Mickey Mantle


Book Description

Mickey Mantle tells stories about his career; includes film footage of game highlights.




A Hero All His Life


Book Description

The wife and sons of baseball great Mickey Mantle tell the story of their private lives with a husband and father who was always in the public eye and almost never home, discussing their battles with alcoholism and sharing details of the closeness they were finally able to attain in Mickey's final years.




An American Dream


Book Description

In this wild battering ram of a novel, which was originally published to vast controversy in 1965, Norman Mailer creates a character who might be a fictional precursor of the philosopher-killer he would later profile in The Executioner’s Song. As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go. Praise for An American Dream “Perhaps the only serious New York novel since The Great Gatsby.”—Joan Didion, National Review “A devil’s encyclopedia of our secret visions and desires . . . the expression of a devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life “A work of fierce concentration . . . perfectly, and often brilliantly, realistic [with] a pattern of remarkable imaginative coherence and intensity.”—Harper’s “At once violent, educated, and cool . . . This is our history as Hawthorne might have written it.”—Commentary Praise for Norman Mailer “[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.”—The New York Times “A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.”—The New Yorker “Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.”—The Washington Post “A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.”—Life “Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.”—The New York Review of Books “The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.”—Chicago Tribune “Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.”—The Cincinnati Post




Yogi


Book Description

Discover the definitive biography of Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees icon, winner of 10 World Series championships, and the most-quoted player in baseball history. Lawrence "Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too--right to Berra's face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he'd never make it in the big leagues. Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he ever cared about. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about. Berra couldn't allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to keep him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game--at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and four years of reporting, Jon Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success--on and off the playing field--as well as his failures; how the man who insisted "I really didn't say everything I said!" nonetheless shaped decades of America's culture; and how Berra's humility and grace redefined what it truly means to be a star. Overshadowed on the field by Joe DiMaggio early in his career and later by a youthful Mickey Mantle, Berra emerges as not only the best loved Yankee but one of the most appealingly simple, innately complex, and universally admired men in all of America.




Stan Musial


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Veteran sports journalist George Vecsey finally gives this twenty-time All-Star and St. Louis Cardinals icon the biographical treatment he deserves. Stan Musial is the definitive portrait of one of the game’s best-loved but most unappreciated legends—told through the remembrances of those who played beside, worked with, and covered “Stan the Man” over the course of his nearly seventy years in the national spotlight. Away from the diamond, Musial proved a savvy businessman and a model of humility and graciousness toward his many fans in St. Louis and around the world. From Keith Hernandez’s boyhood memories of Musial leaving tickets for him when the Cardinals were in San Francisco to the little-known story of Musial’s friendship with novelist James Michener, Vecsey weaves an intimate oral history around one of the great gentlemen of baseball’s Greatest Generation.




Sandy Koufax


Book Description

“Leavy has hit it out of the park…A lot more than a biography. It’s a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero’s self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory… a remarkably rich portrait.” — Time The New York Times bestseller about the baseball legend and famously reclusive Dodgers’ pitcher Sandy Koufax, from award-winning former Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy. Sandy Koufax reveals, for the first time, what drove the three-time Cy Young award winner to the pinnacle of baseball and then—just as quickly—into self-imposed exile.




Joe DiMaggio


Book Description

This is the life story of Joe DiMaggio, including his first game with the New York Yankees in the 1930s, his marriage to Marilyn Monroe & his rise to hero status. Richard Ben Cramer tells of the ways in which fame can both build & destroy.




It's All about Relationships


Book Description

In It’s All About Relationships, Jimmy Walker, insurance agent to the stars and creator of Celebrity Fight Night, tells stories and lessons from some of his most important relationships in business and life and inspires readers to use their unique gifts and key relationships to build a life that matters. Jimmy Walker doesn’t consider himself a celebrity, but he has many famous friends. He has spent nearly six decades building relationships with business people, professional athletes, and entertainers. This list includes names like Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Andrea Bocelli, David Foster, Reba McEntire, and Reggie Jackson. As a young boy, Jimmy was never afraid to strike up a conversation with a celebrity or famous athlete (he was even known to call Mickey Mantle collect). It’s that tenacity that helped him become a successful insurance agent to the stars, as well as create the renowned Celebrity Fight Night in America and Italy alongside Muhammad Ali and Andrea Bocelli, which has given away over $90 million to charity. In It’s All about Relationships, Jimmy tells stories and lessons from some of his most important relationships in business and life and shares many of the missteps and mistakes he has made along the way. He recounts the heartbreaking loss of his son, Scott, to an overdose and says there is no greater loss or pain in life for a parent than losing a child. That experience has made him passionate about helping people recovering from addiction and determined to open sober living homes in the state of Arizona. Finally, Jimmy shares of his faith in God—his most important relationship—and how it has sustained him and carried him through both the good and the hard times in his life. Jimmy’s extraordinary life will inspire you to invest in the relationships you have and use your unique gifts to serve and give to those in need. By nurturing your most important relationships, you can build a life has meaning and purpose. You can build a life that matters. One hundred percent of the profits from this book will go to develop sober living homes in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona—to fulfill his son’s dream to help those fighting addiction.




The Mick


Book Description

Recounts Mickey Mantle's life as a New York Yankee--both public and private.