Basketball's Greatest Buzzer-Beaters and Other Crunch-Time Heroics


Book Description

When the clock is ticking down and the stakes are high, some players seize the moment and make themselves legends. From buzzer-beating half-court shots to thunderous last-second dunks, some of basketball's greatest moments are chronicled in vivid fashion here. You've got a courtside seat to the action.




The Game


Book Description

Marcus and his best friend Taj have never been great at basketball. But during the final game of the season, their coach finally gives them the chance to play. As the minutes count down, Marcus chokes and misses his shot while Taj saves the day with a buzzer-beater. That night Marcus receives a text from an unknown number asking if he would like a do-over. He accepts and gets to relive the game and make the winning shot. But will correcting his mistake be worth taking away his best friend's moment to shine?




Linspired, Kids Edition


Book Description

Linspired reveals the inside story of the remarkable and meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin, superstar of the New York Knicks the first Asian-American-born player of Chinese/Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA. Discover the journey of the underdog who beat the odds to reach his current stardom and catch the attention of the sports world with both his incredible basketball skills and his on and off-court example of faith, persistence, and hard work. After receiving no athletic scholarship offers out of high school and not being drafted by an NBA team after graduating from Harvard, Lin signed a deal with his hometown team of the Golden State Warriors. After only his first year of play he was waived by the Warriors, but he was picked up by the Houston Rockets. Again, he was let go, on Christmas Eve, 2011. In spite of this disappointment, Lin always remained positive and trusted that God had a plan for his life and talents. Soon after, Lin was picked up when the New York Knicks needed a guard. After weeks of sitting on the bench, a teammate’s injury placed Lin on the court, and since then he has captivated sports fans throughout the world with his tremendous skill and humble response.




Born to Run


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller 'A sensation ... a rollicking tale well told' - The Times At the heart of Born to Run lies a mysterious tribe of Mexican Indians, the Tarahumara, who live quietly in canyons and are reputed to be the best distance runners in the world; in 1993, one of them, aged 57, came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing a toga and sandals. A small group of the world's top ultra-runners (and the awe-inspiring author) make the treacherous journey into the canyons to try to learn the tribe's secrets and then take them on over a course 50 miles long. With incredible energy and smart observation, McDougall tells this story while asking what the secrets are to being an incredible runner. Travelling to labs at Harvard, Nike, and elsewhere, he comes across an incredible cast of characters, including the woman who recently broke the world record for 100 miles and for her encore ran a 2:50 marathon in a bikini, pausing to down a beer at the 20 mile mark.




The Tipping Point


Book Description

From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas. “A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person looks at the world.” —Michael Lewis




Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town


Book Description

Cory Doctorow's miraculous novel of family history, Internet connectivity, and magical secrets Alan is a middle-aged entrepeneur who moves to a bohemian neighborhood of Toronto. Living next door is a young woman who reveals to him that she has wings—which grow back after each attempt to cut them off. Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, and among his brothers are sets of Russian nesting dolls. Now two of the three dolls are on his doorstep, starving, because their innermost member has vanished. It appears that Davey, another brother who Alan and his siblings killed years ago, may have returned, bent on revenge. Under the circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to join a scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet, spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles from scavenged parts. But Alan's past won't leave him alone—and Davey isn't the only one gunning for him and his friends. Whipsawing between the preposterous, the amazing, and the deeply felt, Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is unlike any novel you have ever read. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




