This journey to truth begins in the small town of Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and leads to New York and headline-grabbing interviews and insights from celebrities like Kanye West, Kevin Hart, Malcolm Gladwell, Lena Dunham, Jay Z, and Hillary Clinton. Black Privilege lays out all the great wisdom Charlamagne’s been given from many mentors, and tells the uncensored story of how he turned around his troubled early life by owning his (many) mistakes and refusing to give up on his dreams, even after his controversial opinions got him fired from several on-air jobs. These life-learned principles include: -There are no losses in life, only lessons -Give people the credit they deserve for being stupid—starting with yourself -It’s not the size of the pond but the hustle in the fish -When you live your truth, no one can use it against you -We all have privilege, we just need to access it By combining his own story with bold advice and his signature commitment to honesty no matter the cost, Charlamagne hopes Black Privilege will empower you to live your own truth.

    has been in the game a long time. With one of the most recognized voices in sports broadcasting, he is a tireless perfectionist when it comes to preparing and delivering his commentary. Yet he knows that some of sports' greatest triumphs--and life's greatest rewards--come from those unscripted moments you never anticipated.In this heartfelt, gripping autobiography, the three-time Sports Emmy Award-winner and popular host of TNT's Inside the NBA provides a remarkably candid look at his life both on and off the screen. From his relationship with his sportscaster father to his own rise to the top of sports broadcasting, from battling cancer to raising six children with his wife, Cheryl, including a special needs child adopted from Romania, Ernie has taken the important lessons he learned from his father and passed them on to his own children. This is the untold story, the one Ernie has lived after the lights are turned off and the cameras stop rolling. Sports fans, cancer survivors, fathers and sons, adoptive parents, those whose lives have been touched by a person with special needs, anyone who loves stories about handling life's surprises with grace--Unscripted is for all of these.

    But just two years later Hakeem Olajuwon powered his American college team, the University of Houston, to the NCAA Final Four. And that was only the beginning. In Living the Dream, the center of the back-to-back NBA champion Houston Rockets shares one of the most remarkable basketball stories of our time. Hakeem tells exactly how it felt coming to America, leaving his family and friends. He puts you on campus, inside the locker room, and at the Final Four with the University of Houston's famous basketball fraternity, "Phi Slama Jama." Drafted into the NBA, he tells how, with one phone call, he, Michael Jordan, and Clyde Drexler might have all been Houston Rockets teammates. Hakeem gives vivid on-the-court profiles of his teammates, coaches, and competitors over the course of his long career with the Rockets, including Shaquille O'Neal, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Larry Bird, Ralph Sampson, Pat Riley, and Patrick Ewing. He gives remarkable insights into the teamwork, cooperation, and attitude it takes to win a championship or succeed in any business. Hakeem also reveals how a championship team can fall apart and then be put together, and he is very forthright about the NBA's descent into "trash talking." Hakeem is the rare athlete who takes his status as a role model seriously. He became an American citizen, and Living the Dream explains how his reintroduction to his Muslim faith and his pilgrimage to Mecca changed his life.

    He digs deep into the album cuts of his life and unearths some pivotal moments in black art, hip hop, and pop culture.Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is many things: virtuoso drummer, producer, arranger, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon bandleader, DJ, composer, and tireless Tweeter. He is one of our most ubiquitous cultural tastemakers, and in this, his first book, he reveals his own formative experiences--from growing up in 1970s West Philly as the son of a 1950s doo-wop singer, to finding his own way through the music world and ultimately co-founding and rising up with the Roots, a.k.a., the last hip hop band on Earth. Mo' Meta Blues also has some (many) random (or not) musings about the state of hip hop, the state of music criticism, the state of statements, as well as a plethora of run-ins with celebrities, idols, and fellow artists, from Stevie Wonder to KISS to D'Angelo to Jay-Z to Dave Chappelle to...you ever seen Prince roller-skate?!?But Mo' Meta Blues isn't just a memoir. It's a dialogue about the nature of memory and the idea of a post-modern black man saddled with some post-modern blues. It's a book that questions what a book like Mo' Meta Blues really is. It's the side wind of a one-of-a-kind mind.It's a rare gift that gives as well as takes.It's a record that keeps going around and around.

    Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, André moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild's Women's Wear Daily, befriending fashion's most important designers (Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta). But as André made friends, he also made enemies. A racially tinged encounter with a member of the house of Yves Saint Laurent sent him back to New York and into the offices of Vogue under Grace Mirabella.There, he eventually became creative director, developing an unlikely but intimate friendship with Anna Wintour. As she rose to the top of Vogue's masthead, André also ascended, and soon became the most influential man in fashion. The Chiffon Trenches offers a candid look at the who's who of the last fifty years of fashion. At once ruthless and empathetic, this engaging memoir tells with raw honesty the story of how André not only survived the brutal style landscape but thrived--despite racism, illicit rumors, and all the other challenges of this notoriously cutthroat industry--to become one of the most renowned voices and faces in fashion.Woven throughout the book are also André's own personal struggles that have impacted him over the decades, along with intimate stories of those he has turned to for inspiration (Diana Vreeland, Diane von Férstenberg, Lee Radziwill, to name a few), and of course his Southern roots and ongoing faith, which have guided him since childhood.

    Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had.Will Smith’s transformation from a fearful child in a tense West Philadelphia home to one of the biggest rap stars of his era and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, with a string of box office successes that will likely never be broken, is an epic tale of inner transformation and outer triumph, and Will tells it astonishingly well. But it's only half the story. Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn't see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn't signed up for. It turned out Will Smith's education wasn't nearly over. This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world's biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself. “It’s easy to maneuver the material world once you have conquered your own mind. I believe that. Once you've learned the terrain of your own mind, every experience, every emotion, every circumstance, whether positive or negative, simply propels you forward, to greater growth and greater experience. That is true will. To move forward in spite of anything. And to move forward in a way that brings others with you, rather than leave them behind.” —Will Smith

    Known as one of the hardest-working and highest-achieving players in NBA history, this most dedicated competitor was legendary for his sharp shooting. From the Outside is his story in his words: a no-holds-barred look at his life and career, filled with behind-the-scenes stories and surprising revelations about the game he has always cherished.Allen talks openly about his fellow players, coaches, owners, and friends, including LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett. He reveals how, as a kid growing up in a military family, he learned about responsibility and respect—the key to making those perfect free throws and critical three-point shots.From the Outside is the portrait of a gifted athlete and a serious man with a strongly defined philosophy about the game and the right way it should be played—a philosophy that, at times, set him apart from colleagues and coaches, while inspiring so many others, and lead to the most pivotal shot of his career: the unforgettable 3-pointer in the final seconds of Game 6 of the 2013 NBA finals against the San Antonio Spurs. Throughout, Allen makes clear that success in basketball is as much about what happens off the court as on, that devotion and commitment are the true essence of the game—and of life itself.

    This book right here, it tells the story of my seventeen-year NFL career. It tells of my two Super Bowls, the mark I was blessed to be able to make on the game, on the city of Baltimore. But it also tells the story of how I grew up—abandoned by my no-account father, raised with my siblings by our God-fearing, hardworking single mother. It tells how I sometimes struggled off the field. It tells of the anguish and controversy that found me away from the game. Mostly, it tells how heartbreak can sometimes lift you to greatness and glory—if you find a way to put your focus in faith, and faith in your focus. When I left the game, confetti raining down on me and my teammates after winning the Super Bowl, I made a promise to myself to show how the game is really played at the highest level. That’s what you’ll find in these pages—a raw, honest look at the business of football and a look behind the scenes at some of the most torturous aspects of the game. The grind of the NFL—that’s what shines through. My deal? That grind is a given. Every player who wears an NFL uniform has to slog through the same battles just to get to the league. But it’s how you prepare for those battles that defines you—and here I hope to show how an unwavering trust in God and an unbreakable sense of purpose can lift you from tragedy to triumph. From strength to strength, man—that’s the deal.

    Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. But the girls have much more immediate concerns: hiding under the dining room table and eavesdropping on grown folks’ business; collecting secret treasures; and daydreaming about their futures. And then fate intervenes, sending them careening in wildly different directions. There’s heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder. Three Girls from Bronzeville is a memoir that chronicles Dawn’s attempt to find answers. It’s a celebration of sisterhood, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.

    But behind the successful, glamorous career was a story that many of her friends and colleagues knew nothing about—her ongoing struggle with severe depression and alcoholism. Brampton's is a candid, tremendously honest telling of how she was finally able to "address the elephant in the room," and of a culture that sends the overriding message that people who suffer from depression are somehow responsible for their own illness. She offers readers a unique perspective of depression from the inside that is at times wrenching, but ultimately inspirational, as it charts her own coming back to life. Beyond her personal story, Brampton offers practical advice to all those affected by this illness. This book will resonate with any person whose life has been haunted by depression, at the same time offering help and understanding to those whose loved ones suffer from this debilitating condition.

