Seven riveting games. One young reporter. Welcome to the 1969 NBA Finals. They don't set up any better than this. The greatest basketball player of all time - Bill Russell - and his juggernaut Boston Celtics, winners of ten (ten!) of the previous twelve NBA championships, squeak through one more playoff run and land in the Finals again. Russell's opponent? The fearsome 7'1" next-generation superstar, Wilt Chamberlain, recently traded to the LA Lakers to form the league's first dream team. Bill Russell and John Havlicek versus Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. The 1969 Celtics are at the end of their dominance. The 1969 Lakers are unstoppable.Add to the mix one newly minted reporter. Covering the epic series is a wide-eyed young sports writer named Leigh Montville. Years before becoming an award-winning legend himself at The Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated, twenty-four-year-old Montville is ordered by his editor at the Globe to get on a plane to L.A. (first time!) to write about his luminous heroes, the biggest of big men.What follows is a raucous, colorful, joyous account of one of the greatest seven-game series in NBA history. Set against a backdrop of the late sixties, Montville's reporting and recollections transport readers to a singular time - with rampant racial tension on the streets and on the court, with the emergence of a still relatively small league on its way to becoming a billion-dollar industry, and to an era when newspaper journalism and the written word served as the crucial lifeline between sports and sports fans. And there was basketball - seven breathtaking, see-saw games, highlight-reel moments from an unprecedented cast of future Hall of Famers (including player-coach Russell as the first-ever black head coach in the NBA), coast-to-coast travels and the clack-clack-clack of typewriter keys racing against tight deadlines.Tall Men, Short Shorts is a masterpiece of sports journalism with a charming touch of personal memoir. Leigh Montville has crafted his most entertaining book yet, richly enshrining luminous players and moments in a unique American time.

    Is Wrestling Fixed? I Didnt Know It Was Broken: From Photo Shoots and Sensational Stories to the WWE Network, Bill Apters Incredible Pro Wrestling Journey

    Mark Cannizzaro goes behind the scenes of the exclusive competition, covering wide-ranging topics including green jacket rituals, tales from The Crow's Nest atop the clubhouse, the extreme lengths some fans have gone to acquire tickets, and what goes on outside the gates during Masters week. Also featuring some of the most memorable and dramatic moments from the tournament's history, this is an essential, expansive look at golf's favorite event.

    He was born to race —some of the fastest cars ever to tear up a speedway.  Carroll Shelby wasn’t born to run. He was born to race—some of the fastest cars ever to tear up a speedway. The exciting new feature film Ford v Ferrari--starring Matt Damon as Shelby and Christian Bale as fellow racer Ken Miles--immortalizes the small-town Texas boy who won the notorious Le Mans 24-hour endurance challenge, and changed the face of auto racing with the legendary Shelby Cobra. But there’s much more to his high-velocity, history-making story.A wizard behind the wheel, he was also a visionary designer of speed machines that ruled the racetrack and the road. While his GT40s racked up victories in the world’s most prestigious professional racing showdowns, his masterpiece, the Ford Cobra, gave Europe’s formidable Ferrari an American--style run for its money. If you’ve got a need for speed, strap in next to the man who put his foot down on the pedal, kept his eyes on the prize, and never looked back.

    It's about where to hit the ball, when, and why. It focuses on playing tennis strategically, which is the quickest and best way to raise your game to the next level. For recreational players, developing a strategic approach to the game is the single, most transformative step you can take. In this book, you will learn how to take advantage of the strengths in your game, how to minimize your weaknesses, and how to attack your opponent's game. Most tennis players start by focusing on the mechanics of their strokes. That makes sense. If you can't hit the ball over the net and inside the lines, the rest doesn't really matter. Later, when you're hitting the ball well, it's fun to keep working on your shots. All tennis players love to hit the ball. Unfortunately, stroke improvement has a diminishing return. Early on you improve rapidly, but then the pace levels off. It can be frustrating to work, week after week, month after month, and not see any progress. Developing your strategic understanding of the game completely changes that dynamic. It's difficult to exaggerate how much focusing on strategy can improve every aspect of your game. At first glance, tennis is a marvelously simple game. All you have to do is hit the ball over the net and inside the lines one time more than your opponent does and you win the point. Do that often enough and you win the match. In truth, however, tennis is endlessly complex. That's why it becomes a lifetime passion for so many of us. It's a demanding amalgamation of muscle memory, hand-eye coordination, geometric understanding, stamina, and split-second decision making. Adding another layer of complexity, most of us model our games on professional tennis players. We see them win points by smacking the felt off the ball, going for the lines, serving aces, and hitting topspin lobs from outside the doubles alley. We want to play like that. The catch is we don't have unbelievable hand-eye coordination and don't practice eight hours a day. Is it any wonder, then, that about 80 percent of points in a recreational match end with an unforced error? That's right. Eight out of 10 points-and often more-end because you or your opponent hit the ball into the net or outside the lines. When we come out of top in a match, we like to think that we won. It's probably more accurate to say that we didn't lose. At the core of strategic success at the recreational level is reducing unforced errors. Cutting them by just one or two per set can lead to an exponential leap in matches won. This book are filled with strategies and tactics that you can adopt and adapt to improve your game. You don't need to apply all of them; use only the concepts that work for you. If altering the strategies better suits your game, go for it. Playing strategically will make your game more consistent. You'll become a better competitor, and you'll have more fun.

