He is a giant among coaches, a Hall of Famer with a legacy that spans six full decades of coaching, and arguably the greatest Division I college football coach in history. And now Bobby Bowden finally has a biography that befits his stature: Bowden by award-winning journalist and author Mike Freeman.Based on six years of research and interviews with Bowden himself, not to mention the Bowden family, former players, and opposing coaches, Bowden is the complete stunning story of the making of a legend. Despite growing up in the segregated South and witnessing the ugly racism of the time, Bowden still developed into one of the most race-sensitive coaches in college history. When sick as a child, he listened to the radio and gained a taste for war strategy and for Alabama football games on Saturdays. He played football in high school but decided he wanted to be a coach. After years of turning around smaller football programs, and following a tumultuous but successful head coaching tenure at West Virginia University, Bowden accepted the post at Florida State University (FSU), a failing program that was regularly beaten by in-state rival University of Florida. In fact, just the year before Bowden became coach, in 1975, the president of FSU contemplated terminating the program altogether, particularly because the team had won only four games in the past three years.What Bowden accomplished at FSU is nothing short of miraculous: twenty-one bowl wins and two national championships. And he was the only coach to secure a top-five ranking in the Associated Press polls for fourteen straight seasons. A brilliant tactician, he helped usher the pro passing game into college football, after initially doubting it could work on the college level. He has been an unrivaled recruiter, not only coaching his players but also becoming a surrogate father to many of them, all while producing thirty-one consensus All-Americans over the course of his tenure. He spawned one of the greatest rivalries in sports against the University of Miami. He trails only Penn State's Joe Paterno in career victories.Along the way he has had to deal with family tragedies, scandals, and the rise and fall of his three sons' coaching careers. But he has been steadfast, with his good humor intact and with Ann, his wife of sixty years, at his side, raising a family of six children and now twenty-one grandchildren. As he nears the end of his career, though, the critics have their knives out, claiming, among many other things, that he has become a dinosaur who clings to his job so that he can win more games than Paterno.This work examines the total Bowden and is the first of its kind on a one-of-a-kind coach. Poignant, blunt, and eye-opening, Bowden is a towering biography of a man who has left his mark on FSU and the game of college football.

Millions have visited the museums that bear her name, yet few know much about Madame Tussaud. A celebrated artist, she had both a ringside seat at and a cameo role in the French Revolution. A victim and survivor of one of the most tumultuous times in history, this intelligent, pragmatic businesswoman has also had an indelible impact on contemporary culture, planting the seed of our obsession with celebrity. In Madame Tussaud, Kate Berridge tells this fascinating woman's complete story for the first time, drawing upon a wealth of sources, including Tussaud's memoirs and historical archives. It is a grand-scale success story, revealing how with sheer graft and grit a woman born in 1761 to an eighteen-year-old cook overcame extraordinary reversals of fortune to build the first and most enduring worldwide brand identified simply by reference to its founder's name: Madame Tussaud's.

When Muhammad Ali met Joe Frazier in Manila for their third fight, their rivalry had spun out of control. The Ali-Frazier matchup had become a madness, inflamed by the media and the politics of race. When the "Thrilla in Manila" was over, one man was left with a ruin of a life; the other was battered to his soul. Mark Kram covered that fight for Sports Illustrated in an award-winning article. Now his riveting book reappraises the boxers -- who they are and who they were. And in a voice as powerful as a heavyweight punch, Kram explodes the myths surrounding each fighter, particularly Ali. A controversial, no-holds-barred account, Ghosts of Manila ranks with the finest boxing books ever written.

