Shoeless Joe Jackson was one of baseball’s greatest hitters and most colorful players. This work chronicles his life from his poor beginnings to his involvement in the scandal surrounding the 1919 World Series to his life after baseball and his death in 1951. It focuses on his baseball career.
From the ESPN national correspondent and author of the New York Times bestseller Cinderella Man comes the remarkable behind-the-scenes story of a defining moment in sports and world history.
In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and of storm troopers goose-stepping, an African-American son of sharecroppers won a staggering four Olympic gold medals and single-handedly crushed Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man.
Drawing on unprecedented access to the Owens family, previously unpublished interviews, and exhaustive archival research, Jeremy Schaap transports us to Nazi Germany to weave this dramatic tale. From the start, American participation in the 1936 games was controversial. A boycott was afoot, based on reports of Nazi hostility to Jews, but was thwarted by the president of the American Olympic Committee, who dismissed the actions of the Third Reich as irrelevant. At the games themselves the subplots and intrigue continued: Owens was befriended by a German rival, broad jumper Luz Long, who, legend has it, helped Owens win the gold medal at his own expense. Two Jewish sprinters were denied the chance to compete for the United States at the last possible moment, most likely out of misguided deference to the Nazi hosts. And a myth was born that Hitler had snubbed Owens by failing to congratulate him.
With his trademark incisive reporting and rich storytelling gifts, Schaap reveals what really transpired over those tense, exhilarating few weeks some seventy years ago. In the end, Triumph is a triumph—a page-turning narrative that illuminates what happens when sports and the geopolitics collide on a world stage.
When Karl Malone arrived in Salt Lake City in 1985, he couldn’t make a free throw, hit a jumper or decipher a game plan. According to his plentiful critics, he lacked the emotional resources and ruthlessness to make himself over into a first-rank power forward.
For 13 brilliant seasons Michael Jordan danced the dance of greatness across hardwood floors of basketball arenas from New York to Los Angeles to Barcelona and Paris. With a warrior’s heart and an artist’s grace, Jordan long ago transcended the sport to become one of the 20th century’s global icons.
On the court, his almost mythic flair for the spectacular prompted former Los Angeles Laker superstar Magic Johnson to say simply, “There’s Michael, then there’s all the rest of us.”
Off the court, Jordan’s ability to alter markets and drive the business of his marketing partners is unprecedented.
Through it all, Jordan showed the world that greatness, true greatness, comes from the inside out. He remains perhaps the greatest practice player in the history of sports, his desire to improve upon his own example legendary. When critics questioned his all-around ability, he became the game’s most dominant defensive player at his position. When teams decided to close down the lane and eliminate drives to the basket, he became a deadly jump shooter. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had the most successfully teams of the 1980s but never won more than two consecutive championships. The Bulls won three straight—twice.
In For the Love of the Game, Jordan takes us through the wonder of his career on the court and away from the game. From the dream that preceded the game-winning shot against Georgetown in the 1982 NCAA Finals to the methodical dissection of the Utah Jazz prior to his game-winning shot in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals, Jordan pulls back the curtain on one of the most remarkable lives this century.
In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, now with added material and new insights, Thich Nhat Hanh introduces us to the core teachings of Buddhism and shows us that the Buddha’s teachings are accessible and applicable to our daily lives. With poetry and clarity, Nhat Hanh imparts comforting wisdom about the nature of suffering and its role in creating compassion, love, and joy—all qualities of enlightenment. Covering such significant teachings as the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Three Doors of Liberation, the Three Dharma Seals, and the Seven Factors of Awakening, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching is a radiant beacon on Buddhist thought for the initiated and uninitiated alike.
Go beyond mindfulness—practice kindfulness!
Here Ajahn Brahm introduces a new kind of meditation: kindfulness. Kindfulness is the cause of relaxation. It brings ease to the body, to the mind, and to the world. Kindfulness allows healing to happen. So don’t just be mindful, be kindful!
With his trademark knack for telling engaging stories paired with step-by-step anyone-can-do-it instructions, Brahm brings alive and makes accessible powerful tools of transformation. This slim, beautifully designed volume is a Quick Start guide for living a life of joy and compassion.
Cathy rated it ★★★★.
Zoroaster was one of the greatest and most radical religious reformers in the history of the world. The faith that he founded some 2600 years ago in a remote region of central Asia flourished to become the bedrock of a great empire as well as its official religion. Zoroastrianism is still practiced today in parts of India and Iran and in smaller communities elsewhere, where its adherents are known as Parsis. It has the distinction of being one of the most ancient religions in the world: only Hinduism can lay claim to greater antiquity. The foundation texts of this venerable system of belief are the founder’s own passionate poems, known as the Gathas (“Songs”), and a short ritual composed soon after his death, called the Liturgy in Seven Chapters. These hymns are the authentic utterances of a religious leader whose thought was way ahead of his time, and are among the most precious relics of human civilization. After so many millennia they continue to speak to us of an impressively austere theology and of an inspiring and easily understood moral code. Yet existing translations are few, divergent in their interpretations of the original Avestan language of Zoroaster, and frequently hard to access. M. L. West’s new translation, based on the best modern scholarship, and augmented by a substantial introduction and notes, makes these powerfully resonant texts available to a wide audience in clear and accessible form.
Lorna rated it ★★★★★ and said, “There is a lot of good stuff in this book. I had it checked out from the library and I didn’t want to return it because I wanted to keep studying everything that The Dalai Lama talks about. We can really learn a lot from people of other faiths. Basically what I learned from the book is that our unhappiness is usually always caused by negative thinking and that it is possible to train our minds to replace these negative (or distorted) thoughts with positive ones. He also talks a lot about the importance of having compassion and loving kindness towards all people.”