Pete WilliamsPete Williams
Taking the reader from the birth of sports cards in the 1880s to the present, Williams investigates the shady world of the sports trading card industry. At the center of the industry is Upper Deck, the largest manufacturer, with sales of over $260 million annually in the early 1990s. Williams exposes how the power brokers in the game of baseball have changed this once-innocent hobby forever.
Published in 1995 when Williams was a writer and columnist for USA Today, Card Sharks has been frequently cited by other authors and remains the definitive investigative look into the trading card business…
Williams met trainer Mark Verstegen in the late 1990s and they collaborated on six books. The first, the groundbreaking Core Performance, revolutionized how people train. Instead of focusing on aesthetics and muscle mass, Core Performance showed people how to train for maximum performance in sports and daily life while building bodies resistant to injury and long-term deterioration.
Since the book’s 2004 publication, Verstegen’s EXOS company has grown into the worldwide leader in human performance with more than 6,000 employees. Core Performance has been translated into a number of languages and remains a timeless guide for those who strive for a high-performance life.
Mike Veeck is best known for his crazy marketing promotions in minor league baseball. But the son of the late maverick Hall of Fame baseball owner Bill Veeck has preserved the Veeck legacy by bringing humor, passion, and fun to all aspects of work and life. In Fun is Good, Veeck and Williams share the simple, fail-proof formula for business success: Make work fun and you’ll create a culture of creativity that attracts the best employees and encourages customers to spend money.
Peppered with firsthand accounts from businesspeople who have benefited from Veeck’s philosophy, Fun Is Good is an innovative, off-the-beaten-track approach to getting the most out of your work life, in and outside the office.
More than a decade after Core Performance revolutionized the fitness industry and made core conditioning and functional training mainstream, Verstegen and Williams released a more demanding program: Every Day is Game Day.
Borrowing heavily from regimens used by Verstegen for his military clients and NFL-combine hopefuls, Verstegen and Williams break the system down into tough but easy-to-follow workouts that help readers become faster, more explosive, and more powerful while moving with greater efficiency and with far less potential for injury. If you’ve ever wanted to perform like the top sports champions or elite fighting forces, this is the book for you.
Williams follows several NFL hopefuls through the 2004 college season and the predraft process, culminating with the 2005 NFL draft.
It’s a complex environment, with college coaches attempting to protect their “student-athletes” from exploitation (while fully aware that they can only remain competitive if they attract NFL-caliber players to their schools), along with sports agents and NFL scouts trying to stay ahead of their competition. These parties provide a multi-angled view of the world of emerging NFL talent.
The reader follows the process through scouts, agents, and the coaching divisions of Florida State and the University of Virginia. Also central to the narrative are the Atlanta Falcons, who use a character-based evaluation system to set their draft board. These stories weave together, culminating in draft weekend, to create a gripping and fascinating look at a world few see from the inside.
