How a tiny Pacific archipelago is producing more players-from Troy Polamalu to Marcus Mariota-for the NFL than anywhere else in the world, by an award-winning sports historian Football is at a crossroads, its future imperiled by the very physicality that drives its popularity. Its grass roots-high school and youth travel program-are withering. But players from the small South Pacific American territory of Samoa are bucking that trend, quietly becoming...

"With a mix of in-the-moment teenage sass and decades-later perspective, Mango Rash chronicles Nan Pokerwinski's stumbles through two alien landscapes at once: the remote U.S. territory of American Samoa and the tricky terrain of adolescence. As Nan begins to redefine herself and her place in the mid-1960s world, with frangipani-laced air and libidinous music the backdrop to her passage into womanhood, Samoa also experiences growing pains, trying...

Discusses the geographical, historical, and cultural aspects of American Samoa, Guam, North Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.