Once upon a time, there hailed a man from Memphis, a modern day adventurer with a Confederacy of Dunces aiming to bring him down. His enemies:a former high school friend turned cokehead, a lie-mongering newswoman who fiends for sex and unearned money, a pistol-packing homosexual with a badge and a deadly axe to grind and an escaped convict lusting for revenge. Bruin's Wake is the story of Paul Bruin, an enigmatic character who trapses from one adventure to the next. Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas. 201 Poplar. Florida State University. Oxford, Mississippi. They're all stops on the road leading back to Memphis. But will pride,his greatest nemesis of all, finally get the best of him?
Among the "Original Six" National Hockey League clubs to survive the Great Depression, the Boston Bruins have a vibrant history. Entering the 2019-2020 campaign, the team ranked fourth all-time, with six Stanley Cup championships. Some of the most gifted players in NHL history have skated for the Bruins over the years. This detailed survey tells the individual stories of the players and coaches, past and present, who have helped make the Bruins perennial contenders for close to a century.
UCLA basketball is history as much as tradition. From the early days when the lack of reasonable travel options forced the Bruins to play local high school teams, to the World War II years against the studio teams from Hollywood, to the almost surreal success during the 1960s and 70s, to beyond. Jackie Robinson played basketball at UCLA. So did Rafer Johnson. They were part of the era when the Bruins often struggled for wins, strange as that would come to sound for a program that would one day have 88 of them in a row. Lew Alcindor came from the East to dominate, Bill Walton from the West to maintain the greatness, John Wooden from the heartland of Indiana to lead them both, and to lead them all. The Bruin 100 recounts—in order of importance to the sport and the programs—how Wooden nearly didn't come to UCLA and the moment when Alcindor was glad he did. It chronicles the guard who later won the Nobel Peace Prize, the forward who helped save a life in the afternoon and a team later that night, the center who wasn't a superstar but played like it to keep the dynasty alive. It brings back the people and the moments, the most storied games in the most successful of programs. The national championships, the loss to Houston in what has been called the Game of the Century. The record winning streak, the loss to North Carolina State in the Final Four that still pains. The coast-to-coast run by Tyus Edney against Missouri, the even-more-improbable run by Larry Brown's underdog team to reach the title game. Relive the tradition, some parts of which are not even detailed in the record books, through photos and anecdotes and the foreward by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Or live it for the first time.
Bench Bosses celebrates the greatest NHL Coaches in the history of the game. Bench Bosses is filled with compelling biographical narrative, innovative analysis, historical allusion, hockey folklore, humour, heartbreak, and tragedy. By introducing a creative new method for evaluating coaching success, professional historian and hockey columnist Matthew DiBiase settles many a debate. His hard-hitting prose and cogent analysis covers key aspects of coaching and definitively identifies the greatest offensive and defensive coaches, expounds on the best penalty-killing or power-play coaches and delves into statistics to determine the nastiest squads on the ice. His unique assessment method determines his selection of the top fifty head coaches of all time. DiBiase's in-depth hockey research delivers a powerful, gripping and informative look at the game's best of the best. This seminal book tells the story behind the story of coaching success. It removes subjectivity and bias and provides a comprehensive overview of each coach's major career achievements and the contributions each has made to the game. In the writing of this book, the author personally interviewed many of the game's best known coaches and their players to get the most accurate and complete perspective of the sport and its coaching elite. Readers will enjoy hearing from such names as Scotty Bowman, Al Arbour, Jean Beliveau, Dick Irving Jr., and more.
When Coach John Wooden graduated from eighth grade his father gave him a handwritten card and said, "Son, try to live up to this." On the card, his father had written seven simple yet profound life principles: Be true to yourself Help others Make friendship a fine art Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible Make each day your masterpiece Build a shelter against a rainy day by the life you live Give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day These principles were the key to Coach Wooden's greatness--and his goodness. Through powerful stories and pithy advice, this book shares the wisdom that made Wooden happy and successful. This inspirational and conversational book will encourage, challenge, and motivate readers to build these principles into their own lives.
The Boston Bruins are one of the most successful and historic teams in the NHL, with six Stanley Cup championships and counting. Author Dale Arnold, as a longtime broadcaster for the team, has gotten to witness more than his fair share of that history up close and personal. Through singular anecdotes only Arnold can tell as well as conversations with current and past players, this book provides fans with a one-of-a-kind, insider's look into the great moments, the lowlights, and everything in between. Bruins fans will not want to miss this book.
Having played more than 7,500 regular-season and playoff games since the franchise's inception in 1924, the Boston Bruins have become an iconic National Hockey League team boasting a sizable fan base well beyond Massachusetts. In a century of spirited play, the Bruins have brought great joy--and great disappointment--to their passionate legions of followers across North America. Twenty-five of these games are presented here, chronologically, in great detail. Most will be known to hardcore followers of the Bruins, others may be on the obscure side. All of them combine to create a tapestry of triumphs, travails, cheers and tears. The book follows the club's fortunes from the early days of Eddie Shore and Tiny Thompson, through the halcyon seasons of the Kraut Line, forward to the dominant renaissance years of the Orr-Esposito 1970s, and into the third decade of the 21st century.
Th is book describes the authors childhood growing up on a farm, living with four generations of family including his sister, parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. The author describes many varied experiences, from helping his 90 year-old great grandmother churn butter the old-fashioned way to helping his grandfather feed the pigs and other animals on the farm. He writes about his interactions with many of the other people who lived in the same community, and some of the naughty things he and his friends did such as raiding apple orchards. This book gives the reader a clear idea of how life was on a farm in rural Quebec in the 1950s.
