The Boys of Riverside by Thomas Fuller

The Boys of Riverside by Thomas Fuller is a good work of nonfiction that centers on the high school football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, CA. It's an interesting telling of the team, its 2022 season, and the deaf community as a whole. 

Fuller wrote a New York Times article on the team at the end of its 2021 season, and their story went viral, with players appearing on national television morning shows, and the team was at the coin toss of Super Bowl LVI February 2022 in Inglewood. 

The second half of the book is about the season that started in August 2022. The school had just over fifty boys in its high school academic programs, nearly half on the football team. They played eight-on-eight, rather than traditional eleven-on-eleven games. A handful of the games they play are against other deaf schools, like the California School for the Deaf in Fremont, but most are against other smaller schools, a mixture of private schools with high tuition and schools from remote areas. Fuller writes in the book about head coach Keith Adams and his two sons on the team, Trevin and Kaden, and how everyone being deaf created a brotherhood on the team. 

There's a lot about football, but equally if not more interesting is about the deaf community. By the late 1990s, just 20% of babies in the U.S. had their hearing checked, now more than 98% receive tests. This is crucial because of how important language development, either spoken or sign, is at a young age. 

Also fascinating was the writing about how in the past there had been edicts around the deaf community not signing, but rather they should read lips, with this mandate or stigma effectively taking away a language in American Sign Language for a population. As late as the 1960s, the school in Riverside would punish students for signing. The iPhone is noted in the book as having a huge impact in the deaf community, and covered is cochlear implants, enabling a degree of hearing in someone profoundly deaf. It's an interesting book, and noted in it is that the deaf university Gallaudet in Washington, D.C. is where the football huddle started. 

The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal

The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal is a solid work of nonfiction by the psychologist and professor. She notes in the introduction that "seeing the upside of stress is not about deciding whether stress is all good or all bad. It's about how choosing the see the good in stress can help you meet the challenges in your life."

It's an interesting and well put together book, with some ideas from it including:

- Stress isn't always bad for you. What is bad is stress when you believe that stress is harmful to you. That's when it can have adverse effects, and bad things snowball. 

- How you think about something can transform its effect on you. Mindsets are believes that shape your reality. For instance, adults with a positive view of aging have a lower risk of heart attack, and if you don't feel you belong, it often makes it so. You really are making a choice of how to react to something. 

- A meaningful life is also a stressful life. It means you're doing things. Think about your values, or bigger-than-self goals, those are the important things. 

- Resilience is the courage to grow from stress, to find meaning in it rather than just discomfort. Why should someone be excited before playing a big game, yet negatively stressed before taking a final? It's believing you can handle something stressful that can make it so. Think about how your stress response can be helpful to you. Embracing stress is an act of self-trust, viewing yourself as capable. 

- In a situation of stress, caring for others helps them and you, it creates courage and hope. It also goes the other direction. Having a willingness to ask for help should increase your chance of succeeding.

- Just as post-traumatic stress is a thing, so is post-traumatic growth. When something positive can come out of a trauma, it doesn't belong to the trauma, it belongs to you. You're still acknowledging suffering, but also looking for the good that can come out of the pain. It can come in the form of a sense of personal or spiritual growth, an increased appreciation for life, enhanced relationships, or new possibilities or life directions.