A collection of offbeat, funny, and often moving backstories of the many entertainers and athletes covered by award-winning Newsweek journalist Allison Samuels, Off the Record reveals the inner worlds of today's A-list black celebrities.With anecdotes on everyone from Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O'Neal, Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, and Whitney Houston, this "all-access" book is filled with insightful stories that never made it into the pages of the mainstream press.From her start at CAA's infamous agent training program which included tasks such as blowing up 200 dinosaurs for the lobby when Steven Spielberg made a quick visit, and picking up Ted Danson's half-million-dollar weekly paycheck there was no chore too small. But these humble beginnings gave Samuels access to Hollywood's A-list and led to her eventual focus on the world of black entertainers.

Cynthia Kaplan takes us on a hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking journey through her unique, uncensored world her bungled romantic encounters and unsung theatrical experiences; her gadget-obsessed father, her pill-popping therapist, and her eccentric grandmothers; her fearless husband, whom she engages in an ongoing battle over which of them is the most popular person in their apartment; and, of course, her vengeful, power-hungry one-year-old son.Kaplan's voice is a lot like the one in our heads the one that most of us are only willing to listen to late at night . . . maybe while locked in a closet. What a relief it is that someone finally admits that she is afraid of nearly everything; that she is jealous even of people whose lives are on the verge of collapse; and that she has, at times, tried to pass for a gentile.

Bill Parcells was living in self-imposed exile from the National Football League sidelines. The Tuna had earned living-legend status after coaching the Giants, Patriots, and Jets from the skid-row district of the NFL and transforming those teams into champions. The final weeks of the 2002 season found Parcells working as an analyst at the ESPN studios. His heart aching, Parcells was like a televangelist with no cripples to heal. The Tuna urgently yearned for another lost cause.In Dallas, Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones described by author Mike Shropshire as "a man involved in a heroic struggle to overcome what had been diagnosed as a terminal face-lift" was suffering through sleepless nights. Although his once-proud pro football powerhouse traveled beneath a banner that read "America's Team," it had suffered three straight 5-11 seasons. This team was so sick, it had bedsores.After a clandestine meeting aboard Jones's private jet, parked at a New Jersey airport, Parcells agreed to abandon his East Coast roots and travel south to restore life to the Cowboys. The Tuna and Jones needed each other in the worst kind of way, so a shotgun wedding was performed. The pundits of the national media joined hands and shouted, "Parcells and Jones can't stand each other! They're too set in their ways! It'll never work!"As usual, the pundits were wrong. With Parcells the ultimate motivator and so-called Jock Whisperer applying his craft, Dallas rolled to a 10-6 regular-season record and shocked the NFL by making the playoffs. When the Tuna Went Down to Texas details the saga of how this unlikely partnership of men "too brittle for tango lessons, but not yet blind enough for assisted living" amazed the sports world and serves as absolute proof that while the truth is not always stranger than fiction, it's usually a lot funnier.

Weis was taught football by some of the best minds in the game: Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick. Parcells would give him a life-defining break in 1990 by hiring him as an assistant on the New York Giants staff. For a Jersey guy who loved sports, this was a dream come true, especially when Weis won his first championship in his debut year in the NFL. He'd always wanted to be a sports announcer the next Marv Albert but he'd caught the coaching bug and was now in a position to learn from the best. And he did, following Parcells to the New England Patriots and then to the New York Jets. Under enormous pressure and exacting standards, Weis flourished and later became offensive coordinator.When Parcells stepped down as coach of the Jets, Weis joined his colleague and friend Bill Belichick, who was the newly named Patriots head coach. Together they would thrive, building a storied franchise, a rare modern-day dynasty that won three Super Bowls in four years. Through it all, Weis designed offensive schemes that would befuddle even the best defenses in the NFL, and he coached a number of players to greatness, including Pro Bowlers Ben Coates, Curtis Martin, and, of course, Tom Brady.The chance of a lifetime arrived in December of 2004: Weis was offered the opportunity to lead one of the most prestigious football schools in the country, Notre Dame home of coaching legends Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine, and Lou Holtz. And so began a new chapter in Weis's career. Weis took over a program in dire need of direction, and now he is in the process of building his own legacy with his unique vision.Off the field, Weis faced his other challenges. Seeking to improve his health and lose weight, he decided to get gastric bypass surgery. What he thought would be a routine procedure turned into a nightmare as he nearly bled to death, lapsed into a coma, and was read the last rites. It was a horrifying experience, yet he battled back in inspiring fashion and still demands nothing less of himself despite the long-lasting aftereffects.He has had his joys, too. Weis considers his wife, Maura, his best friend. They have two beautiful children: Charlie, his "best buddy," and Hannah, who he and his wife consider their "guiding angel." Hannah is developmentally delayed and has been the inspiration leading to the establishment of Hannah and Friends, a nonprofit foundation seeking to improve the quality of life for people with special needs. No Excuses is not only illuminating and insightful, it is an extraordinary look inside one of football's greatest minds who has helped shape today's game.

