{"title":"Jon Keen","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"sum-of-the-parts-book-jon-keen-9780993517501","title":"The Sum of the Parts","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat makes a team greater than The Sum of the Parts?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTen years ago was a special time for Reading Football Club, a provincial team with a long but largely undistinguished history. Suddenly, all the pieces of the football jigsaw clicked into place to create what was virtually a perfect team - a team that won the Football League Championship in great style, amassing a record-breaking total of 106 points in the process. The next season, their first ever in the Premier League, they confounded pundits and opponents alike by finishing eighth and narrowly missing out on European qualification.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFor everyone associated with Reading Football Club, this was a time of wonder and excitement, a time when every match seemed to bring ever greater highs and exceed all previous expectations. But it was short-lived, and the following season they were relegated back to the Championship.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJust what happened in this brief period to transform a group of relatively unknown players into such a perfect team?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMost were either at the start of their careers or coming to the end of largely unremarkable ones, so how did they all come to have the best years of their careers at precisely the same time? What was the particular combination of factors that came together simultaneously to make this team so good and so successful.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Sum of the Parts\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e is not just an account of what happened over those three incredible years. It's also an in-depth analysis of \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003ehow\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003ewhy\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e it happened - from the very start of the process of putting this team together to their decline when all those factors were no longer present.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis isn't just a book for Reading supporters who want to celebrate such an incredible time in their club's history. It's a book showing how one relatvely minor team acheived unheard of success in professional sport, and a book for anyone interested in how football works or in discovering exactly what the ingredients are which go together to make a team so much more than just a collection of players one greater than the sum of its parts.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49555734823185,"sku":"GOR013513591","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49657587171601,"sku":"GOR007890817","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740996301073,"sku":"NIN9780993517501","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52815722381585,"sku":"CIN0993517501VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0993517501.jpg?v=1750820892"},{"product_id":"ultimate-reading-fc-quiz-book-book-jon-keen-9780993517525","title":"The Ultimate Reading FC Quiz Book","description":"\u003ci\u003eSacramento Bee\u003c\/i\u003e journalist Sam McManis spent five years on the road trying to find the real California. He discovered that there is more than one California, but every different California is equally weird and wonderful. Worlds collide and commingle: the neo-hippies with the rednecked farmers; the urban sophisticates with the quirky desert dwellers; the Hollywood power brokers with the outsider artists. Brought together in a bouillabaisse of voices, \u003ci\u003eCrossing California\u003c\/i\u003e will make you see the state in an entirely new light. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e From the briny scent of Fisherman's Wharf to the fragrant sage scrub of Imperial County; from the otherworldly starkness of Death Valley to the crashing waves and flexing muscles at Venice Beach, \u003ci\u003eCrossing California\u003c\/i\u003e gives readers a first-hand experience. McManis has stalked the tony aisles of the newly minted Broad Museum in gentrified downtown Los Angeles, and quick-footed it through the International Banana Museum along the desiccated shores of the moonscaped Salton Sea. He has inadvertently gotten his car stuck in a tree at a cheesy drive-thru giant Sequoia roadside attraction along the hemp highway between Mendocino and Humboldt, and witnessed, with both fascination and can't-look-away horror, grown men and women, sans children and sans inhibitions, belt out full-throated versions of Let It Go at a Disneyland sing-along. All told, \u003ci\u003eCrossing California\u003c\/i\u003e is a trip. 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