"There are moments in life that you envision. Winning the lottery. Meeting the love of your life. Cradling your newborn child for the first time. And, if you're adopted, discovering your birth parents. I had occasionally dared to imagine this moment. But I'd never imagined it would be like this."Award-winning journalist Caroline Clarke was born in an era when adoptions were shameful and secret and sealed. Her story begins with a happy childhood in the Bronx, as the only child of educators, both with strong ties to their large West Indian families. She never had any desire to know her birth parents until her thirties when some health questions led her to contact Spence-Chapin Family Services. The adoption agency's response sparked a series of stunning discoveries. Caroline knew her biological family and had so for more than twenty years. Her birth mother, nicknamed "Cookie," was the eldest sister of one of her dearest college friends; thus, Caroline's girlfriend was actually her aunt. Moreover, the family was a prominent one, storied in old Hollywood and known throughout the world for not just one but two generations of musical greatness, including the famous singer Natalie Cole and her iconic father, Nat King Cole, whose music had actually filled Caroline's life as she was growing up. Cookie was his first child.And so Caroline's story begins again. Drawing on details provided by the agency and on her own investigative skills, she embarks on a life-changing relationship with Cookie that stretches from coast to coast, forged through e-mails, phone calls, and hundreds of postcards. The constancy, volume, and intimacy of their steady correspondence fills the days and distance between them, even as the two remain respectful of Caroline's connection with her devoted parents.Through messages squeezed onto three-inch open-faced squares, they share confidences, take risks, unite their families, and ultimately build a bond like no other. Postcards from Cookie is a story about family. It's about loss, reconciliation, and w one woman's acceptance of the secrets and lies she discovers about the people who have most shaped her life. An uplifting modern-day fairytale, this extraordinary story just happens to be true.

With the 2006 publication of The God Delusion, the name Richard Dawkins became a byword for ruthless skepticism and brilliant, impassioned, articulate, impolite debate (San Francisco Chronicle). his first memoir offers a more personal view.His first book, The Selfish Gene, caused a seismic shift in the study of biology by proffering the gene-centered view of evolution. It was also in this book that Dawkins coined the term meme, a unit of cultural evolution, which has itself become a mainstay in contemporary culture. In An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. He paints a vivid picture of his idyllic childhood in colonial Africa, peppered with sketches of his colorful ancestors, charming parents, and the peculiarities of colonial life right after World War II. At boarding school, despite a near-religious encounter with an Elvis record, he began his career as a skeptic by refusing to kneel for prayer in chapel. Despite some inspired teaching throughout primary and secondary school, it was only when he got to Oxford that his intellectual curiosity took full flight. Arriving at Oxford in 1959, when undergraduates left Elvis behind for Bach or the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dawkins began to study zoology and was introduced to some of the university's legendary mentors as well as its tutorial system. It's to this unique educational system that Dawkins credits his awakening, as it invited young people to become scholars by encouraging them to pose rigorous questions and scour the library for the latest research rather than textbook teaching to any kind of test. His career as a fellow and lecturer at Oxford took an unexpected turn when, in 1973, a serious strike in Britain caused prolonged electricity cuts, and he was forced to pause his computer-based research. Provoked by the then widespread misunderstanding of natural selection known as group selection and inspired by the work of William Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and John Maynard Smith, he began to write a book he called, jokingly, my bestseller. It was, of course, The Selfish Gene.Here, for the first time, is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist, and the story of how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the twentieth century.

When parents are told their child has a learning disability, they need more information. Thinking Differently is just the resource to meet that need. David Flink, leader of Eye to Eye, a national mentoring program for children with learning differences, explains each learning disability in layman's terms to prepare parents to speak knowledgeably with teachers about their child's specific challenges. Thinking Differently will not overwhelm parents with legal jargon, but it will guide them through what laws are on their side and what they can insist that schools provide for their child. With compassion and hope, Flink describes the importance of testing and diagnosis to equip parents with the tools they need to advocate authoritatively on their child's behalf and to seek the most effective accommodations from technology to extra time and medication to guarantee that their child succeeds in school and life. In this eye-opening book, David Flink helps parents understand what their child is experiencing. He also emphasizes the importance of maintaining and building children's self-esteem, by helping them discover inner gifts and special talents and realize they are as smart as anyone even if they think differently.

From the acclaimed bestselling author of Sushi for Beginners and Angels comes a collection of personal essays on shopping, writing, moviemaking, motherhood and all the assorted calamities involved in being a savvy woman in the new millennium.Her novels are read and adored by millions around the world, and with Under the Duvet, Marian Keyes tackles the world of nonfiction. These are her collected pieces: regular bulletins from the woman writing under the covers.Marian loves shoes and her LTFs (Long-Term Friends), hates realtors and lost luggage, and she once had a Christmas office party that involved roasting two sheep on a spit, Moroccan-style. She's just like you and me ...Featuring a wide compilation of Marian's journalism from magazines and newspapers, plus some exclusive, previously unpublished material, Under the Duvet is bursting with funny stories: observations on life, in-laws, weight loss, parties and driving lessons that will keep you utterly gripped -- either wincing with recognition or roaring with laughter.

