He ultimately escaped the death and drugs of a crime-riddled Bronx by way of the United States Marine Corps. However, after earning his way into the esteemed ranks of the service's famed Scout Snipers, Delgado saw that old struggle reignited when he was dumped into the hell of war in Iraq.There Delgado proved not only a participant, but a warrior capable of turning the tide in several of the most harrowing and historically important battles of the evolving war. He took all the hard lessons learned in combat and, as MARSOC's original lead sniper instructor, made himself a pivotal figure in revolutionizing the way special operations snipers trained and operated. But even after accomplishing his mission in the military, Delgado still faced that original fight, struggling to understand and accept the man his experiences had transformed him into. Bounty Hunter 4/3 is Jason Delgado's captivating first-hand account of these powerful and life-changing experiences.

    Frommer paints Shoeless Joe as a baseball natural ("Joe Jackson hit the ball harder than any man ever to play baseball"-Ty Cobb), an illiterate hick (his table untemsils consisted of knife and fingers), and an innocent man snared by the greatest scandal in baseball history.

    He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn’t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America’s game.In The Captain, best-selling author Ian O’Connor draws on extensive reporting and unique access to Jeter that has spanned some fifteen years to reveal how a biracial kid from Michigan became New York’s most beloved sports figure and the enduring symbol of the steroid-free athlete. O’Connor takes us behind the scenes of a legendary baseball life and career, from Jeter’s early struggles in the minor leagues, when homesickness and errors in the field threatened a stillborn career, to his heady days as a Yankee superstar and prince of the city who squired some of the world’s most beautiful women, to his tense battles with former best friend A-Rod. We also witness Jeter struggling to come to terms with his declining skills and the declining favor of the only organization he ever wanted to play for, leading to a contentious contract negotiation with the Yankees that left people wondering if Jeter might end his career in a uniform without pinstripes.Derek Jeter’s march toward the Hall of Fame has been dignified and certain, but behind that leadership and hero’s grace there are hidden struggles and complexities that have never been explored, until now. As Jeter closes in on 3,000 hits, a number no Yankee has ever touched, The Captain offers an incisive, exhilarating, and revealing new look at one of the game’s greatest players in the gloaming of his career.

    Hockey, Nine Lessons I Learned from My Father is a son's intimate account of all that lies behind the towering legacy of the beloved Gordie Howe.When Gordie Howe passed away, the world paused to acknowledge the legacy of the game's greatest player. For twelve straight hours--9 to 9--thousands of mourners passed through Joe Louis Arena in Detroit to pay their respects. The game's elder statesmen dropped what they were doing to gather for the funeral. Fans young and old flew in from around the world. Wayne Gretzky argued that Howe's number 9 should be retired league-wide. Barack Obama issued a statement recognizing what Gordie Howe meant to the game. As one after another dignitary spoke, it became clear that as staggering as Howe's achievements were on the ice, he was even greater as a person. In story after story, friends and rivals alike painted a portrait of a man the likes of which we may never see again. How could someone so revered also be so humble? How could someone who fought so hard also be so gentle? How could someone of whom so much was expected routinely astonish those around him by doing more? The man named Gordie Howe--not the hockey player, not the legend, but the living, breathing man--came into focus when his son, Murray, approached the podium to deliver the eulogy. The mourners in the packed cathedral, and those watching on television, got a glimpse of what a man who was a hero to generations looked like to his own children, and what his life looked like to those whose lives he shaped. The Gordie Howe his son introduced to the world was in many ways a teacher. Through his words and, more importantly, through his actions, he showed those around him what it means to live a life you can be proud of. Those lessons formed the backbone of the eulogy his son delivered, as it does the book that grew out of it. Unlike his two brothers, Murray Howe failed in his attempt to follow in his father's footsteps to become a professional athlete. Yet, his failure brought him to the realization that in truth, his dream wasn't to be a pro hockey player. His dream was to be his father, Gordie Howe. To be amazing at something, but humble and gracious. To be courageous, and stand up for the little guy. To be a hero. You don't need to be a hockey player to do that. What he learned was that it is a waste of time wishing you were like someone else. We need to identify and embrace our gifts. Gordie Howe may have been the greatest player in the history of hockey, but greatness was never defined by goals or assists in the Howe household. Greatness meant being the best person you could be, not the best player on the ice. This book will take the reader through the hours Murray spent writing the eulogy--the hours immediately after his father's death, as he gathers his thoughts and memories, and makes sense of what his remarkable father meant to him. The result is nine lessons, built out of hundreds of stories, that show us the man behind the legend and give us a glimpse of what we can learn from this incredible life.

    Her first dish, a tinned-tuna curry, was assembled on a tiny stove in her graduate student apartment while she pondered her first writing assignment. From there, whether her travels took her to a tent settlement in the Sahara for an afternoon interview with an old Berber woman toiling over goat stew, or to the great London restaurateur and author Yotam Ottolenghi's Notting Hill apartment, where they assembled a buttered phylo-and-cheese tower called a mutabbaq, Jane always returned from the field with a new recipe, and usually, a friend.For the first time, Jane's beloved food pieces from The New Yorker, where she has been a staff writer since 1964, are arranged in one place--a collection of definitive chef profiles, personal essays, and gastronomic history that is at once deeply personal and humane. The Reporter's Kitchen follows Jane everywhere, and throughout her career--from her summer writing retreat in Umbria, where Jane and her anthropologist husband host memorable expat Thanksgivings--in July--to the Nordic coast, where Jane and acclaimed Danish chef Rene Redzepi, of Noma, forage for edible sea-grass. The Reporter's Kitchen is an important record of culture distilled through food around the world. It's welcoming and inevitably surprising.

