Memory Man: The Life and Sporting Times of Jimmy Magee
Memory Man: The Life and Sporting Times of Jimmy Magee

Author: Jimmy Magee

Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd

Published: 2012-08-31

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0717153533

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Jimmy Magee, whose extraordinary memory for sports trivia has led to his being dubbed the Memory Man, has the distinction of being the longest-serving sports commentator in the English-speaking world. He started his career in 1956, the year that Ronnie Delany won the 1,500 metres gold medal at Melbourne. He has covered every Olympic Games since 1972 (the London 2012 games were his eleventh!) and every soccer World Cup since 1974. He achieved worldwide notice in Munich in 1972 when he managed to breach security in the Olympic village to cover the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes. This incredible scoop was picked up by CBS in the United States and then by every television station around the world. Jimmy Magee has been present at the most iconic sporting moments in both world and Irish sport and gives his unique insight into these major sporting moments. He tells how he played five-a-side football with Gert Müller, how he almost came to blows with Nigel Benn, and why he thinks Katie Taylor is Ireland's greatest contemporary sportsperson. But what is perhaps the most striking aspect of such an accomplished career is how Jimmy managed to find the strength to keep up his cheerful persona on air as he endured immeasurable sorrow in his personal life. His beloved wife, Marie, died unexpectedly in 1989 and his son Paul, himself a footballer and sports broadcaster, tragically lost his battle with motor neuron disease in 2008 at the early age of fifty-one. Full of anecdotes, humour and poignancy, Memory Man tells all these things and more. This is a frank, open and honest book by one of Ireland's most beloved national treasures.

Different Class
Different Class

Author: Jimmy Magee

Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 071715856X

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The Memory Man – a sobriquet earned for his uncanny ability to recall virtually any sporting trivia – not only gives us his entertaining and forensic insight into which sporting moments he believes can be justifiably described as in a Different Class, but sports fans will also be thrilled to finally discover who Jimmy Magee really thinks is the best of the best – or the most over-rated for that matter – in soccer, GAA, rugby, boxing, golf, athletics and many other sports. The maestro of memories has anecdotes about the hundreds of iconic sport heroes he has had the privilege of meeting during his travels. The pages of Different Class are bursting with legendary figures: Muhammad Ali, Pelé, Eddie Merckx, Maradona and Matt Busby. Fans of Irish sport won't be disappointed either, with Jimmy Magee casting a critical eye over the likes of George Best, Katie Taylor, Jack Charlton, Seán Kelly, Brian O'Driscoll, Rory McIlroy, Stephen Roche, Roy Keane, Sonia O'Sullivan, and virtually anyone who's been anybody in the GAA. With such a stellar cast, this book is definitely in a Different Class.

After All These Years
After All These Years

Author: Mick Foster

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2013-08-29

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0753549883

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This is the combined life story of Mick Foster and Tony Allen, revealing how these most unlikely of stars toured the world and entered the record books. A charming narrative told with heaps of Celtic charm, it is filled with nostalgic reminiscences about growing up in rural Ireland in the 1950s and 60s, and spans the breadth of their long career, including appearing on Top of the Pops alongside Bob Geldof and being feted by Terry Wogan, and the extraordinary moment when they found themselves at the very top of the charts, beating Take That to the number-one slot.

Dear William
Dear William

Author: David Magee

Publisher: BenBella Books

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1953295681

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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER 2022 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARDS FINALIST — MEMOIR "Shot through with hope, purpose and an unflinching love, it's a story that must be read." —Newsweek "Essential, poignant, and insightful reading." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review Award-winning columnist and author David Magee addresses his poignant story to all those who will benefit from better understanding substance misuse so that his hard-earned wisdom can save others from the fate of his late son, William. The last time David Magee saw his son alive, William told him to write their family’s story in the hopes of helping others. Days later, David found William dead from an accidental drug overdose. Now, in a memoir suggestive of Augusten Burroughs meets Glennon Doyle, award-winning columnist and author David Magee answers his son's wish with a compelling, heartbreaking, and impossible to put down book that speaks to every individual and family. With honesty and heart, Magee shares his family’s intergenerational struggle with substance abuse and mental health issues, as well as his own reckoning with family secrets—confronting the dark truth about the adoptive parents who raised him and a decades-long search for identity. He wrestles with personal substance misuse that began at a young age and, as a father, he sees destructive patterns repeat and develop within his own children. While striving to find a truly authentic voice as a writer despite authoring nearly a dozen previous books, Magee ultimately understands that William had been right and their own family’s history is the story he needs to tell. A poignant and uplifting message of hope translates unimaginable tragedy into an inspirational commitment to saving others, as David founded the William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing at the University of Mississippi. His mission to share solutions to self-medication and addiction, particularly as it touches America’s high school and college students, emphasizes that William’s story is about much more than a tragic addiction—it’s an American story of a family broken by loss and remade with love. Dear William inspires readers to find purpose, build resilience, and break the cycles that damage too many individuals and the people who love them. It’s a life-changing book revealing how voids can be filled, and peace—even profound, lasting happiness—is possible.

Memory Man
Memory Man

Author: Jimmy Magee

Publisher: Gill & Macmillan

Published: 2013-05-17

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780717157921

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A Memoir from one of Ireland's best-loved and most respected sports commentators.

