Everything Harder Than Everyone Else
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Everything Harder Than Everyone Else
It’s part of human nature to test our limits. But what happens when this part comes to define us? When Jenny Valentish wrote a memoir about addiction, she noticed that people who treated drug-taking like an Olympic sport would often hurl themselves into a pursuit such as marathon running upon getting sober. What stayed constant was the need to push their boundaries. Everything Harder Than Everyone Else follows people doing the things that most couldn’t, wouldn’t or shouldn’t. Their insights lead Jenny on a compulsive, sometimes reckless journey through psychology, endurance and the power of obsession, revealing what we can learn about the human condition. There’s the neuroscientist violating his brain to override his disgust response. The athlete using childhood adversity as grist for the mill. The wrestler turning restlessness into curated ultraviolence. The designer who hangs from hooks in her flesh to get out of her head. The performance artist seeking erasure by manipulating his body. The BDSM dominant helping people flirt with death to feel more alive. The bare-knuckle boxer whose gnarliest opponent was once her ego. And the porn-star-turned-fighter for whom sex and violence are two sides of the same coin. Darkly funny and vividly penetrating, Everything Harder Than Everyone Else explores our deeper selves and asks: what are your limits? ‘Valentish takes us into hidden worlds that fascinate, horrify, inspire and entertain. Valentish is your intrepid guide to fringe communities, where the members are hardcore and their wisdom is hard-won. The characters and stories will stay with you long after the last page.’ —Brigid Delaney ‘As a fan of wrestling and general out-there foolishness, I've often wondered – but couldn't put into words – what drives people to such limits. An outstanding read.’ —Broden Kelly, Aunty Donna
Perfect Game USA and the Future of Baseball
For decades baseball scouts have beat the bushes for talent, wandering throughout the United States in search of promising young players. But technology and competition have recently brought about big changes, as potential stars are identified as early as Little League. The largest such scouting and development service, Perfect Game USA, has become the primary pipeline to college and professional baseball, with its participants accounting for more than 70 percent of the players taken in the 2007 amateur draft. This book looks at the history, methods, and impact of Perfect Game USA, which continues to change the landscape of youth baseball.
Visual Impairment and Work
This book traces the development of paid work for visually impaired people in the UK from the 18th century to the present day. It gives a voice to visually impaired people to talk about their working lives and documents the history of employment from their experience, an approach which is severely lacking in the current literature about visual impairment and employment. By analysing fifty in-depth face-to-face interviews with visually impaired people talking about their working lives (featuring those who have worked in traditional jobs such as telephony, physiotherapy and piano tuning, to those who have pursued more unusual occupations and professions), and grouping them according to occupation and framed by documentary, historical research, these stories can be situated in their broader political, economic, ideological and cultural contexts. The themes that emerge will help to inform present day policy and practice within a context of high unemployment amongst visually impaired people of working age. It is part of a growing literature which gives voice to disabled people about their own lives and which adds to the growing academic discipline of disability studies and the empowerment of disabled people.