    The NBA has never seen a player quite like Kevin Durant. Larry Bird wasn’t as quick, Magic Johnson didn’t have such a range, and Michael Jordan wasn’t seven feet tall. Durant handles the ball like Allen Iverson, shoots like Dirk Nowitzki, and has the scoring instincts of Kobe Bryant. He does it in a body that’s about as big as Hakeem Olajuwon. But ultimately, Kevin Durant is like no one but himself. After an incredible first season with Golden State, Kevin Durant earned the coveted NBA Finals MVP award: he was the Warriors’ top scorer in every game of the 2017 Finals, helping the team snatch the title from LeBron James and the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers. As a sports columnist for The Athletic Bay Area, and longtime beat reporter covering the Golden State Warriors, Marcus Thompson is perfectly positioned to trace Durant’s inspirational journey. KD follows Durant’s underdog story from his childhood spent in poverty outside DC; to his rise playing on AAU teams with future NBA players; to becoming a star and hometown hero for the Oklahoma Thunder; to his controversial decision to play for the NBA rival Golden State Warriors; to his growth from prodigy into a man, in the first true inside account of this superstar player. KD is a powerful, moving biography of a modern-day legend and an essential read for all sports fans—or anyone who wants to know: what’s it like to shoot for greatness?

    Moreover, he was as legendary a figure on the streets of New York as on the streets of London.Pearson persuaded the mysterious criminal leader to talk to him - and the result was a story even more extraordinary than that of the Kray twins. Here Pearson reveals the true story of the Englishman who became the adopted son of Joey Pagano, the head of one of the major New York crime families. Here the Englishman tells the story that no-one else dared to tell.

    Both are pretty easy to put off as they're very expensive and tend to wreck your house.' Stand-up comedian Sam Avery (aka the Learner Parent) started his award-winning blog when his twin boys were born. A million nappies, Peppa Pig episodes and a lot less sleep later, he shares all the lows, highs and hilarious in-betweens of his experiences of first-time parenthood in this, his highly anticipated first book. Sam's honest, messy and laugh-out-loud account of trying for a baby (which transpired to be babIES) and figuring out what to do with them once they arrived - right up to the toddler years of talking, walking and tantrum-ing - will have you crying with laughter between your own nappy changes and nursery runs.

    And the moments are part of college basketball lore: the Sweater Game, Villanova Beats Georgetown, and Six Overtimes. But this is the story of the Big East Conference that you haven't heard before--of how the Northeast, once an afterthought, became the epicenter of college basketball.Before the league's founding, East Coast basketball had crowned just three national champions in forty years, and none since 1954. But in the Big East's first ten years, five of its teams played for a national championship. The league didn't merely inherit good teams; it created them. But how did this unlikely group of schools come to dominate college basketball so quickly and completely?Including interviews with more than sixty of the key figures in the conference's history, The Big East charts the league's daring beginnings and its incredible rise. It transports fans inside packed arenas to epic wars fought between transcendent players, and behind locker-room doors where combustible coaches battled even more fiercely for a leg up.Started on a handshake and a prayer, the Big East carved an improbable arc in sports history, an ensemble of Catholic schools banding together to not only improve their own stations but rewrite the geographic boundaries of basketball. As former UConn coach Jim Calhoun eloquently put it, "It was Camelot. Camelot with bad language."

