus of religious power and knowledge” in which healers, sorcerers, priestly chanters, and dance leaders exercise complementary functions that link living specialists with the deities and great spirits of the cosmos. Exploring in depth the apprenticeship of the shaman, Wright shows how jaguar shamans seek the knowledge and power of the deities through several stages of instruction and practice.  This volume, the first study to map the sacred geography (“mythscape”) of the northern Arawak-speaking people of the Northwest Amazon, demonstrates the direct connections between petroglyphs and other inscriptions and Baniwa sacred narratives as a whole. In eloquent and inviting analytic prose, Wright links biographic and ethnographic elements in elevating anthropological writing to a new standard of theoretically aware storytelling and analytic power.

Available in English for the first time, The Apache Indians tells the story of the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad's sojourn among the Apaches near the White Mountain Reservation in Arizona and his epic journey to locate the "lost" group of their brethren in the Sierra Madres in the 1930s. Ingstad traveled to Canada, where he lived as a trapper for four years with the Chipewyan Indians. The Chipewyans told him tales about people from their tribe who traveled south, never to return. He decided to go south to find the descendants of his Chipewyan friends and determine if they had similar stories. In 1936 Ingstad arrived in the White Mountains and worked as a cowboy with the Apaches. His hunch about the Apaches' northern origins was confirmed by their stories, but the elders also told him about another group of Apaches who had fled from the reservation and were living in the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Ingstad launched an expedition on horseback to find these "lost" people, hoping to record more tales of their possible northern origin but also to document traditions and knowledge that might have been lost among the Apaches living on the reservation.Through Ingstad's keen and observant eyes, we catch unforgettable glimpses of the landscape and inhabitants of the southwestern borderlands as he and his Apache companions, including one of Geronimo's warriors, embark on a dangerous quest to find the elusive Sierra Madre Apaches. The Apache Indians is a powerful echo of a past that has now become a myth.

Simone Weil, the French philosopher, political activist, and religious mystic, was little known when she died young in 1943. Four years later the philosopher-farmer Gustave Thibon compiled La pesanteur et la grâce from the notebooks she left in his keeping. In 1952 this English translation accelerated the fame and influence of Simone Weil. The striking aphorisms in Gravity and Grace reflect the religious philosophy of Weil's last years. Written at the onset of World War II, when her health was deteriorating and her left-wing social activism was giving way to spiritual introspection, this masterwork makes clear why critics have called Simone Weil "a great soul who might have become a saint" and "the Outsider as saint, in an age of alienation."

In this sequel to At the Earth's Core, return to the world of Pellucidar—an exotic, savage land at the center of the Earth, an untamed wilderness where the sun never sets. When American explorer David Innes first discovered Pellucidar, he fell under the spell of the strange world, earning the respect of many, the undying hatred of a few, and the love of the beautiful Dian. Torn from her arms by trickery, Innes vows revenge and returns to the Inner World to seek his lost love. Innes breaks through the earth's outer crust, far from his beloved, and is forced to cross a fierce, unyielding world to reach her. Innes's epic journey through the many strange lands of Pellucidar, including the Land of Awful Shadow, which lies beneath the brilliantly conceived pendant moon, and his heart-pounding encounters with prehistoric beasts and strange peoples makes Pellucidar one of Edgar Rice Burroughs's most rousing adventures.

In 1930, four decades after the surrender of Geronimo, anthropologist Grenville Goodwin headed south in search of a rumored band of "wild" Apaches in the Sierra Madre. Goodwin's journals chronicling his epic search have been edited and annotated by his son, Neil, who was born three months before his father's tragic death at the age of thirty-three. Neil Goodwin uses the journals to engage in a dialogue with the father he never knew.