    Bush.As the principal New York Times reporter assigned to cover George W. Bush's presidential campaign from its earliest stages – and then as a White House correspondent – Frank Bruni has spent as much time around Bush over the last two years as any other reporter.In Ambling Into History, Bruni paints the most thorough, balanced, eloquent and lively portrait yet of a man in many ways ill–suited to the office he sought and won, focusing on small moments that often escaped the news media's notice. From the author's initial introduction to Bush through a nutty election night and Bush's first months in office, Bruni captures the president's familiar and less familiar oddities and takes readers on an often funny, usually irreverent, journey into the strange, closed universe – or bubble – of campaign life.The result is an original take on the political process and a detailed study of George W. Bush as most people have never seen him.

    But, as Bob Greene writes, “just when in our lives we give up on capturing the freedom and bright mornings of our world when it was new, sometimes something happens to keep the sun high in the sky a while longer. Sometimes we find something we weren’t even aware we were looking for."For fifteen years beginning in the 1990s, Greene stepped into a universe that, out in the country every summer night, is hiding in plain sight: the touring world of the great early rock bands who gave America the car-radio and jukebox music it still loves best. Singing backup with the legendary Jan and Dean as they endlessly crisscross the nation, Greene takes us to football stadiums and minor-league ballparks, to no-name ice cream stands and midnight diners, to back roads and carnival midways as he tells a riveting story of great fame and lingering sorrow, of unexpected friendship and lasting dreams, of the things that keep us going in the face of all the things that threaten to stop us.Striking chords of recognition and yearning, When We Get to Surf City glistens with cameos by the men and women with whom Greene traveled the United States on his deliriously unlikely journey, including Chuck Berry, Martha and the Vandellas, the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beach Boys, the Monkees, the Kingsmen, James Brown, Lesley Gore, the Drifters, Little Eva, and the Coasters.All of them—not just the people on the stage, but the people in the audiences, too—are seeking their private versions of the mythical destination Jan and Dean came up with all those years ago: Surf City as the perfect, cloudless place we all believe is out there, if only we can find it.Hilarious and heartbreaking, moving and brilliant, this is the trip of a lifetime, a travelogue of the heart, accompanied by a thundering guitar chorus of Fender Stratocasters. It is a story destined to touch readers not just today, but for generations to come, as long as the music itself echoes.

    In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American and were malnourished and barefoot. They had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields. Their future was in those same fields, working alongside their parents in virtual slavery, known not by their names but by numbered tags that hung around their necks. Their teacher, Soichi Sakamoto, was an ordinary man whose swimming ability didn't extend much beyond treading water. In spite of everything, including the virulent anti-Japanese sentiment of the late 1930s, in their first year the children outraced Olympic athletes twice their size; in their second year, they were national and international champs, shattering American and world records and making headlines from L.A. to Nazi Germany. In their third year, they'd be declared the greatest swimmers in the world. But they'd also face their greatest obstacle: the dawning of a world war and the cancellation of the Games. Still, on the battlefield, they'd become the 20th century's most celebrated heroes, and in 1948, they'd have one last chance for Olympic glory. They were the Three-Year Swim Club. This is their story.*Includes Reading Group Guide*

    Often called the greatest boxer of all time, he held world titles at four different weights, is the only boxer in history to have fought in five different decades, and his bouts with fellow greats like Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, and Marvin Hagler have gone down in fistic folklore. He finally retired in January of 2002, at age fifty-two, with a professional record of 104 wins (69 by KO) in 120 fights. They called him Manos de Piedra: “Hands of Stone.” Now journalist Christian Giudice has written the first—and definitive—story of Duran’s incredible life both in and out of the ring. He has interviewed the fighter, his family, closest friends, and scores of his opponents to separate truth from myth. Duran was born in utter poverty in Panama and grew up in the streets, fighting to survive. His talent with his fists soon emerged, and he had his first professional fight in 1967. Duran grew into a fighter’s fighter. His hunger to destroy opponents and his willingness to take on anyone, anywhere, made him a huge favorite while his flamboyant lifestyle outside the ring made headline news. Duran was one of the first Latino fighters to become a mainstream sports star in the United States, and his natural talent, unprecedented achievements, and longevity made an indelible mark on the world of sport.

    We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating.In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every page with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings readers inside the minds of combatants sixty feet, six inches apart.Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history--from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw--K will be the definitive book on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.