A timeless and visionary blueprint for conscious living and quantum change as we approach the next century.

"John Koethe's The Constructor is a scrupulous, elegant account of the meditative intellect as an instrument continually registering the passage of time. Exquisitely modulated and brutally honest, these poems would be harrowing were they not so seductively beautiful. No one writing in this country today sees as deeply as Koethe into the tears that lie at the heart of things, and no contemporary investigation of the life of the mind may be called complete that does not accommodate the lush intricacy of his terrifying recognitions."-- George Bradley"I prize John Koethe's intimate expanses and unsettling reveries, his tender contemplations and odd mental landscapes. He is an heir to Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery and, like them, he gives us the sensation of thinking itself, of a certain fleeting, daily, solitary consciousness rescued from oblivion and held aloft."-- Edward Hirsch

The last time a Philadelphia professional sports team won a championship, Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Return of the Jedi was number one at the box office. No city with all four major sports has gone longer without one. The local NFL franchise, the Eagles, has not won a title since 1960, putting its devoted fans through decades of futility and heartbreak.Peppered with riotous anecdotes about the grandstand brawlers and football lunatics who make Philadelphia one of the most entertaining places in America to watch a game, If Football's a Religion, Why Don't We Have a Prayeris the hilarious day-by-day account of the operatic passion of Eagles fans in the buildup to the team's first Super Bowl appearance since 1981. With outrageous detail and beer-on-your-shoes reporting, New York Times sportswriter and longtime Philly resident Jere Longman reveals what happens when the losingest sports town in America finally has a shot at winning it all.

From her fame as the Oscar-winning actress who uttered the famous line in Moonstruck, "I know who I am," to her lauded role as Mrs. Madrigal, the landlord of indeterminate gender in Tales of the City, to being the cousin of Michael Dukakis, presidential candidate, Olympia Dukakis has captured the imagination of a broad audience. Known for her straightforward talk, her lack of pretension, and her ongoing quest to explore ever more aspects of herself and her art, she is a role model for women of all ages.Olympia Dukakis's role in Moonstruck made her a household name, but before that overnight success came twenty-eight years of hard work. For nineteen of those years, she was an integral part of running the Whole Theatre Company in Montclair, New Jersey, while she and her husband raised their three children. She managed to "have it all" -- career, family, home -- before having it all became fashionable.

More than a star pitcher and accomplished coach, Mel Stottlemyre has a history that serves as a behind-the-scenes tour of five decades of baseball. From Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford to Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry to Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, Stottlemyre connected generations of stars during a remarkable career.In his long-awaited autobiography, Stottlemyre tells his story in colorful detail, from his days as a rookie sensation on the last of the great Mantle teams to those as trusted pitching coach during the Joe Torre administration. Along the way he takes readers inside the clubhouses of champions describing the defiance of the '86 Mets, from manager Davey Johnson on down, and recalling the true grit and selflessness that helped make Torre's Yankees a dynasty from 1996 to 2000.

On January 2, 1678, a fleet of French ships sank off the Venezuelan coast. This proved disastrous for French naval power in the region, and sparked the rise of a golden age of piracy.Tracing the lives of fabled pirates like the Chevalier de Grammont, Nikolaas Van Hoorn, Thomas Paine, and Jean Comte d'Estres, The Lost Fleet portrays a dark age, when the outcasts of European society formed a democracy of buccaneers, settling on a string of islands off the African coast. From there, the pirates haunted the world's oceans, wreaking havoc on the settlements along the Spanish mainland and -- often enlisted by French and English governments -- sacking ships, ports, and coastal towns.More than three hundred years later, writer, explorer, and deep-sea diver Barry Clifford follows the pirates' destructive wake back to Venezuela. With the help of a lost map, drawn by the captain of the lost French fleet, Clifford locates the site of the disaster and wreckage of the once-mighty armada.

