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Summary
Summary
Tim Tebow is considered one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of college football. During his five years in football, he won two BCS national championships, the Heisman Trophy, and two Maxwell Awards. Here, Tebow chronicles his life, revealing how his childhood, values, and family helped shape him on his way to a successful collegiate career.
Summary
Over the course of the last five years, Tim Tebow established himself as one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of college football and a top prospect in the NFL. During that time he amassed an unparalleled resume - winning two BCS national championships, becoming the first sophomore in NCAA history to win the Heisman trophy, and in the face of massive public scrutiny, being drafted in the first round of the NFL draft by the Denver Broncos. Now, in Through My Eyes, Tebow brings readers everywhere an inspirational memoir about life as he chose to live it, revealing how his faith and family values, combined with his relentless will to succeed, have molded him into the person that he is today. As the son of Christian missionaries, Tebow has a unique story to tell - from the circumstances of his birth, to his home-schooled roots, to his record-setting collegiate football career with the Florida Gators and everything else that took place in between. At every step, Tebow's life has defied convention and ex
Author Notes
Tom Mueller writes for The New Yorker and other publications. He lives in a medieval stone farmhouse surrounded by olive groves in the Ligurian countryside outside of Genoa, Italy.
READER BIO
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Italy resident Mueller, who wrote a piece on olive oil for the New Yorker, is well-situated to interpose olive oil against the Byzantine ways of its present-day production in this intriguing and sumptuously researched book. He begins in southern Puglia at a small, family-run olive oil business, then examines the vastness of Italian farming and olive production and the ongoing struggle for quality oil making. His history takes readers through Europe and eventually around to California and Australia. The book's organizing conflict centers on current imbalances between trade quality and quantity, and the problematic roles of politics, government, and regulation. Mueller includes specialists in his book from a variety of disciplines, including archeology, classics, and epidemiology. Interspersed historical material follows the oil's thread out of Mediterranean antiquity through subsequent civilizations and imperiums, into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Mechanization during the Industrial Revolution, Mueller points out in this engaging story, accelerated production and consumption, but now the industry is plagued by questionable developments that are fortunately offset by the growing artisanal trade. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Ever since the British stopped thinking it was something you bought from the chemist and poured into your ears, olive oil has come to represent foreign-holiday sophistication and a rejection of the lardy tastes of cold-weather, beer-drinking types in favour of the elegant Mediterranean diet. As Tom Mueller reveals in this book, however, there is nothing refined about the olive oil trade, a business adulterated by fraud, corruption, sub-standard products and sometimes - as in the case of the 1981 Spanish toxic oil scandal, where as many as 800 people could have died - pure poison. Mueller examines how a substance so closely associated with the sacred, the ancient and the health-giving became an easy target for unscrupulous oil barons and left honest producers struggling to make a living from their groves. Heavily drizzled with fascinating facts - disgustingly, the oily scrapings from the bodies of sportsmen were sold as medicine in ancient Greece - it also offers practical advice, with a useful oil-buying guide at the back. - Victoria Segal Ever since the British stopped thinking it was something you bought from the chemist and poured into your ears, olive oil has come to represent foreign-holiday sophistication and a rejection of the lardy tastes of cold-weather, beer-drinking types in favour of the elegant Mediterranean diet. - Victoria Segal.
Kirkus Review
New Yorker article exposing fraud in the olive oil industry, Mueller considers the trade's past, present, and future. The author opens with an olive oil tasting, where experts identify the flavors and fragrances that distinguish high-quality oil from lampante, which can legally be sold only for fuel--except that lax enforcement by the EU has led to an epidemic of oil labeled extra virgin and/or "100 percent Italian" when in fact it is a blend of cheaper oils from other countries. In addition to the slippery (but often surprisingly engaging) rascals whose shenanigans Mueller investigated in the original article, the author visits conscientious cultivators striving to elevate standards with a combination of time-honored techniques and cutting-edge technology. Among them are the De Carlos in Puglia, historic center of Italian olive oil production; the Vao family in Jan, trying to improve the generally low quality of Spanish oil; and Gordon Smyth of the New Norcia monastery near Perth, innovative preserver of a tradition established by the Spanish monks who brought olive trees to Australia in 1846. Mueller consults with chemists and government officials on two continents to examine why extra virgin olive oil is so healthful and why attempts to control its adulteration have been so ineffectual. (Short answer: corruption in Italy; indifferent FDA in America.) He intersperses aromatic vignettes from the history of olive oil, which in centuries past adorned the bodies of Greek athletes, burned in lamps in Christian churches, served as a folk remedy for a plethora of ailments and set the civilized Romans apart from those barbarians who favored meat, beer and animal fat over bread, wine and oil. So, "[a]re we witnessing a renaissance in oil, or the death of an industry?" The answer is still uncertain, but lovers of fine food and fine prose will relish Mueller's exploration of the storied byways and modern sanctuaries of the olive, related with supple elegance. Engrossing history, vivid contemporary reporting and a cogent call to action, expertly blended in an illuminating text.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Mueller, a freelance writer based in Italy, expands on his 2007 New Yorker article, "Slippery Business: The Trade in Adulterated Olive Oil," with this in-depth look at the world of olive oil production. Skillfully blending international courtroom drama with the rich history of one of the first commodities, Mueller explains that despite its almost universal status as a symbol of peace and prosperity, olive oil has been a magnet for fraud and corruption since antiquity. While the earliest record of oil tampering dates back to 5000-year-old cuneiform tablets, the Romans devised a system that helped curtail such behavior; bottles known as amphorae were stamped or inscribed with notes at each stop on their way to the consumer. Mueller would say that such a system would be a good starting point in today's olive oil trade, where the words "Made in Italy" carry almost no assurance that anything other than the label is from that country. VERDICT Fans of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and Peter Singer and Jim Mason's The Way We Eat will find Mueller's indictment of a slippery trade enlightening and entertaining.-Rosemarie Lewis, Georgetown Cty. Lib., SC (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