    As evidence began to build, however, a full on NFL investigation was launched, exploding an unsubstantiated rumor into an intense scandal that would lead news coverage for weeks. As shockwaves rippled throughout the NFL system, the very legitimacy of one of the league's most popular teams and their star quarterback began to erode, even as the Patriots and Brady went on to win that year's Super Bowl. But as the celebrations gave way to the offseason, the investigation only intensified, reopening old wounds between the Patriots' powerful owner, Robert Kraft, and the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell. Brady was devastated and seemingly more nervous in front of a judge that on a game-winning drive. When the dust settled, Brady would be able to play again - but only after watching the first four games of the 2016 season from his couch. The pressure couldn't have been more intense: Brady's legacy was at stake. If he failed to return to his usual self, all the critics and even the history books would have to put a giant asterisk next to his name, signifying one thing: he was a cheater. 12 is the propulsive story of this gritty comeback. It's a drama that unfolds in the locker room, the court room, and under the brightest lights in all of sports -- the Super Bowl. Now for the first time, readers will have an exclusive look into Tom Brady's experience and the NFL's shocking strangle-hold on their players. With unprecedented access to Brady himself, his teammates, and his lawyers, we will see just how a football legend went up against one of the largest corporations in the world to stage the greatest comeback in NFL history and emerge a god of the gridiron.

    Robinson has become a national icon, his name a virtual synonym for pathbreaker. Indeed, much has transpired between this young African-American's first bold strides around the baseball diamonds of a segregated America and General Manager Bob Watson's pride in assembling 1996 World Champion New York Yankees. Recognizing this monumental event in America's continuing struggle for integration, Jules Tygiel has expanded his highly acclaimed Baseball's Great Experiment. In a new afterword, he addresses the mythology surrounding Robinson's achievements, his overall effect on baseball and other sports, and the enduring legacy Robinson has left for African Americans and American society. In this gripping account of one of the most important steps in the history of American desegregation, Tygiel tells the story of Jackie Robinson's crossing of baseball's color line. Examining the social and historical context of Robinson's introduction into white organized baseball, both on and off the field, Tygiel also tells the often neglected stories of other African-American players--such as Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron--who helped transform our national pastime into an integrated game. Drawing on dozens of interviews with players and front office executives, contemporary newspaper accounts, and personal papers, Tygiel provides the most telling and insightful account of Jackie Robinson's influence on American baseball and society.

    Grueling. Thrilling. Routine. Lonely. Exhilarating. Major league ballplayers even have a name for this relentless, unmatchable rhythm: The Grind.In The Grind, Barry Svrluga, The Washington Post’s national baseball correspondent, zooms in on the 2014 Washington Nationals, reporting not just on the roster’s star players, but also on the typically invisible supporting cast who each have their own sacrifices to make and schedules to keep. There’s The Wife, who acts as a full-time mom, part-time real estate agent, occasional father, and all-hours dog walker; The 26th Man, a minor leaguer on the cusp of job security who gets called up to the majors only to be sent back down the very next week; The Reliever, one of the most mentally taxing, precarious, and terribly exposed positions on any pro squad. These and many more players, scouts, equipment managers, and even travel schedulers create the fabric of Svrluga’s intimate and unusual book; they could be from any team or any big-league city. As he writes: “There is no other sport with an everydayness, a drum-drum-drum beat like baseball.”Built on material that appeared in The Washington Post, Svrluga’s book is a raw, inside look at the wear and tear, the glory and impermanence, of America’s pastime.

    Almanzo Wilder was 71, Laura 61, and Rose felt obligated to stay and help. To make life easier, she built them a new home, while she and Helen Boylston transformed the farmhouse into a rural writing retreat and filled it with visiting New Yorkers. Rose sold magazine stories to pay the bills for both households, and despite the subterranean tension between mother and daughter, life seemed good.Then came the Crash. Rose’s money vanished, the magazine market dried up, and the Depression darkened the nation. That’s when Laura wrote her autobiography, “Pioneer Girl,” the story of growing up in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, on the Kansas prairie, and by the shores of Silver Lake. The rest—the eight remarkable books that followed—is literary history.But it isn’t the history we thought we knew. For the surprising truth is that Laura’s stories were publishable only with Rose’s expert rewriting. Based on Rose’s unpublished diaries and Laura’s letters, A Wilder Rose tells the true story of the decade-long, intensive, and often troubled collaboration that produced the Little House books—the collaboration that Rose and Laura deliberately hid from their agent, editors, reviewers, and readers.Why did the two women conceal their writing partnership? What made them commit what amounts to one of the longest-running deceptions in American literature? And what happened in those years to change Rose from a left-leaning liberal to a passionate Libertarian?In this impeccably researched novel and with a deep insight into the book-writing business gained from her own experience as an author and coauthor, Susan Wittig Albert follows the clues that take us straight to the heart of this fascinating literary mystery.

    The improbable hockey career of Jonsey started in 1992, when he was with the Washington Capitals. After a brief stint in Colorado, Keith was traded to Philadelphia, where is hard work, dirty play and colorful personality made him one of the more popular players in recent history. Jonsey is the story of Keith s career in the league as well as all of the interesting stories he accumulated over the course of his career, playing with some of the leagues best players in the last 15 years, including Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic, Mark Recchi and Eric Lindros. The book will include a forward written by Hall of Fame defense-man Ray Bourque.