Is this a great country or whatYou can bet on the turn of the card or a roll of the dice, but also on the NFL, the NCAA, and which Olsen twin marries first. We bet $80 billion a year, the amount growing wildly as more and more people gain access to this huge American wheel of fortune. No longer quarantined in Las Vegas, gambling has become as local and convenient as our neighborhood cineplex. If there's not a casino around the corner, there's one on your laptop computer.In Jackpot Nation, Richard Hoffer takes us on a headlong tour, alternately horrifying and hilarious, across our landscape of luck. Whether he's trying to win a side of bacon in a Minnesota bar, hustling a paper sack filled with $100,000 in cash across Las Vegas parking lots, poring over expansion plans with a tribal chief in California, or visiting the New York prison cell of a retired bus salesman with a poor understanding of three-game parlays, Hoffer explores with wit and heart our national inclination a cultural predisposition, even to take a chance.

When she lands a coveted nonpaying, nonspeaking role in a play going on a European tour, Rachel Shukert with a brand-new degree in acting from NYU and no money finally scores her big break. And, after a fluke at customs in Vienna, she gets her golden ticket: an unstamped passport, giving her free rein to find herself on a grand tour of Europe. Traveling from Vienna to Zurich to Amsterdam, Rachel bounces through complicated relationships, drunken mishaps, miscommunication, and the reality-adjusting culture shock that every twentysomething faces when sent off to negotiate "the real world" whatever that may be.

He lied, he cheated. He destroyed her life.How difficult could killing him be?Madeline Piatro devoted four years of her life to her boyfriend Carlton—and, in return, got romance, flowers, and the best sex she'd ever had. But then he dumped her—by e-mail, no less! He used her, he broke her heart...and he even cost her the marketing job she dearly loved. Now Maddy's on a mission. She wants revenge and she wants her career back.But Maddy's about to discover that getting even, no matter how justifiable, isn't as easy as it might at first appear—even with a batch of arsenic brownies, the help of a professional (if bumbling) hit man, and the advice and best wishes of her very best friends.

In Mindy's yoga-obsessed, thirty-is-the-new-wife neighborhood, every day is a battle between Dunkin' Donuts, her jaws-of-life jeans, and Beth Diamond, the self-absorbed sancti-mommy next door who looks sixteen from the back. So much for sharing the chores, the stores, and the occasional mischief to rival Wisteria Lane.It's another day, another dilemma until Beth's marriage becomes fodder on Facebook. Suddenly the Ivy League blonde needs to be “friended,” and Mindy is the last mom standing. Together they take on hormones and hunger, family feuds and fidelity, and a harrowing journey that spills the truth about an unplanned pregnancy and a seventy-year-old miracle that altered their fates forever.Dear Neighbor, Drop Dead is a hilarious, stirring romp over fences and defenses that begs the question, what did you do to deserve living next door to a crazy womanSometimes it's worth finding out.

March 1934. Revered mystery writer Josephine Tey is traveling from Scotland to London for the final week of her play Richard of Bordeaux, the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes that resonate in a world still haunted by war. But joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with the murder of a young woman she had befriended on the train ride—and Tey is plunged into a mystery as puzzling as any in her own works. Detective Inspector Archie Penrose is convinced that the killing is connected to the play, and that Tey herself is in danger of becoming a victim of her own success. In the aftermath of a second murder, the writer and the policeman must join together to stop a ruthless killer who will apparently stop at nothing.

It is a time of turmoil, with the nation mired in an unpopular war in Korea and with Senator Joseph McCarthy stirring up fear of a lurking Communist "menace." Racial discrimination is rampant. A woman's place is in the home. And when a shocking act of God eliminates the Democratic presidential nominee, the party throws its support to an unlikely standard bearer: former First Lady and goodwill ambassador to the world Eleanor Roosevelt.Captivating and fast-paced, Eleanor vs. Ike pits the unforgettable Eleanor against the enormously popular war hero Gen. Dwight David ("Ike") Eisenhower. But while the opponents promise "an honest campaign," their strategists mire the race in scandal and bitter innuendo. Suddenly Eleanor finds herself a target of powerful insiders who mean to destroy her good name—and Ku Klux Klan assassins dedicated to her death—as she gets caught up in a mad whirl of appearances and political maneuvering . . . and a chance encounter with a precocious five-year-old named Hillary Rodham.

