<b>A <i>New York Times </i>Editors' Choice <br><br><i>&quot;</i>[T]he stuff of great literature.&quot; —<i>The New York Times </i>| &quot;<i>Red or Dead</i> is a winner.&quot; —<i>The Washington Post</i><br></b><br>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.<br><br>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 . . .<br><br>And soon, too, there was something else those thousands of people would chant as one: Shank-lee, Shank-lee . . .<br><br>In <i>Red or Dead</i>, 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<i>Red or Dead</i> 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.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>