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In 2008, the men's wheelchair basketball team at the University of Illinois set out to achieve their sport's pinnacle: a college national championship. That lofty goal represented another stage of a journey begun in 1948 when Tim Nugent established the Gizz Kids wheelchair squad. Embedded with the team, Josh Birnbaum took photos that captured the life experiences of people in the Illinois wheelchair basketball program from 2005 through the 2008 championship season. Dream Shot follows the unique lives of the players and coaches on the court and the road, and in quiet moments at home and the classroom. Along the way, Birnbaum provides the definitive story of the 2008 team and the challenges it overcame to capture one of Illinois's record fifteen men's titles. Featuring more than 100 color photographs, Dream Shot memorializes a legendary team alongside the story of the university's dedication to the progress of disability rights.

Melvin Juette has said that becoming paralyzed in a gang-related shooting was “both the worst and best thing that happened” to him. The incident, he believes, surely spared the then sixteen year-old African American from prison and/or an early death. It transformed him in other ways, too. He attended college and made wheelchair basketball his passion—ultimately becoming a star athlete and playing on the U.S. National Wheelchair Basketball Team.

In Wheelchair Warrior, Juette reconstructs the defining moments of his life with the assistance of sociologist Ronald Berger. His poignant memoir is bracketed by Berger’s thoughtful introduction and conclusion, which places this narrative of race, class, masculinity and identity into proper sociological context, showing how larger social structural forces defined his experiences. While Juette’s story never gives into despair, it does challenge the idea of the “supercrip.”