Valerie Vane was an up-and-coming lifestyle reporter at a prominent New York City daily. Then she stumbled, rather publicly, and lost it all—her column, her fiancé, her access behind the city's velvet ropes. Now she's on the obituary desk writing death notices, and it feels like a dead end. However, when she writes about a recently deceased once-famous graffiti artist, the phone calls start. A mysterious voice on the other end of the line tells her the artist's death was a murder—and if she were a real reporter, she'd investigate. But can Valerie trade her stilettos for gumshoes?

Meet Alice Finnegan: thirty-something, single and determined to take control of her own destiny ... even if she is stuck in a series of secretarial temp jobs and living with her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother -- a feisty, funny, former Ziegfeld showgirl. But that's easier said than done when your job counselor can't spell "employment" correctly, your boss has you planning her daughter's wedding, your new boyfriend cares more about his career than caresses, and your dreams of stardom are dashed when a hotshot casting director suggests you get your nose fixed -- and you already have. But even as it seems that Alice's world has gone crazy, and she succumbs to a Mr. Right who turns into a Mr. Not Right Now, she knows that any insanity is only temporary ...

Emma Taylor wanted an engagement ring and a job promotion for her thirtieth birthday.What she got instead was the boot from herboyfriend, the heave-ho from his Manhattanloft -- and the indignity of having to work forthe weenie who stole her position. Her palsonly add insult to injury by giving her the "perfect" birthday gift: a bottle ofbreast-enhancing pills. It would be enough to defeat even a well-endowed woman, but Emma's notabout to let such twists of fate get her down, even as she sets out on the most grueling task known to humankind: apartment hunting in New York City. But sleeping in the backseat of her car provides an unexpected bonus -- she meets Jack, who's kind enough to invite Emma into his home ... in a strictly landlord/tenant-type of arrangement, of course. Perhaps things are looking up -- since honestly they couldn't get much worse. Emma may not be able to fill a bikini, but she's going to do that "life and love" thing right this time. Because no matter what else destiny throws in her face, she's determined to come out where she never has before ... on top!

Sandra Greene knows men don't go for women like her: the invisible ones, the plain ones scrambling to make a living without benefit of the right connections, college degree, and fashionable clothes. But her life is changed forever when, at an old friend's wedding, she meets the wealthy socialites of the Hunt Club. They proudly claim they made that wedding possible, and they make Sandra an offer no woman can refuse. Sandra is guaranteed to marry any man she wants—no matter how good-looking, rich, powerful, or successful. All she has to do is play their matchmaking "game." Seduced by the promise of makeovers, money, and matrimony, she quickly joins the Hunt Club and can't wait to go after the husband of her dreams—a sexy Hollywood actor. At first it all seems too wonderful to be true as she changes her life and is about to get her guy—until the FBI steps in asking questions. Just how far will these women go to get what they wantThat's when Sandra begins to realize that matchmaking is really murder...possibly in more ways than one!

The iconic First Lady, Jackie lived her life in a fishbowl yet she was shrouded in mystery. She was the epitome of style, poise, grace, and femininity, but her lifelong silence in front of the media has left many unanswered questions.In this juicy yet reverential examination of her life, Eve Pollard's insight into what made America's most admired woman tick is blended into a page-turning, believable thriller. Starting from the somber days following the shocking assassination of Jackie's husband, President John F. Kennedy, Pollard explores the emotions that guided her existence as the world's most famous widow. Everything in Jackie's life is encompassed: the painful childhood that prepared her for the dual role of dramatic chatelaine of the White House and cheated wife; the hidden mental torture behind her marriage to Jack as she attempted to maintain her self-esteem an anguish that doubled when his debauched love life became public after his death. To cope, Jackie developed a self-defense system to deal with the friends and family who were revealed as the willing helpers in her late husband's constant quest for new sexual partners. And, finally, she used different methods from sunglasses to psychiatry, from remarriage to realpolitik to protect herself and her precious children.With brilliant storytelling, Pollard, one of the former First Lady's first biographers, entangles Jackie during her early days as a senator's wife in the complex world of espionage with startling and thrilling consequences after the tragic murder of her husband. Pollard's wealth of information on the adored Jackie produces a captivating and realistic tale that both surprises and entertains.