Louisa Thomas

A portrait of the British-born wife of John Quincy Adams details her upbringing in circumstances that differed significantly from her husband's, their tempestuous marriage, their wide range of residences, and her efforts to forge her own sense of self.

The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams

Louisa

John Urschel

"For John Urschel, what began as an insatiable appetite for puzzles as a child quickly evolved into mastery of the elegant systems and rules of mathematics. By the time he was thirteen, Urschel was auditing college-level calculus courses. But when he joined his high school football team, a new interest began to eclipse the thrill he once felt in the classroom. Football challenged Urschel in an entirely different way, and he became addicted to the physical contact of the sport. Accepting a scholarship to play football at Penn State, Urschel refused to sacrifice one passion for another, and simultaneously pursued his bachelor's and then master's degrees in mathematics. Against the odds, Urschel found a way to manage his double life as a scholar and an athlete, and so when he was drafted to the Baltimore Ravens, he enrolled in his PhD at MIT. Weaving together two separate yet bound narratives, Urschel relives for us the most pivotal moments of his bifurcated life. He explains why, after Penn State was sanctioned for the acts of former coach Jerry Sandusky, he turned his back on offers from Ivy League universities and refused to abandon his team, and contends with his mother's repeated request, at the end of every season, that he quit the sport and pursue a career in rocket science. Perhaps most personally, he opens up about the correlation between football and CTE, and the risks he took for the game he loves. Equally at home with both Bernard Riemann's notion of infinity and Bill Belichick's playbook, Urschel reveals how each challenge - whether on the field or in the classroom - has brought him closer to understanding the two different halves of his own life, and how reason and emotion, the mind and the body, are always working together"--

A Life in Math and Football

Mind and Matter

Mary Pilon

“It's easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself.” —Floyd Patterson Twenty-two notable writers—including Bob Sullivan, Abby Ellin, Mike Pesca, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Louisa Hall, and Gay Talese—examine the untold stories of the losers, and in doing so reveal something raw and significant about what it means to be human The locker rooms of winning teams are crowded with coaches, family, and fans. Reporters flock to the athletes, brimming with victory and celebration, to ask, How does it feel? In contrast, the locker rooms of the losing teams are quiet and awkward, and reporters tend to leave quickly, reluctant to linger too long around loss. But, as sports journalists Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas argue, losing is not a phenomenon to be overlooked, and in Losers, they have called upon novelists, reporters, and athletes to consider what it means to lose. From the Olympic gymnast who was forced to surrender her spot to another teammate, to the legacy of Bill Buckner's tenth-inning error in the 1986 World Series, to LeBron James's losing record in the NBA Finals, these essays range from humorous to somber, but all are united by their focus on defeat. Interweaving fourteen completely new and unpublished pieces alongside beloved classics of the genre, Losers turns the art of sports writing on its head and proves that there is inspiration to be found in stories of risk, resilience, and getting up after you've been knocked down.

Dispatches from the Other Side of the Scoreboard

Losers

Conscience

Norman Thomas and his brothers' upbringing prepared them for a life of service--but their calls to conscience threatened to tear them apart. Conscience is Louisa Thomas's account of the remarkable Thomas brothers in a time of trial, exploring the difficult decisions the four brothers faced with the advent of World War I. Sons of a Presbyterian minister and grandsons of missionaries, they shared a rigorous moral upbringing, a Princeton education, and a faith in the era's spirit of hope. Ralph enlisted right away, heeding President Wilson's call. Arthur, the youngest, was less certain about the righteousness of the cause but sensitive to his obligation as a citizen. Evan became a conscientious objector; when the truce was signed in 1918, he was in solitary confinement. Norman left his ministry in the tenements of East Harlem, New York, and began the course he would follow for the rest of his life, fighting for civil liberties and social justice, and against violence as a method of change.--From publisher description.

Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family : a Test of Will and Faith in World War I

It was a time of testing and uncertainty. Even before World War I, there was a sense that country was changing. As Louisa Thomas reveals in Conscience, for the Thomas brothers, the struggle did not only take place on the battlefields. It was within themselves. Sons of a Presbyterian minister and grandsons of missionaries, the brothers shared a rigorous moral code, Princeton educations, and a faith in the era’s spirit of hope. Their upbringing prepared them for a life of service, but the war challenged their notions of citizenship, faith, and freedom and threatened to tear their family apart. Centered around the life of the oldest, Norman Thomas, Conscience tells the story of four brothers, and the choices they made. When the United States entered the Great War, Ralph Thomas enlisted right away, heeding President Woodrow Wilson’s call to fight for freedom. A captain in the Army Corps of Engineers, he would be wounded in France. Arthur, the youngest, was less certain about the righteousness of the cause but was sensitive to his obligation as a citizen—and like so many men eager to have a chance to prove himself. Evan became a conscientious objector, protesting conscription; when the truce was signed on November 11, 1918, he was in solitary confinement. Norman Thomas was a Presbyterian minister when the war began. Before the United States entered the war, he became a pacifist, and by the time it was over, he was a Socialist. He would go on to run for President six times on the Socialist ticket. The Thomas brothers argued about what was possible and what was principled, what was right and what was wrong—and they told each other to have courage. . Conscience moves from the gothic buildings of Princeton to the tenements of New York City, from the West Wing of the White House to the battlefields of France, tracking four young men navigating upheaval. In telling the story of their journeys, Thomas recovers a way of talking about personal liberty and social obligation, about being true to oneself and to one another.

Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family--a Test of Will andFaith in World War I

Norman Thomas and his brothers' upbringing prepared them for a life of service-but their calls to conscience threatened to tear them apart Conscience is Louisa Thomas's beautifully written account of the remarkable Thomas brothers at the turn of the twentieth century. At a time of trial, each brother struggled to understand his obligation to his country, family, and faith. Centered around the story of the eldest, Norman Thomas (later the six-time Socialist candidate for president), the book explores the difficult decisions the four brothers faced with the advent of World War I. Sons of a Presbyterian minister and grandsons of missionaries, they shared a rigorous moral upbringing, a Princeton education, and a faith in the era's spirit of hope. Two became soldiers. Ralph enlisted right away, heeding President Woodrow Wilson's call to fight for freedom. A captain in the Army Corps of Engineers, he was ultimately wounded in France. Arthur, the youngest, was less certain about the righteousness of the cause but sensitive to his obligation as a citizen-and like so many men eager to have a chance to prove himself. The other two were pacifists. Evan became a conscientious objector, protesting conscription; when the truce was signed on November 11, 1918, he was in solitary confinement. Norman left his ministry in the tenements of East Harlem, New York, and began down the course he would follow for the rest of his life, fighting for civil liberties, social justice, and greater equality, and against violence as a method of change. Conscience reveals the tension among responsibilities, beliefs, and desires, between ideas and actions-and, sometimes, between brothers. Conscience moves from the gothic buildings of Princeton to the tenements of New York City, from the West Wing of the White House to the battlefields of France, tracking how four young men navigated a period of great uncertainty and upheaval. A Thomas family member herself (Norman was Louisa's great grandfather), Thomas proposes that there is something we might recover from the brothers' debates about conscience: a way of talking about personal liberty and social obligation, about being true to oneself and to one another.

Louisa Thomas

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