More than one million copies sold2017 One Book One Nebraska selection“An American classic.”-Western Historical QuarterlyBlack Elk Speaks, the story of the Oglala Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) and his people during momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century, offers readers much more than a precious glimpse of a vanished time. Black Elk’s searing visions of the unity of humanity and Earth, conveyed by John G. Neihardt, have made this book a classic that crosses multiple genres. Whether appreciated as the poignant tale of a Lakota life, as a history of a Native nation, or as an enduring spiritual testament, Black Elk Speaks is unforgettable.Black Elk met the distinguished poet, writer, and critic John G. Neihardt in 1930 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and asked Neihardt to share his story with the world. Neihardt understood and conveyed Black Elk’s experiences in this powerful and inspirational message for all humankind.  This complete edition features a new introduction by historian Philip J. Deloria and annotations of Black Elk’s story by renowned Lakota scholar Raymond J. DeMallie. Three essays by John G. Neihardt provide background on this landmark work along with pieces by Vine Deloria Jr., Raymond J. DeMallie, Alexis Petri, and Lori Utecht. Maps, original illustrations by Standing Bear, and a set of appendixes rounds out the edition.

Betrayed by his wife, Stephen Stone spirits his son, Henry, away to a remote tropical island and trains him to be an ideal physical specimen and a perfect gentleman. After years of isolation, Henry Stone is now a young man, standing a full six feet two inches tall and weighing 190 pounds. His hair is bronze, his eyes turquoise, his skin mahogany—a magnificent man. When Henry finally returns to civilization, he finds that his father's business has grown into a news empire. Though he is the owner of this huge conglomerate, a great conversationalist and excellent company, well versed in etiquette, and extraordinarily nice, Henry has never seen a woman. Indeed his father has taught him never to trust a female and that love itself is a myth. When Henry collides with the contemporary world and the modern woman, the collision is necessarily fascinating and complicated for both Henry and the society he is discovering.

The culture of the Ponca Indians is less well known than their misfortunes. A model of research and clarity, The Ponca Tribe is still the most complete account of these Indians who inhabited the upper central plains. Peaceably inclined and never numerous, they built earth-lodge villages, cultivated gardens, and hunted buffalo. James H. Howard considers their historic situation in present-day South Dakota and Nebraska, their trade with Europeans and relations with the U.S. government, and, finally, their loss of land along the Niobrara River and forced removal to Indian Territory. The tragic events surrounding the 1877 removal, culminating in the arrest and trial of Chief Standing Bear, are only part of the Ponca story. Howard, a respected ethnologist, traces the tribe's origins and early history. Aided by Ponca informants, he presents their way of life in his descriptions of Ponca lodgings, arts and crafts, clothing and ornaments, food, tools and weapons, dogs and horses, kinship system, governance, sexual practices, and religious ceremonies and dances. He tells what is known about a proud (and ultimately divided) tribe that was led down a "trail of tears."The Ponca Tribe was originally published in 1965 as a bulletin of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology.

No American president has been closer to the working life of the West than Theodore Roosevelt. From 1884 to 1886 he built up his ranch on the Little Missouri in Dakota Territory, accepting the inevitable toil and hardships. He met the unique characters of the Bad Lands—mountain men, degenerate buffalo hunters, Indians, and cowboys—and observed their changes as the West became more populated. Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail describes Roosevelt's routine labor and extraordinary adventures, including a stint as a deputy sheriff pursuing three horse thieves through the cold of winter. Whether recounting stories of cowboy fights or describing his hunting of elk, antelope, and bear, the book expresses his lifelong delight in physical hardihood and tests of nerve.

Slithering from these pages are never-before-collected tales of suspense and wonder by the woman who invented modern-day dark fantasy: A man goes quietly to bed aboard the doomed Lusitania and awakens on a magical South Pacific Island just as the passenger liner is torpedoed. In a future where women rule the world, a sentient island becomes murderously jealous of a shipwrecked couple. Dire consequences await a human swept into the dark, magical world of elves. A deadly labyrinth coils around the dark heart of a picturesque landscape garden. Within an Egyptian sarcophagus lies the horrifying price of infidelity. Swirling unseen around us are loathsome creatures giving form to our basest desires and fears. A beautiful, veiled medium may hold the key to preventing unspeakable evil from slipping through the borderlands between life and death. On a lost island a woman pipe player and her monstrous dancing partner bring death and terror to five adventurers. The stories in this collection have played an integral role in the development of modern dark fantasy, greatly influencing such writers as H. P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt.

