Football, it is often said, remains the "one defining sport" for American men. Certainly, much of the language emerging from the game itself-its tactics, its strategy, its jargon-is often called upon to express the practices of the country's most competitive businesses and organizations. Shorty: A Life in Sports is a compelling new sports biography and social history. Sportswriter David White, whose highly acclaimed first book, the regional best-selling Leadership Lessons for Life, examined the key character traits and leadership qualities of a diverse cross-section of Alabama high school coaches, now tackles much broader, more compelling cultural theme-what is the state of amateur athletics in the heartland as we settle into the twenty-first century? In this remarkably resonant life of Coach George "Shorty" White (no relation to the author), we follow the trajectory of a high school coach's career, moving from a modest but happy childhood without a father in the Depression-era South to the challenging war years as an adolescent under the wing of a loving, hard-working mother facing the loss of two loved ones. We revisit football in the booming fifties when Shorty was a young football star and a rising head coach, and finally, we continue to track the arc of his successes and failures into the sixties and early seventies as we reflect upon a world shaken by inevitable social change... not only in Birmingham, but for nation and the world as well.