Pumping Granite

From rock climbing to rodeo, bowling to boomerangs, sumo wrestling to slow-pitch softball, this collection of magazine and newspaper stories by one of America's leading writers of narrative nonfiction probes the passion people of all ages and genders pour into the games and sports they play. From a basketball-crazed Eskimo village in Arctic Alaska, to a Massachusetts mill town where a kid named Jack Kerouac once starred for the high school football team, to a miniature golf course in Virginia Beach where a Putt-Putt pro hustles tourists for cash, these stories explore the more obscure nooks and crannies of our culture, revealing what our recreational obsessions say about us as individuals and as a society. Heroic and heartbreaking, triumphant and tragic, comic and calamitous, the stories shared in Pumping Granite comprise an insightful, compassionate, complex and entertaining journey into the souls of the men, women, and children whose lives are consumed by the games they play.