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Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History Audiobook
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Publisher Description
From Mike Pesca, host of the popular Slate podcast The Gist, comes the greatest sports minds imagining how the world would change if a play, trade, injury, or referee's call had just gone the other way.
"Intriguing...thought provoking...delightful." --The Washington Post
No announcer ever proclaimed: "Up Rises Frazier!" "Havlicek commits the foul, trying to steal the ball!" or "The Giants Lose the Pennant, The Giants Lose The Pennant!" Such moments are indelibly etched upon the mind of every sports fan. Or rather, they would be, had they happened. Sports are notoriously games of inches, and when we conjure the thought of certain athletes - like Bill Buckner or Scott Norwood - we can't help but apply a mental tape measure to the highlight reels of our minds. Players, coaches, and of course fans, obsess on the play when they ask, "What if?" Upon Further Review is the first book to answer that question.
Upon Further Review is a book of counterfactual sporting scenarios. In its pages the reader will find expertly reported histories, where one small event is flipped on its head, and the resulting ripples are carefully documented, the likes of...
What if the U.S. Boycotted Hitler's Olympics?
What if Bobby Riggs beat Billie Jean King?
What if Bucky Dent popped out at the foot of the Green Monster?
What if Drew Bledsoe never got hurt?
Upon Further Review takes classic arguments conducted over pints in a pub and places them in the hands of dozens of writers, athletes, and historians. From turning points that every sports fan rues or celebrates, to the forgotten would-be inflection points that defined sports, Upon Further Review answers age old questions, and settles the score, even if the score bounced off the crossbar.
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"The inevitable plight of sports fans is longing for what might have been. Retrospective analysis -- and wistful reimagining -- is what gets them through the night. UPON FURTHER REVIEW teems with such moonlit fantastical -- and a ravishing counterfactual revelation: sportswriters, the proud and embittered few, are actually a delightful bunch of goofball romantics."
— Nicholas Dawidoff, author of The Catcher Was A Spy and Collision Low Crossers.
Quotes
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What if you didn't read UPON FURTHER REVIEW? You'd miss a lot of mind-blowing fun. But why take the chance? Read it. You'll laugh. You'll learn. You'll impress your friends. There hasn't been a sure winner like this book since Mike Tyson beat Buster Douglas.
— Jonathan Eig, author of Ali: A Life and Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig -
Enlightening and entertaining, Pesca's collection of hypothetical sports outcomes gives sports fans much food for thought.
— Publishers Weekly -
This is sports escapism brought to new and entertaining heights.
— Kirkus -
A thought-provoking venture into sports' road-not-taken possibilities.
— Booklist
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About Mike Pesca
Mike Pesca is the host of the daily podcast The Gist. For ten years he was a reporter for NPR, where he primarily covered sports. He has covered Super Bowls, Final Fours, the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Olympics, the World Cup, the World Series of Poker, and the Westminster Dog Show. In addition to hosting the NPR News Quiz Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, his work has been featured on This American Life, Radiolab, Inside the NFL, as well as in Baseball Prospectus and Basketball Prospectus. He is the winner of two Edward R. Murrow awards, one for his coverage of high school football, another for his analysis of the monetary value of Crackerjacks being mentioned in the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." He was a two-time winner of the Emory University Intramural Softball Official of the Year.
About the Narrators
Jeremy Schaap is an American sportswriter, television reporter, and author. Schaap is a six-time Emmy award winner for his work on ESPN’s E:60, SportsCenter and Outside the Lines. He is a regular contributor to Nightline and ABC World News Tonight and has been published in Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine, Time, Parade, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. A native and resident of New York City, Schaap is the author of Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History, a New York Times bestseller, and Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics.
Steve Kornacki is a national political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. His work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Roll Call, and the New York Times, among others. He is a native of Groton, Massachusetts, and a graduate of Boston University. He lives in New York City.
Mary Pilon is an award-winning sports reporter at the New York Times. She was previously a staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal for the paper’s Money and Investing section. In 2011 she was named one of Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30 for media. Her work has appeared in Gawker, USA Today, and New York magazine and she is an honors graduate of New York University. She lives in New York.
Julian E. Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, a CNN political analyst, and a contributor to NPR's Here and Now. He is the author of several books, including Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 (co-authored with Kevin Kruse) and The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, the winner of the D. B. Hardeman Prize for Best Book on Congress. He has been awarded fellowships from the New York Historical Society, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and New America.
Louisa Thomas is the author of Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family—a Test of Will and Faith in World War I. She is a former writer and editor for Grantland and a former fellow at the New America Foundation. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, and other places.
Peter Thomas Fornatale is a freelance writer, editor, and Jerichoholic. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter.