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Tropic of football : the long and perilous journey of Samoans to the NFL / Rob Ruck.

by Ruck, Rob, 1950- author.

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New York : The New Press, 2018.

National Football League.

Football players -- United States -- Biography.

Football players -- American Samoa -- Biography.

American Samoa -- Biography.

9781620973370 hardcover ; (alkaline paper)

1620973375 hardcover ; (alkaline paper)

305 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

God's sweetest work -- The war and America come to Samoa -- Hawaiʻi : the North shore -- Al Lolotai, Charlie Ane, and Bob Apisa -- American Samoa in the 1960s -- Jesse Sapolu, Dick Tomey, and Faʻa Samoa -- Faʻa Kalifonia : Oceanside, California -- Kalifonia dreaming -- Back in Hawaiʻi : where football still matters -- David and Goliath -- The Samoan paradox.

"Football is at a crossroads, its future imperiled by the very physicality that drives its popularity. Its grass roots--high school and youth travel program--are withering. But players from the small South Pacific American territory of Samoa are bucking that trend, quietly becoming the most disproportionately overrepresented culture in the sport. Jesse Sapolu, Junior Seau, Troy Polamalu, and Marcus Mariota are among the star players to emerge from the Samoan islands, and more of their brethren suit up every season. The very thing that makes them so good at football--their extraordinary internalization of discipline and warrior self-image--makes them especially vulnerable to its pitfalls, including concussions and brain injuries. Award-winning sports historian Rob Ruck travels to the South Seas to unravel American Samoa's complex ties with the United States. He finds an island blighted by obesity, where boys train on fields blistered with volcanic pebbles wearing helmets that should have been discarded long ago, incurring far more neurological damage than their stateside counterparts and haunted by Junior Seau, who committed suicide after a vaunted twenty-year NFL career, unable to live with the demons that resulted from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Tropic of Football is a gripping, bittersweet history of what may be football's last frontier."--Amazon.com.

Copy/Holding information

Location	Collection	Call No.	Status
Hana P/S Library	Hawaiian Nonfiction	H 796.33209 Ru	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList
Hawaii Kai Public Library	Adult Nonfiction	796.33209 Ru	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList
Hawaii State Library	Hawaiian & Pacific	H 796.33209 Ru	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList
Hawaii State Library	R -- Hawaiian & Pacific	H 796.33209 Ru	Non Circulating	Add Copy to MyList
Hilo Public Library	Adult Nonfiction	796.33209 Ruck	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList
Kahuku P/S Library	Adult Nonfiction	796.33209 Ru	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList
Kaimuki Public Library	Hawaiian Nonfiction	H 796.33209 Ru	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList
Kalihi-Palama Public Library	Hawaiian Nonfiction	H 796.33209 Ru	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList
Kapolei Public Library	Adult Nonfiction	796.33209 Ru	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList
Kealakekua Public Library	Adult Nonfiction	796.33209 Ru	Checked In	Add Copy to MyList

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