    In his own words, and for the first time, Roberto Duran tells his unbelievable story in I Am Duran: The Autobiography of Robert Duran. From the mean streets of Panama to the bright lights of Las Vegas, blazing a trail through the golden decade of boxing, Duran, in unflinching form, dispels myths and lays bare the cost of conquering the world. He also returns to the debacle that entered sporting folklore during his rematch with Sugar Ray Leonard, when he uttered the infamous words 'no mas' - no more.Starting life in abject poverty as the illegitimate son of a serving US soldier, Duran quickly realized that his fists could both protect him on the streets and put food on the table. His reputation in and out of the ring travelled the corridors of boxing power on the day, for a bet, he knocked down a horse with a single punch.From his stunning debut in New York to the glorious defeat of Sugar Ray Leonard, the world titles and the chaos that ensued after the No Mas encounter, Duran's explosive life in the ring was matched only by the volatility outside of it, as he lurched from kingmaker to bankruptcy, before the ultimate ending of a bloody comeback and, finally, redemption.

    In a game defined by big stakes and bigger egos, rabid fans and an unforgiving media, Karl was hired and fired a dozen times. After leading a team beset by injuries and with no superstar to its best season of all time—an achievement that earned Karl the title NBA Coach of the Year—he was dumped by the Denver Nuggets in 2013. Less than a year and a half later, Karl was at the helm of the Sacramento Kings, snarling and bellowing on the sidelines before being cut loose in May 2016.Intense, obstinate, and loud, Karl has never backed down from a confrontation, whether with management, officials, or star players, as NBA legends from Allan Iverson to Gary Payton to Carmelo Anthony to Demarcus Cousins can attest. Telling his story, Karl holds nothing back as he speaks out about the game that has defined his life, including the greed, selfishness, and ass-covering he believes are characteristic of the modern NBA player, and the rampant corruption that leads all the way to the office of the NBA commissioner, David Stern. Karl also reveals how he’s learned to deal with the personalities, the pressure, and the setbacks with a resilience he acquired from his three bouts with cancer.Raw, hard-hitting, and brutally honest, Furious George is as thrilling, unpredictable, and entertaining as the game that has defined Karl’s life.

    Part chronicle of an extraordinary life and part spiritual and philosophical discourse, The Tao of Wu is a nonfiction Siddhartha for the hip-hop generation-an engaging, seeking book that will enlighten, entertain, and inspire.The legions of Wu-Tang fans are accustomed to this heady mix-their obsession with the band's puzzlelike lyrics and elaborate mythology has propelled the group through fifteen years of dazzling, multiplatform success. In his 2005 bestseller The Wu-Tang Manual, the RZA provided the barest glimpse of how that mythology worked. In The Tao of Wu, he takes us deep inside the complex sense of wisdom and spirituality that has been at the core of his commercial and creative success.The book is built around major moments in the RZA's life when he was faced with a dramatic turning point, either bad (a potential prison sentence) or good (a record deal that could pull his family out of poverty), and the lessons he took from each experience. His points of view are always surprising and provocative, and reveal a profound, genuine, and abiding wisdom-consistently tempered with humor and peppered with unique, colloquial phraseology. It is a spiritual memoir as the world has never seen before, and will never see again.

    Feared, loathed, and admired in equal measure, early on he drew the wrath of many fans, who literally wore their emotions on their sleeve, donning tee-shirts that read: I hate warm beer, cold women, and Darrell Waltrip. As the decade progressed, he won over their hearts and was voted NASCAR's most popular driver in 1989 and 1990-and his popularity has continued to soar ever since. Waltrip retired in 2000, tied for third all-time with eighty-four career victories, and immediately began attracting new fans with his folksy style as a color commentator for FOX Sports' NASCAR coverage. Now, with that same inimitable charm, he shares his memories of his life in racing. It's the tale of a man who lived his dream every time he stepped into a race car, and whose dreams got better every time he climbed out in Victory Lane. But it's also the story of NASCAR, as Waltrip serves as a bridge between its earlier days and its explosion into one of the world's most popular sports. Having raced against immortals like Richard Petty and David Pearson, modern-day legends Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, and rising stars Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Waltrip provides a knowing look at the evolution of the sport and its greatest drivers and personalities.

    In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.