One morning in 1943, close to eighty men descended into the Smith coal mine in Bearcreek, Montana. Only three came out alive. "Goodbye wifes and daughters . . ." wrote two of the miners as they died. The story of that tragic day and its aftermath unfolds in this book through the eyes of those wives and daughters—women who lost their husbands, fathers, and sons, livelihoods, neighbors, and homes, yet managed to fight back and persevere. Susan Kushner Resnick has uncovered the story behind all those losses. She chronicles the missteps and questionable ethics of the mine's managers, who blamed their disregard for safety on the exigencies of World War II; the efforts of an earnest federal mine inspector and the mine union's president (later a notorious murderer), who tried in vain to make the mine safer; the heroism of the men who battled for nine days to rescue the trapped miners; and the effect the disaster had on the entire mining industry. Resnick illuminates a particular historical tragedy with all its human ramifications while also reminding us that such tragedies caused by corporate greed and indifference are with us to this day.

Thomas H. Leforge was "born an Ohio American" and chose to "die a Crow Indian American." His association with his adopted tribe spanned some of the most eventful years of its history--from the Indian Wars to the reservation period—and as interpreter, agency employee, chief of Crow scouts for the 1876 campaign (he was with Terry at the Little Big Horn), bona fide Crow "wolf," and husband of a Crow woman, he was usually in the midst of the action. His story, first published in 1928, remains a remarkably accurate source of historical and ethnological information on this relatively little known tribe.

Master of driving pace, exotic setting, and complex plotting, Harold Lamb was one of Robert E. Howard's favorite writers. Here at last is every pulse-pounding, action-packed story of Lamb's greatest hero, the wolf of the steppes, Khlit the Cossack. Journey now with the unsung grandfather of sword and sorcery in search of ancient tombs, gleaming treasure, and thrilling landscapes. Match wits with deadly swordsmen, scheming priests, and evil cults. Rescue lovely damsels, ride with bold comrades, and hazard everything on your brains and skill and a little luck. Wolf of the Steppes is the first of a four-volume set that collects, for the first time, the complete Cossack stories of Harold Lamb and presents them in order: every adventure of Khlit the Cossack and those of his friends, allies, and fellow Cossacks, many of which have never before appeared between book covers. Compiled and edited by the Harold Lamb scholar Howard Andrew Jones, each volume features never-before reprinted essays Lamb wrote about his stories, informative introductions by popular authors, and a wealth of rare, exciting, swashbuckling fiction.In this first volume, Khlit infiltrates a hidden fortress of assassins, tracks down the tomb of Genghis Khan, flees the vengeance of a dead emperor, leads the Mongol horde against impossible odds, accompanies the stunning Mogul queen safely through the land of her enemies, and much more. This is the stuff of grand adventure, from the pen of an American Dumas.

A Primer of Italian Fascism makes available for the first time in English translation the key documents pertaining to one of our century's defining mass political movements. Whereas existing anthologies survey Fascist writings in a multiplicity of national settings, A Primer of Italian Fascism opts for a tightly focused, in-depth approach that emphasizes the development of Fascist ideology in the country of its birth. Historically speaking, Italian Fascism was the original Fascism. The model for subsequent movements including Nazism, Falangism, and Integralism, Italian Fascism set out to define a "third way" to modernization known as "corporatism." A Primer of Italian Fascism situates the rise and fall of corporatist ideals within the framework of the actual history of Mussolini's movement and regime. It includes not only classic doctrinal statements such as Mussolini's "Foundations and Doctrine of Fascism" and writings by corporatist theorists such as Bottai, Pellizzi, Rocco, and Spirito, but also an array of fundamental political and juridical documents, including the party platforms adopted by the Fascist combat brigades, the 1938 Manifesto of Race, the 1940 Manifesto of Verona, and the Fascist labor and school charters. By making available such an extensive array of source texts, A Primer of Italian Fascism aims to open up for the English reader a more complex and complete vision of Fascism, both in Italy and beyond.