Everyone has an opinion about the Yankees. More than an opinion in most cases, but an opinion at the very least. From the IntroductionLove them or hate them, the New York Yankees have been an American institution for nearly a century. With their rich history and colorful cast of characters, the Yankees never fail to inspire or provoke. In this exciting compendium, some of today's most acclaimed writers including Pete Dexter, Colum McCann, Roy Blount Jr., Dan Barry, Jane Leavy, Charles P. Pierce, J. R. Moehringer, Daniel Okrent, Frank DeFord, Bill James, and many more step up to the plate to take their cuts. The result is a collection of original essays as idiosyncratic and expansive as the team that has inspired them: ruminations on Babe Ruth's gravestone, Derek Jeter's swing, and the upper-deck vantage of the Oldest Living Yankee; dual allegiances; mortal rivalries; and every other subject that spans from the hilarious (the Yankee wife-swap of the '70s) to the sublime (the grace of Catfish Hunter).Superbly written, deeply insightful, and full of both passion and humor, Damn Yankees is a completely fresh look at baseball's most enduring franchise by a Murderers' Row of writers as stacked as that of the 1927 Yanks.

From the author of Pitching Around Fidel and Far Afield comes an account of the accidental death of minor league first base coach Mike Coolbaugh, illustrating the many ways in which baseball still has a hold on America.Heart of the Game centers on the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league coach who was killed on a sweltering Sunday evening in Little Rock in July 2007 when a foul ball rocketed off Tino Sanchez's bat. Coolbaugh died almost instantly, his body carted off the field of the Double-A Arkansas Travelers. He was thirty-five years old and the father of two; a third child was on the way.Mike's exemplary life his devotion to the game and to his family is the spine of the story. But it isn't the drama. The drama is in the telling of what can happen when a projectile hits the human body, of the narratives of the remarkable people who happened to be in the ballpark at that fatal moment, of the impact of Coolbaugh's death on the man who hit the ball, and of all the lives left behind.Price reveals anew that classic heart of Americana small-town sports, small-town lives and makes us understand that a game played away from the mindless churn of Internet blather and highlight shows can be more important than those played on the national stage.

When Tina Basich grabbed her rented snowboard and headed to the mountains in Lake Tahoe, snowboarding wasn't even considered a sport . . . yet. It was the beginning, and could have easily gone the way of many other sports and become dominated by male-driven competition. But not with Tina on the scene . . . Comments like "You're pretty good . . . for a girl" only pushed her harder to be the best and to prove she was more than just a token player on the slopes. Representing for women everywhere, she became a snowboarding all-star, started her own signature board and clothing lines for women, founded Boarding for Breast Cancer, and followed her heart, which led her on the adventure of a lifetime.This is her story.

They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives--a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, spirited Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled ''V'' for victory on the walls of her lycee; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers. Eventually the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie. In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France. A Train in Winter draws on interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and World War II resistance organization documents to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival, and of the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.

On February 17, 1986, after years of addiction and self-destruction, Christopher Kennedy Lawford reached a turning point in his life, one that would mark the beginning of his long road to recovery. In his New York Times bestselling memoir, Symptoms of Withdrawal, he chronicled his deep descent into near-fatal drug and alcohol addiction, and his subsequent hard-won journey back to sobriety, which he has maintained for more than twenty years. The Before and the After. But before and after whatWhat happened at that point in time to trigger the understanding within himself that he had to changeWhat finally forces any person to choose life over death?The overwhelming response he received to his book impressed upon Lawford the number of people struggling to find their own way back from addiction and the need to share their stories. There was no easy way out for any of them. They all had to go through a moment of humility, vulnerability, and transformation and choose to take that first step of the journey. And each had their own intensely personal moment that signaled a Before and an After. The histories gathered here are the recollections of lives snatched back from the brink of a precipice so wide and deep it threatened to engulf them.Every segment of society has been touched by addiction and its aftermath. Moments of Clarity collects stories from men and women, young and old, and across all barriers of celebrity, color, and class. Represented in these pages are the singer and the actress, the writer and the anchorman, the man from the movie screen and the woman who lives down the street. A myriad of different moments but all with the common understanding of where these men and women have been and where they must go. As they bravely share their stories, they shed light not only on their own experiences but also on the journey we all take as human beings, looking to make sense of our world.