Changing the Game
Changing the Game

Author: John O'Sullivan

Publisher: Morgan James Publishing

Published: 2013-12-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1614486468

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The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O’Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.

Times Remembered
Times Remembered

Author: Joe La Barbera

Publisher: University of North Texas Press

Published: 2021-10-15

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1574418548

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In the late 1970s legendary pianist Bill Evans was at the peak of his career. He revolutionized the jazz trio (bass, piano, drums) by giving each part equal emphasis in what jazz historian Ted Gioia called a “telepathic level” of interplay. It was an ideal opportunity for a sideman, and after auditioning in 1978, Joe La Barbera was ecstatic when he was offered the drum chair, completing the trio with Evans and bassist Marc Johnson. In Times Remembered, La Barbera and co-author Charles Levin provide an intimate fly-on-the-wall peek into Evans’s life, critical recording sessions, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes of life on the road. Joe regales the trio’s magical connection, a group that quickly gelled to play music on the deepest and purest level imaginable. He also watches his dream gig disappear, a casualty of Evans’s historical drug abuse when the pianist dies in a New York hospital emergency room in 1980. But La Barbera tells this story with love and respect, free of judgment, showing Evans’s humanity and uncanny ability to transcend physical weakness and deliver first-rate performances at nearly every show.

Sinatra and Me
Sinatra and Me

Author: Tony Oppedisano

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 198215179X

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"An intimate, revealing portrait of Frank Sinatra-from the man closest to the famous singer during the last decade of his life. More than a hundred books have been written about legendary crooner and actor Frank Sinatra. Every detail of his life seems to captivate: his career, his romantic relationships, his personality, his businesses, his style. But a hard-to-pin-down quality has always clung to him-a certain elusiveness that emerges again and again in retrospective depictions. Until now. From Sinatra's closest confidant and an eventual member of his management team, Tony Oppedisano, comes an extraordinarily intimate look at the singing idol. Deep into the night, for more than two thousand nights, Frank and Tony would converse-about music, family, friends, great loves, achievements and successes, failures and disappointments, the lives they'd led, the lives they wished they'd led. In these full-disclosure conversations, Sinatra spoke of his close yet complex relationship with his father, his conflicts with record companies, his carousing in Vegas, his love affairs with some of the most beautiful women of his era, his triumphs on some of the world's biggest stages, his complicated relationships with his talented children, and, most important, his dedication to his craft. Toward the end, no one was closer to the singer than Oppedisano, who kept his own rooms at the Sinatra residences for many years, often brokered difficult conversations between family members, and held the superstar entertainer's hand when he drew his last breath. Featuring never-before-seen photos and offering startlingly fresh anecdotes and new revelations that center on some of the most famous people of the past fifty years-including Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, Madonna, and Bono-Sinatra and Me pulls back the curtain to reveal a man whom history has, in many ways, gotten wrong"--

Jim Henson
Jim Henson

Author: Brian Jay Jones

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2013-09-24

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0345526139

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • For the first time ever—a comprehensive biography of one of the twentieth century’s most innovative creative artists: the incomparable, irreplaceable Jim Henson He was a gentle dreamer whose genial bearded visage was recognized around the world, but most people got to know him only through the iconic characters born of his fertile imagination: Kermit the Frog, Bert and Ernie, Miss Piggy, Big Bird. The Muppets made Jim Henson a household name, but they were just part of his remarkable story. This extraordinary biography—written with the generous cooperation of the Henson family—covers the full arc of Henson’s all-too-brief life: from his childhood in Leland, Mississippi, through the years of burgeoning fame in America, to the decade of international celebrity that preceded his untimely death at age fifty-three. Drawing on hundreds of hours of new interviews with Henson's family, friends, and closest collaborators, as well as unprecedented access to private family and company archives, Brian Jay Jones explores the creation of the Muppets, Henson’s contributions to Sesame Street and Saturday Night Live, and his nearly ten-year campaign to bring The Muppet Show to television. Jones provides the imaginative context for Henson’s non-Muppet projects, including the richly imagined worlds of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth—as well as fascinating misfires like Henson’s dream of opening an inflatable psychedelic nightclub. An uncommonly intimate portrait, Jim Henson captures all the facets of this American original: the master craftsman who revolutionized the presentation of puppets on television, the savvy businessman whose dealmaking prowess won him a reputation as “the new Walt Disney,” and the creative team leader whose collaborative ethos earned him the undying loyalty of everyone who worked for him. Here also is insight into Henson’s intensely private personal life: his Christian Science upbringing, his love of fast cars and expensive art, and his weakness for women. Though an optimist by nature, Henson was haunted by the notion that he would not have time to do all the things he wanted to do in life—a fear that his heartbreaking final hours would prove all too well founded. An up-close look at the charmed life of a legend, Jim Henson gives the full measure to a man whose joyful genius transcended age, language, geography, and culture—and continues to beguile audiences worldwide. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BOOKPAGE “Jim Henson vibrantly delves into the magnificent man and his Muppet methods: It’s an absolute must-read!”—Neil Patrick Harris “An exhaustive work that is never exhausting, a credit both to Jones’s brisk style and to Henson’s exceptional life.”—The New York Times “[A] sweeping portrait that is a mix of humor, mirth and poignancy.”—Washington Independent Review of Books “A meticulously researched tome chock-full of gems about the Muppets and the most thorough portrait of their creator ever crafted.”—Associated Press