Five hundred miles beneath the earth's surface lies a fantastic, timeless world of eternal daylight, prehistoric beasts, and primeval peoples—Pellucidar. Pellucidar is a world within our world, a place where the horizon curves upward and merges with the sky. Here time stands still, for Pellucidar is illuminated by a miniature sun that never sets but hovers motionless in the sky. Scattered throughout the savage, prehistoric wilderness are communities of distrustful humans and the cities of the reptilian, highly evolved Mahars. David Innes and Abner Perry break through into this mysterious inner world. Their discovery of Pellucidar and the ensuing struggle to unite the human communities and overthrow the Mahars is a top-notch, thrilling tale of conquest, deceit, and wonder. This commemorative edition features an introduction by Gregory A. Benford and an afterword on the science of At the Earth's Core by Phillip R. Burger. Also included are a map of Pellucidar, a glossary of terms and names by Scott Tracy Griffin, a contemporary review, and the classic J. Allen St. John illustrations.

A pioneer in the field of basketball analytics, Dean Oliver introduced a framework to understand basketball through the use of statistics in his book Basketball on Paper. In his follow-up, Basketball beyond Paper, Oliver lays out both the technical and personal aspects of his twenty-year experience in the NBA as he helped build the analytics that changed the game. He also looks at the people and technology that pushed those analytics forward.Oliver tells stories of how the insights came about, whether studying other teams or witnessing events with players, coaches, and management of his own teams. He highlights how great LeBron James and Steph Curry have been but also how critical “middle-class” or “glue” players such as Shane Battier, Andre Iguodala, and JJ Redick were to their teams. Oliver illustrates the paths taken by Most Improved Player Award winners such as Lauri Markkanen, Julius Randle, and Brandon Ingram. Basketball beyond Paper tells the stories of how analytics have helped basketball players, coaches, and management-and changed the game.

Although he has earned a reputation as a profound theologian, the author demonstrates in this small collection of sermons his ability to simplify the Christian message for the common reader.-BooklistThese twenty-three meditations on key passages from the Bible were originally delivered as addresses at colleges and universities. They are short, powerful, and persuasive examinations of the effect of God’s love on the life of the believer and the challenges of living the New Creation-“the infinite passion of every human being.” Tillich scholar Mary Ann Stenger provides a new introduction for this edition.

“With eighty men I could ride through the entire Sioux nation.” The story of what has become popularly known as the Fetterman Fight, near Fort Phil Kearney in present-day Wyoming in 1866, is based entirely on this infamous declaration attributed to Capt. William J. Fetterman. Historical accounts cite this statement in support of the premise that bravado, vainglory, and contempt for the fort’s commander, Col. Henry B. Carrington, compelled Fetterman to disobey direct orders from Carrington and lead his men into a perfectly executed ambush by an alliance of Plains Indians. In the aftermath of the incident, Carrington’s superiors-including generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman-positioned Carrington as solely accountable for the “massacre” by suppressing exonerating evidence. In the face of this betrayal, Carrington’s first and second wives came to their husband’s defense by publishing books presenting his version of the deadly encounter. Although several of Fetterman’s soldiers and fellow officers disagreed with the women’s accounts, their chivalrous deference to women’s moral authority during this age of Victorian sensibilities enabled Carrington’s wives to present their story without challenge. Influenced by these early works, historians focused on Fetterman’s arrogance and ineptitude as the sole cause of the tragedy. In Give Me Eighty Men, Shannon D. Smith reexamines the works of the two Mrs. Carringtons in the context of contemporary evidence. No longer seen as an arrogant firebrand, Fetterman emerges as an outstanding officer who respected the Plains Indians' superiority in numbers, weaponry, and battle skills. Give Me Eighty Men both challenges standard interpretations of this American myth and shows the powerful influence of female writers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Essays in Radical Empiricism shows William James concerned with ultimate reality and moving toward a metaphysical system. The twelve essays originally appeared in journals between 1904 and 1906. James himself collected them to illustrate what he called "radical empiricism," but this volume was not published until 1912, two years after his death. Included are such seminal essays as "Does Consciousness Exist?" and "A World of Pure Experience." The distinguished scholar and biographer Ralph Barton Perry, who edited this volume, called the essays essential to an understanding of James's writings. Radical empiricism takes us into a "world of pure experience." In the essays, as introducer Ellen Kappy Suckiel notes, "James inquires into the metaphysically basic reality underlying the common-sense objects of our world. It is here that he defends his view that 'experience' is the sole and ultimate reality." The essays deal with the applications of this "pure" or "neutral" experience: the general problem of relations, the role of feeling in experience, the nature of truth. Horace M. Kallen observed: "The fundamental point of these essays is that the relations between things, holding them together or separating them, are at least as real as the things themselves . . . and that no hidden substrata are necessary to account for the clashes and coherences of the world."

