#1 New York Times bestseller Mike Lupica makes his return to the basketball court! There's a reason teammates call him "True." Because for basketball phenom Drew Robinson, there is nothing more true than his talent on the court. It's the kind that comes along once in a generation and is loaded with perks--and with problems. Before long, True buys in to his own hype, much to the chagrin of his mother, who wants to keep her boy's head grounded--and suddenly trouble has a way of finding him. That is, until a washed-up former playground legend steps back onto the court and takes True under his wing.
A collection of oft-repeated urban legends brings together the best of modern myths, from the stoned baby sitter who mistook a baby for a turkey to the fabulously expensive recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
Much has been written about the west—most of it clouded by exaggeration and fabrication. Since 1953, True West magazine has been devoted to celebrating the West’s true colors, giving the men and women who settled there accurate voices, exploring every triumph and tragedy of their time—and exposing every vice and virtue. True Tales and Amazing Legends of the Old West commemorates these unforgettable cowboys, Indians, and city slickers through a mix of classic histories and brand-new narratives, all illustrated with photographs—many reproduced here for the first time—of the people and places that gave rise to America’s Western mythology. With twenty-six stories that blend fact with folklore, this collection abounds with accounts of the famous and the infamous, including Sacagawea, Wild Bill Hickok, Pancho Villa, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Davy Crockett, and Wyatt Earp. Also here are lesser-known figures whose stories were pivotal to shaping the culture of the era, such as European conquistador Francisco Coronado, rancher “Black Billy” Hill, and fearless lawman Orlando “Rube” Robbins. Other tales recount the wide open plains, lawlessness, drama, mayhem, and promise embodied in the Old West. Whether you’re a history buff, an Old West devotee, or simply someone who is fascinated by the characters of America’s early years, these timeless tales and photographs epitomize the legendary spirit of what it meant to settle the West.
Georgia Myths and Legends explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Georgia’s history. Each episode included in the book is a story unto itself, and the tone and style of the book is lively and easy to read for a general audience interested in Georgia history. From the puzzle of lost confederate gold to a woman who mysteriously spent her life waving at more than 50,000 passing ships, this selection of stories from Georgia's past explores some of the Peach State's most compelling mysteries and debunks some of its most famous myths.
A fascinating, creepy, frightening, disgusting, and hilarious collection of some of the world's most popular and enduring tall tales. With themes that run the gamut from funny to sick, risqué to informative, and frightening to disgusting, Urban Legends features fantastic yarns that are remarkable for their uncanny ability to travel the world by word of mouth. We've all heard the one about the alligators that roam New York City's sewers, or how "Mikey" of Life Cereal fame died from eating Pop Rocks mixed with Coke. And what about the flustered parents who left their baby on the car roof, or the scuba diver who was found in the middle of a forest after a fire? These classic tall tales are featured here in all of their creepy glory along with hundreds of others, and they're guaranteed to amuse, enlighten, and intrigue, but be careful: they may stick in your mind forever.
Part of our growing Mysteries and Legends series, Mysteries and Legends of Texas explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Texas's history. Each episode included in the book is a story unto itself, and the tone and style of the book is lively and easy to read for a general audience interested in Texas history.
Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.
For several hundred years, the West had been the land of dreams, an extraordinary region of hope, expansion and opportunity where European countries—and then the young USA itself—sent their finest explorers to plant seeds in a seemingly untapped, open landscape. This spirit captured the popular imagination in the Wild West, those raucous 30 years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of a new century. Within these pages, readers will explore true tales of rebels and heroes such as General George Custer, Buffalo Bill, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Annie Oakley, and Sitting Bull, among others. The Wild West was the American Dream on steroids. It was an age of gunfights and gold rushes, cowboys and Comanches, with the likes of Buffalo Bill, Jesse James and Billy the Kid making their names. It forged extraordinary legends and even bigger lies, with everything fueled by dime novels written back East that encouraged folks to grab their share of a promise that was difficult for this hard land to keep. This book looks at all these mythical characters, the start of the railroad across the nation, the cost it all dealt to the Native Americans whose land was lost, and the way Hollywood still keeps the dream alive. As historian Richard White says, “People could go west and no matter their failures elsewhere, they had an opportunity to remake themselves. It’s a symbol for a kind of individualism that actually doesn’t exist in the West, but mythically it does.”
5.5" X 8.5", Soft Cover---Yvonne Cruz, in a stunning debut as an Author, has written a 460-page Biography about her father, martial arts legend Grandmaster Freddie G. Cruz. Spanning seven decades and containing over 400 pictures, Yvonne Cruz spent over three years working on the project. ** Available everywhere Saturday 09/10/11 ** $1.00 from every sale/download will be donated to StandUp2Cancer (up to $1M). This book is not to be missed. Delve into the world of Grandmaster Cruz and see how he was able to succeed despite the circumstances around him. 5.5" x 8.5", perfect binding, white interior paper (50# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (100# weight), full-color exterior ink.
An irresistible collection of favorite writings from an author celebrated for his bravura style and sheer unpredictability Francis Spufford’s welcome first volume of collected essays gathers an array of his compelling writings from the 1990s to the present. He makes use of a variety of encounters with particular places, writers, or books to address deeper questions relating to the complicated relationship between story-telling and truth-telling. How must a nonfiction writer imagine facts, vivifying them to bring them to life? How must a novelist create a dependable world of story, within which facts are, in fact, imaginary? And how does a religious faith felt strongly to be true, but not provably so, draw on both kinds of writerly imagination? Ranging freely across topics as diverse as the medieval legends of Cockaigne, the Christian apologetics of C. S. Lewis, and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, Spufford provides both fresh observations and thought-provoking insights. No less does he inspire an irresistible urge to turn the page and read on.