In the tradition of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Thomas L. Friedmam's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, prominent journalist Amanda Little maps out the history and future of America's energy addiction in a wonk-free, big-picture, solutions-oriented adventure story. After covering the environment and energy beat for more than a decade, Amanda Little decided that the only way to really understand America's energy crisis was to travel into the heart of it. She embarks on a daring cross-country power trip, and describes in vivid, fast-paced prose the most extreme and exciting frontiers of our energy landscape.At her side we visit an offshore oil rig, the cornfields of Kansas, the Pentagon's fuel-logistics division, the Talladega Superspeedway, New York City's electrical grid, and laboratories creating the innovations of a clean-energy future. As Little explains, energy is everything: It grows our crops, fights our wars, makes our plastics and medicines, warms our homes, moves our products and vehicles, and animates our cities.How did we develop this insatiable appetite for fossil fuelsLittle travels through history to track the evolution of America's energy addiction: the 1897 installation of the world's first power plant (a Thomas Edison J. P. Morgan venture); the 1901 Spindletop gusher that threw open the era of cheap American fuel; FDR's encounter with a Saudi king that set the stage for our dependence on Middle Eastern oil; General Motors' early decision to sell big guzzlers rather than small, efficient cars.Little illustrates how abundant oil and coal built the American superpower even as they posed political and environmental dangers to the nation and the world. More important, we learn how the same American ingenuity that got us into this mess can get us out of it. With next-generation candor and optimism, Little explores the most promising clean-energy solutions on the horizon, arguing that everything we know about our past teaches us that we can solve the problems of our future.Hard-hitting yet forward-thinking, Power Trip is a lively and impassioned travel guide for all readers trying to navigate our shifting landscape and a clear-eyed manifesto for the younger generations who are inheriting the earth.

In this provocative account of colonial America, William R. Polk explores the key events, individuals, and themes of this critical period. With vivid de*ions of the societies that people from Europe came from and with an emphasis on what they believed they were going to, Polk introduces the native Indians encountered in the New World and the black Africans who were brought across the Atlantic. With insightful analysis, he also discusses the dual truths of colonial societies' "growing up" and "growing apart." As John Adams would point out to Thomas Jefferson, the long years that witnessed the formation of our national character and the growth of our spirit of independence were indeed the real revolution. That story forms the basis of The Birth of America. In addition to its discussion of the influence the British had on the colonies, The Birth of America covers the pivotal roles played by the Spanish, French, and Dutch in early America.From the fearful crossing of the stormy Atlantic to the growth of the early settlements, to the French and Indian War and the unrest of the 1760s, William Polk brilliantly traces the progress of the colonies to the point where itwas no longer possible to recapture the past and the break with England was inevitable. America had been born.

Why should you need the government’s permission to save your own lifeJenn McNary’s two sons, Max and Austin, were diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy—a fatal disorder that leads to muscle degeneration and eventually death. In a cruel and unnecessary twist, Max received access to a clinical trial; Austin didn’t. As a result, Max was able to get out of his wheelchair and play on his school soccer team while Austin continued to deteriorate until he could not even feed himself. The FDA takes as long as fifteen years to approve a new drug, demanding near-absolute proof of effectiveness before allowing commercial distribution. But this ignores the urgent plight of millions of terminally ill Americans who have run out of approved options—and are running out of time. These patients are not looking for a 100 percent guarantee that a treatment will work for them. They are looking for a fighting chance. Why can’t they have that chanceWhy don’t they have the right to try . . . the right to save their own livesAuthor and activist Darcy Olsen, president of the Goldwater Institute, tells the remarkable story behind the Right to Try movement, the national campaign to give dying Americans access to cutting-edge treatments that are under study but still years away from receiving the FDA’s green light. The men, women, and children featured in these pages are our own family members, friends, and neighbors. Their heartbreaking, triumphant, and inspirational stories prove the necessity for Right to Try laws. Because everyone deserves the Right to Try.

