Author(s): David Peace

Sport & Fitness

A "New York Times "Editors' Choice """[T]he stuff of great literature." "The New York Times "-""Red or Dead" is a winner." "The Washington Post" The place where the swinging sixties started Liverpool, England, birthplace of the Beatles wasn t so swinging. Amid industrial blight and a bad economy, the port town s shipping industry was going bust and there was widespread unemployment, with no assistance from a government tightening its belt. Even the Beatles moved to London. Into these hard times walked Bill Shankly, a former Scottish coal miner who took over the city s perpetually last-place soccer team. He had a straightforward work ethic and a favorite song a silly pop song done by a local band, You ll Never Walk Alone. Soon he would have entire stadiums singing along, tens of thousands of people all dressed in the team color red. . . as Liverpool began to win. . . And soon, too, there was something else those thousands of people would chant as one: Shank-lee, Shank-lee. . . In "Red or Dead," the acclaimed writer David Peace tells the stirring story of the real-life working-class hero who lifted the spirits of an entire city in turbulent times. But "Red or Dead" is more than a fictional biography of a real man, and more than a thrilling novel about sports. It is an epic novel that transcends those categories, until there s nothing left to call it but as many of the world s leading newspapers already have a masterpiece. "From the Hardcover edition.""