English Grammar For Dummies


Book Description

A few years ago, a magazine sponsored a contest for the comment most likely to end a conversation. The winning entry? "I teach English grammar." Just throw that line out at a party; everyone around you will clam up or start saying "whom." Why does grammar make everyone so nervous? Probably because English teachers, for decades – no, for centuries – have been making a big deal out of grammar in classrooms, diagramming sentences and drilling the parts of speech, clauses, and verbals into students until they beg for mercy. Happily, you don't have to learn all those technical terms of English grammar – and you certainly don't have to diagram sentences – in order to speak and write correct English. So rest assured – English Grammar For Dummies will probably never make your English teacher's top-ten list of must-read books, because you won't have to diagram a single sentence. What you will discover are fun and easy strategies that can help you when you're faced with such grammatical dilemmas as the choice between "I" and "me," "had gone" and "went," and "who" and "whom." With English Grammar For Dummies, you won't have to memorize a long list of meaningless rules (well, maybe a couple in the punctuation chapter!), because when you understand the reason for a particular word choice, you'll pick the correct word automatically. English Grammar For Dummies covers many other topics as well, such as the following: Verbs, adjectives, and adverbs – oh my! Preposition propositions and pronoun pronouncements Punctuation: The lowdown on periods, commas, colons, and all those other squiggly marks Possession: It's nine-tenths of grammatical law Avoiding those double negative vibes How to spice up really boring sentences (like this one) Top Ten lists on improving your proofreading skills and ways to learn better grammar Just think how improving your speaking and writing skills will help you in everyday situations, such as writing a paper for school, giving a presentation to your company's big wigs, or communicating effectively with your family. You will not only gain the confidence in knowing you're speaking or writing well, but you'll also make a good impression on those around you!




The Wolf of Wall Street


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids waiting at home and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king, here, in Jordan Belfort’s own words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called the Wolf of Wall Street. In the 1990s, Belfort became one of the most infamous kingpins in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. It’s an extraordinary story of greed, power, and excess that no one could invent: the tale of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices to making hundreds of millions—until it all came crashing down. Praise for The Wolf of Wall Street “Raw and frequently hilarious.”—The New York Times “A rollicking tale of [Jordan Belfort’s] rise to riches as head of the infamous boiler room Stratton Oakmont . . . proof that there are indeed second acts in American lives.”—Forbes “A cross between Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Scorsese’s GoodFellas . . . Belfort has the Midas touch.”—The Sunday Times (London) “Entertaining as pulp fiction, real as a federal indictment . . . a hell of a read.”—Kirkus Reviews




How Asia Works


Book Description

“A good read for anyone who wants to understand what actually determines whether a developing economy will succeed.” —Bill Gates, “Top 5 Books of the Year” An Economist Best Book of the Year from a reporter who has spent two decades in the region, and who the Financial Times said “should be named chief myth-buster for Asian business.” In How Asia Works, Joe Studwell distills his extensive research into the economies of nine countries—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China—into an accessible, readable narrative that debunks Western misconceptions, shows what really happened in Asia and why, and for once makes clear why some countries have boomed while others have languished. Studwell’s in-depth analysis focuses on three main areas: land policy, manufacturing, and finance. Land reform has been essential to the success of Asian economies, giving a kick-start to development by utilizing a large workforce and providing capital for growth. With manufacturing, industrial development alone is not sufficient, Studwell argues. Instead, countries need “export discipline,” a government that forces companies to compete on the global scale. And in finance, effective regulation is essential for fostering, and sustaining growth. To explore all of these subjects, Studwell journeys far and wide, drawing on fascinating examples from a Philippine sugar baron’s stifling of reform to the explosive growth at a Korean steel mill. “Provocative . . . How Asia Works is a striking and enlightening book . . . A lively mix of scholarship, reporting and polemic.” —The Economist




Dwyane


Book Description

The long-awaited photographic memoir from basketball superstar Dwyane Wade, beautifully designed with hundreds of photos from Wade’s life on and off the court. "[A] trip down memory lane with one of the NBA's greats. ... For those yearning for the personal side of Wade, they need to look no further." —Sports Illustrated For 16 years, Dwyane Wade has dazzled basketball fans with his on-court artistry and has built his personal brand into one of the most powerful ones in sports. In this beautiful full-color memoir, featuring more than 200 photos from Bob Metelus, who has been documenting Wade’s career for more than a decade, Wade takes readers inside his fascinating life and career. Dwyane moves from Wade’s challenging upbringing on the South Side of Chicago through his college career at Marquette, where he went from unheralded recruit to one of college basketball’s greatest stars, to his extraordinary years with the Miami Heat, with whom he won three NBA championships and was named an All-Star 13 times. Off the court, too, his star has transcended basketball. In Dwyane he takes readers inside his relationship with Gabrielle Union; his dedication to his children and experiences as a father; and his varied interests outside of basketball, from fashion to winemaking. Dwyane is a deep dive into the mind and heart of one of the most compelling basketball players of all time.