Playing Hurt: My Journey from Despair to Hope

John Saunders

John U. Bacon

Da Capo Press

Product Description \nAn uplifting leadership book about a coach who helped transform the nation’s worst high school hockey team into one of the best. Bacon’s strategy is straightforward: set high expectations, make them accountable to each other, and inspire them all to lead their team. When John U. Bacon played for the Ann Arbor Huron High School River Rats, he never scored a goal. Yet somehow, years later he found himself leading his alma mater’s downtrodden program. How bad? The team hadn’t won a game in over a year, making them the nation’s worst squad—a fact they celebrated. With almost everyone expecting more failure, Bacon made it special to play for Huron by making it hard, which inspired the players to excel. Then he defied conventional wisdom again by putting the players in charge of team discipline, goal-setting, and even decision-making – and it worked. In just three seasons the River Rats bypassed 95-percent of the nation’s teams. A true story filled with unforgettable characters, stories, and lessons that apply to organizations everywhere, Let Them Lead includes the leader’s mistakes and the reactions of the players, who have since achieved great success as leaders themselves. Let Them Lead is a fast-paced, feel-good book that leaders of all kinds can embrace to motivate their teams to work harder, work together, and take responsibility for their own success.\nReview 
“ 
Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High School Hockey Team, is where 
Ted Lasso meets the 
Mighty Ducks.”\n-Dan Shaughnessy, Columnist, The Boston Globe\n"Plenty of adjectives describe 
Let Them Lead — practical, readable, lively, compelling, thought-provoking. Whether the story of the hockey program or the leadership principles proves the greater draw, both will stay with readers after finishing the book. This is a volume worth returning to for insight and inspiration."\n-John Young, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette\n“Hey, Mighty Ducks. Meet the River Rats. It is not just a high-school hockey book, and it is not just a self-help book for aspiring bosses, teachers and coaches. Bacon works two timelines into one good story with ease. He’s quick to point out he played 86 high school games without scoring a goal. He found a greater reward as a coach, and that’s the heart of a must-read book for those who want to learn more about that pursuit. Great read for youth coaches!” \n-Bill Bender, The Sporting News\n“Journalist Bacon delivers a heartfelt narrative about the leadership skills he learned when he returned to his alma mater to coach the lowest-ranked high school hockey team in Michigan… Interspersed are moving stories about the confidence, motivation, and humility the players gained. These valuable lessons will inspire readers regardless of whether they’ve ever picked up a hockey stick.”\n-Publishers Weekly\n"You get hooked by the River Rats, and you just have to see how this thing turns out. In making it hard to be a part of the team, more kids wanted to join it. This feel-good tome resonates whether you’re a coach or a corporate type. It’s an easy read, and you'll take a lot from it."\n-John Johnson, Michigan High School Athletic Association\n"Just finished this excellent book, which weaves lessons for life and leadership throughout an entertaining, inspiring story. It transcends hockey and sports. Great for coaches, parents, players and leaders in all walks of life."\n-Nick Cotsonika, Columnist, NHL.com\n“Highly recommended. To call it a great sports book is to dramatically undersell it. There's something in it for everyone. Seriously, a must read. Do yourself a big favor: Put it on your reading list and order it now.”\n-Keith Gave, author, The Russian Five, and director, The Russian Five documentary\n“How do you take the country’s worst hockey team and turn it into one of the best? John Bacon knows the answer, because he made it happen. This book is brimming with brilliant, concret

Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America's Worst High School Hockey Team

Business & Money

Economics

Mariner Books

From New York Times bestselling author John U. Bacon, a gripping narrative history of the largest manmade detonation prior to Hiroshima: in 1917 a ship laden with the most explosives ever packed on a vessel sailed out of Brooklyn's harbor for the battlegrounds of World War I; when it stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an extraordinary disaster awaited …On Monday, December 3, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc set sail from Brooklyn carrying the largest cache of explosives ever loaded onto a ship, including 2,300 tons of picric acid, an unstable, poisonous chemical more powerful than TNT. The US had just recently entered World War I, and the ordnance was bound for the battlefields of France, to help the Allies break the grueling stalemate that had protracted the fighting for nearly four demoralizing years. The explosives were so dangerous that Captain Aime Le Medec took unprecedented safety measures, including banning the crew from smoking, lighting matches, or even touching a drop of liquor.Sailing north, the Mont-Blanc faced deadly danger, enduring a terrifying snowstorm off the coast of Maine and evading stealthy enemy U-boats hunting the waters of the Atlantic. But it was in Nova Scotia that an extraordinary disaster awaited. As the Mont-Blanc waited to dock in Halifax, it was struck by a Norwegian relief ship, the Imo, charging out of port. A small fire on the freighter's deck caused by the impact ignited the explosives below, resulting in a horrific blast that, in one fifteenth of a second, leveled 325 acres of Halifax -- killing more than one thousand people and wounding nine thousand more.In this definitive account, Bacon combines research and eyewitness accounts to recreate the tragedy and its aftermath, including the international effort to rebuild the devastated port city. As he brings to light one of the most dramatic incidents of the twentieth century, Bacon explores the long shadow this first ''weapon of mass destruction'' would cast on the future of nuclear warfare -- crucial insights and understanding relevant to us today.

The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism

History

Americas

HarperCollins Publishers and Blackstone Audio

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by John U. Bacon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by John U. Bacon