Brad Gooch, the author of the acclaimed City Poet, returns with a searing memoir of life in 1980s New York City. Brad Gooch arrived in New York in the 1970s, eager for artistic and personal freedom. Smash Cut is his bold and intimate memoir of this exhilarating time and place, complete with its cast of wild bohemians, celebrities, and budding artists, such as Robert Mapplethorpe, William Burroughs, and Madonna. At its center is his love affair with film director Howard Brookner, recreated from fragments of memory and a crosshatch of conflicting emotions, from innocent romance to bleak despair. Gooch and Brookner’s intense relationship is challenged by sex and drugs, and by a culture of extreme experimentation. As both men try to reconcile love and fidelity with the irresistible desire to sample the legendary abandon of the era, they live together and apart. Gooch works briefly as a model in Milan, then returns to the city and discovers his vocation as a writer. Brookner falls ill with a mysterious virus that soon has a terrifying name: AIDS. And the story, and life in the city, is suddenly overshadowed by this new plague that will ravage a generation and transform the creative world. Gooch charts the progress of Brookner through his illness, and writes unforgettably about endings: of a great talent, a passionate love affair, and an incandescent era. Beautifully written, full of rich detail and poignant reflection, recalling a city and particular period and group of friends with affection and clarity, Smash Cut is an extraordinary memoir and an exquisite unflinching account of an epoch.

Hoping to outpace her grief in the wake of her father's suicide, Marina has come to the small, rural Japanese town of Shika to teach English for a year. But in Japan, as she soon discovers, you can never really throw away your past . . . or anything else, for that matter. If You Follow Me is at once a fish-out-of-water tale, a dark comedy of manners, and a strange kind of love story. Alive with vibrant and unforgettable characters—from an ambitious town matchmaker to a high school student-cum-rap artist wannabe with an addiction to self-tanning lotion—it guides readers over cultural bridges even as it celebrates the awkward, unlikely triumph of the human spirit.

Ramona Drottoveo, an albino, is a chambermaid at a lush Italian estate. Distinguished by the intoxicating scent she exudes, Ramona is despised by all women and adored by all men, whose inexhaustible lust she eagerly satisfies. Life changes when her husband dies after discovering his bride with another man on their wedding night. Blamed for his death, Ramona and her lover are exiled to the neighboring city of Naples. There, Ramona's life is transformed once again by the birth of a daughter, Blandina, who "steals" her mother's scent. No longer able to seduce men into blind submission, Ramona humbly returns to the estate to an unexpected welcome -- and revenge. A hilarious and naughty celebration of the senses and the strange places they can lead us, Nectar explores the mystery of sexual attraction and the frivolous nature of divine justice.

The lives of four individuals—a dying painter, a blind girl, a landscape artist, and an art curator—intertwine across nearly five decades in this luminous and searching novel of extraordinary power. With How to Paint a Dead Man, Sarah Hall, "one of the most significant and exciting of Britain's young novelists" (The Guardian), delivers "a maddeningly enticing read . . . an amazing feat of literary engineering" (The Independent on Sunday).

Amelia Lockwood doesn't mean to sound greedy. She's got a fabulous career in television, a posh apartment, and four fiercely loyal and wickedly funny friends. The only thing she's missing is a husband. So she swallows her pride, signs up for dating boot camp, and enlists the help of a professional—an acidic New Yorker with a black belt in "tongue fu"—who'll help Amelia apply proven business-marketing principles to finding her dream man. Amelia's first assignment is to track down all the lovers she's ever lost—from the guy who dumped her during Live Aid to her most painfully recent ex, he-whose-name-shall-forever-remain-unspoken—because her future happiness depends on her tackling lesson number one: If you can't learn from your past, how will you ever move forward?

An elite school. Glamorous students who have fancy cars and mansions for homes (and all the haughty attitude to go with it). This is Katie O'Connor's fabulous new life since her family's recent move to Brentwood –– a perfect opportunity for a fresh start, at least in theory. The only time she can overlook the hostility of her classmates is when they share the stage for plays. Onstage, directed by her awesome drama teacher, Tess, she has the confidence and talent that she cannot seem to muster in her everyday life. And it doesn't hurt that one of Katie's fellow actors is smart and cute and interested in her. But beneath the glossy surface, there are secrets buried deep, even in Katie's own past. Nightmares and dark memories continue to plague Katie's consciousness, and in order to deal with the present, she needs to come to terms with the past. If only she could remember it.