Max Nordau was a famous writer, a practicing physician, a bourgeois examplar of enterprise and energy when his Degeneration appeared in Germany in 1892. He argued that the spirit of the times was characterized by enervation, exhaustion, hysteria, egotism, and inability to adjust or to act. Culture had degenerated, he said, and if criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and lunatics were degenerates, so were the authors and artists of the era. Degeneration, and the controversy it aroused, served to define the fine de siÈcle. Its targets included Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Richard Wagner, Zola, and Walt Whitman. The book was enormously influential. Nordau anticipated Freud in describing art as a product of neurosis, and he set a precedent for psychological and sociological critiques of literature. You may wish to talk back to Degeneration, as George Bernard Shaw did, but you will be entertained by its vitality. Holbrook Jackson, in The Eighteen Nineties, called the book "an example of the very liveliness of a period which was equally lively in making or marring itself."

2022 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleThe Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years.Steeves discusses the political history of American anthropology to focus on why pre-Clovis sites have been dismissed by the field for nearly a century. She explores supporting evidence from genetics and linguistic anthropology regarding First Peoples and time frames of early migrations. Additionally, she highlights the work and struggles faced by a small yet vibrant group of American and European archaeologists who have excavated and reported on numerous pre-Clovis archaeology sites.In this first book on Paleolithic archaeology of the Americas written from an Indigenous perspective, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere includes Indigenous oral traditions, archaeological evidence, and a critical and decolonizing discussion of the development of archaeology in the Americas.

Of the thousands of people who escaped through the Pyrenees during World War II, at least one hundred owe their lives to a daring scheme that Belgian Charles Schepens masterminded in Mendive, a remote Basque village near the French-Spanish border. The story of this near-miraculous resistance effort, an epic undertaking carried out in plain view of the Nazis, is recounted in full for the first time in The Surgeon and the Shepherd, an incredible, true tale of wartime heroism. In 1942, in coordination with the Belgian resistance, Schepens stage-managed a highly secret information and evacuation service through the counterfeit operation of a back-country lumbering enterprise. This book traces Schepens's gradual transformation from an apolitical young ophthalmologist into double agent "Jacques Pérot," and his emergence in the postwar period as a modern folk hero to the residents of Mendive. Woven into the account are the stories of a remarkable international cast of characters, most notably the Basque shepherd Jean Sarochar, regarded as a local misfit, with whom Schepens formed his most unlikely partnership and an enduring friendship.Part biography, part spy tale, part cultural study, The Surgeon and the Shepherd is based on more than ten years of oral history research. The saga of a Belgian "first resister" who, by posing as a collaborator, successfully duped both the Germans and the local French Basque population, it offers a powerful and illuminating picture of moral and physical courage.

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) has been called the founder of English drama and the perfecter of dramatic blank verse. He is known as a poet and translator of Lucan and Ovid, and as a guide and leader for Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan poets and dramatists. Tamburlaine the Great was his most ambitious work and the first play written in English blank verse.