    Although the “Golden Bear,” as he is known by fans, is widely regarded as the best golfer of all time, with a record number of PGA major championships, his life and values show that true legacy lives on through your children, grandchildren, and others we are blessed to call family and friends.For the first time, the public is given the opportunity to see what made Jack Nicklaus an off-course success, includinghow he and his wife, Barbara, fashioned fifty-plus years of marriage, understanding that they both had to give of themselves “at least 95 percent of the time”the importance of having boundaries and limits that everyone in the family agrees onhow Nicklaus taught his son Jack, who worked as his caddie for several years, to value his competitors and treat them as he would hope to be treatedthe need to be connected to what we’ll leave behind: our legaciesOne June day, Jack Nicklaus II had just completed his second round in a Palm Beach County Junior Golf Association tournament and was sitting at the scorer’s table, signing his scorecard, when somebody told him his dad was on the telephone. He was a little frustrated because he didn’t want to be bothered on such an important day, but his dad wanted to know how he had played, so Jack II spent the next twenty minutes detailing every hole and every shot. Afterward, his father said, “Jackie, would you like to know how your dad did today?” Of course he wanted to know, and he felt a little guilty for not asking. “Well, I just won the US Open.” It was Father’s Day 1980, and on that day Jack II learned a valuable lesson that he carried with him into adulthood: family is more important than anything in the world.

    In a life spanning over four decades as a poker professional, Mike has excelled both on the felt and on the business side of poker. He is a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, helped create PartyPoker in 2001 and was a key player in an event that changed the poker world forever the launch of the World Poker Tour (WPT) in 2002. He has been a commentator on the WPT, along with Vince Van Patten, since its inception. In addition, Mike was recognized as poker's Top Ambassador at the Card Player Magazine Player of the Year Awards gala in 2006. That same year, he won WSOP Tournament of Champions, winning $1 million in prize money half of which he donated to charity. He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2009. In this book Mike recounts his personal experiences and gives his take on some of poker's legendary characters over the past 40 years. If you enjoy poker, are fascinated by the development of the game and enjoy compelling poker, golf and gambling adventures, then you'll love Life's A Gamble."

    The author witnessed the mud-soaked agony of the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and the rapidly moving events of the following year. The book contains one of the most extraordinary accounts of the German spring offensive in 1918, from the point of view of a gunner officer with a grandstand view of the ruthless German advance.The author's father was Prime Minister at the outbreak of the first world war. The author's three brothers also served during the war; his eldest brother died during the Battle of the Somme.

    VT-8 rose from the ashes of the Battle of Midway to become an indispensable air arm in the series of engagements for the Solomon Islands and beyond. In three months, the crack squadron carried out thirty-nine attack missions, sixteen against ships, twenty-three against ground targets. Their motto following the tragedy at Midway was "Attack and Revenge." Herman Wouk paid homage to the squadron in his 1971 novel War and Remembrance, referring to the pilots as, "The soul of America in action." *Includes annotations and images.

    Author GM Matheny was a US Navy saturation diver on the nuclear submarine USS Halibut. Involved in Operation Ivy Bells. America's most important (and most dangerous of the Cold War) clandestine operations. If you like good old fashioned American bravado, espionage and American history, you will enjoy this book. GOD & SPIES is a firsthand account of America's greatest intelligence coup! Operation Ivy Bells was not a onetime intercept of foreign intelligence but an ongoing operation of multiple Soviet military channels! Another reason for the high interest in our operation was the audacious nature in which it was done—with not one person risking his neck but the crews of two US Navy nuclear submarines which rendezvoused in Soviet territorial waters. “How did I end up as a navy diver, four hundred feet down in a frigid Russian sea? After making my dad totally disgusted with me, I set out to make him happy. ‘Honor thy father’ - I struggled with a decision to serve God. ‘Lord, I will give my life to you and serve you if you let me make this dive.’ But I had the impression He only wanted to know one thing: ‘What if I do not let you? Will you serve me anyway?’”

    Here was Arnold Palmer, the workingman's hero, "sweating, chain-smoking, shirt-tail flying"; Ben Hogan, the greatest player of the fifties, a perfectionist battling twin demons of age and nerves; and, making his big-time debut, a crew-cut college kid who seemed to have the makings of a champion: twenty-year-old Jack Nicklaus.        And of course, the rest: Ken Venturi, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Doug Sanders, Gary Player, and the many other colorful characters who chased around a little white ball--and a dream.        Would Palmer win the mythical Grand Slam of golf? Could Hogan win one more major tournament? Was Nicklaus the real thing? Even more than an intimate portrait of these men and their exciting times, The Eternal Summer is also an entertaining, perceptive, and hypnotically readable exploration of professional golf in America.