"An exciting account by one of the last great chiefs."―Los Angeles TimesIn his old age, Plenty-coups (1848–1932), the last hereditary chief of the Crow Indians, told the moving story of his life to Frank B. Linderman, the well-known western writer who had befriended him. Plenty-coups is a classic account of the nomadic, spiritual, and warring life of Plains Indians before they were forced onto reservations. Plenty-coups tells of the great triumphs and struggles of his own life: his powerful medicine dreams, marriage, raiding and counting coups against the Lakotas, fighting alongside the U.S. Army, and the death of General Custer.This new edition allows readers to appreciate more fully the accomplishments and rich legacy of Plenty-coups:A previously unpublished essay by Linderman tells of his meeting and working with the chief.An introduction by Phenocia Bauerle and Barney Old Coyote Jr., both members of the Crow Nation, speaks to the enduring importance of Plenty-coups for the Crow people in the twenty-first century.An afterword by Timothy P. McCleary, also of the Crow Nation, highlights the pivotal role Plenty-coups played during the early reservation years after the buffalo had gone.An essay by Celeste River examines the special relationship between the old chief and Linderman.A map of Plenty-coups's world highlights places named in the storyA glossary of Crow words and concepts found in the story draws upon the latest orthographic standards and contemporary translation.A photo gallery showcases both Plenty-coups at different stages of his life and unforgettable scenes of his world.

Ella Deloria could speak intimately about Indian ways because she belonged to a Yankton Sioux family. A distinguished scholar who studied with Franz Boas at Columbia University, she had the gift of language and the understanding necessary to bridge races. Originally published in 1944, this book is an important source of information about Dakota culture and a classic in its elegant clarity of insight. Beginning with a general discussion of American Indian origins, language families, and culture areas, Deloria then focuses on her own people, the Dakotas, and the intricate kinship system that governed all aspects of their life. She writes, "Exacting and unrelenting obedience to kinship demands made the Dakotas a most kind, unselfish people, always acutely aware of those about them and innately courteous."Deloria goes on to show the painful transition to reservations and how the holdover of the kinship system worked against Indians trying to follow white notions of progress and success. Her ideas about what both races must do to participate fully in American life are as cogent now as when they were first written.

Generations before the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery wintered in the northern Plains, the Mandan Indians farmed along the banks of rivers. The traditional world of the Mandans comes vividly to life in this classic account by anthropologist Alfred W. Bowers. Based on years of research and conversations with Crows Heart and ten other Mandan men and women, Bowers offers an engaging and detailed reconstruction of their way of life in earlier times. Featured here are overviews of how their households function, the makeup of their clan and moiety systems and kinship network, and a valuable look at the entire Mandan life cycle, from birth and naming through adulthood, marriage, and death.Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization also includes descriptions and analyses of Mandan ceremonies, legends, and religious beliefs, including origin myths, the Okipa Ceremony, sacred bundles, Corn ceremonies, the Eagle-Trapping Ceremony, Catfish-Trapping Ceremony, and the Adoption Pipe Ceremony. Many of these practices and beliefs remain vital and relevant for Mandans today. A comprehensive look at the legacy and traditional roots of present-day Mandan culture, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization is a classic ethnography of an enduring North American Native community.

At a time when cycling in the United States rivaled baseball as the nation’s most popular professional sport, along came Reggie McNamara, a farmer’s son from Australia. Within a month of his arrival in the United States in 1913, he had earned the moniker “Iron Man” for his high tolerance of pain and his remarkable ability to recover from seemingly catastrophic injury. The nickname proved justified. Not only was he tough, he was also one of the best and highest-paid athletes in the world.  During his thirty-year career, McNamara won seventeen punishing six-day races along with an inestimable number of shorter distance races, including high-profile events on three different continents, peaking in 1926–27 at the age of thirty-nine. The fans, media, and his fellow professionals all idolized him as an example of the true grit needed to succeed in this grueling and dangerous sport. Late in his career, however, hard drinking and injuries took their toll, and McNamara became estranged from his wife and children. He fought back just as he always had on the race course, conquering his addiction to alcohol and becoming one of the earliest success stories of Alcoholics Anonymous.  In this humorous and exciting biography of the original Iron Man, Andrew M. Homan pulls McNamara back into the spotlight, depicting a flawed but beloved man whose success in those unrelenting six-day races came at a price.