Biography & Autobiography

Much like the careers forged by Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer, Jones's record stands as a landmark in golf history. By the time he retired from competitive golf in 1930 at the age of twenty-eight, Jones had won four U.S. Opens, three British Opens, and five U.S. Amateur titles -- all without ever earning a dime for any of his triumphs. Jones's status as the greatest amateur golfer, if not the greatest golfer ever, was clinched in 1930 when he won each of those three tournaments as well as the coveted British Amateur. That made him the only golfer ever to win all four Grand Slam events in one calender year.

In I Remember Bobby Jones, the indomitable golfer and successful businessman is remembered -- in their own words -- by dozens of fellow golfers, journalists, golf industry leaders, friends, relatives, and followers of the game. The portrait is of a man and champion who embodied sportsmanship and brought the words classic and golf together in one phrase.

BASEBALL LEGEND—AMERICAN HERO

Years after being banned from Major League Baseball “for life” because of alleged sports gambling, Pete Rose continues to be a colorful and controversial newsmaker. His frequent appeals to Commissioner Bud Selig for reinstatement have had the overwhelming support of fans, reflecting the enthusiasm Rose brought to the game and the passion he has generated over the years.

Rose played twenty-four seasons before retiring in 1986 with numerous records; most career hits (4,256), most games played (3,562), most at-bats (14,053), most seasons with 200 or more hits (10), and most winning games played in (1,972). During a career with the Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, and Montreal Expos, Rose was the National League’s Rookie of the Year in 1963 and its Most Valuable Player in 1973. In addition to winning three batting titles and two Gold Glove Awards, he also was the World Series MVP with Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine” team that won the 1975 world championship.

In Pete Rose: Baseball’s Charlie Hustle, dozens of the people who know him best—teammates, opposing players, friends, fans, hometown acquaintances, and baseball experts—share their memories of the man and the player. Among the many aspects of his life explored are his competitive zeal even as a Little Leaguer, his athletic success in high school, his on-fields scrapes and collisions, his leadership role on the Big Red Machine, his leaving the Reds to join the Phillies, his record-setting 44-games hitting streak, his pursuit of Ty Cobb’s all-time hits record, his turbulent days as manager of the Reds, his banishment from baseball, and his various enterprises after baseball.

If ever there was a perfect meshing of franchise, coach, and on-field leader, it was the silver-white-and-blue Cowboys of the seventies with Tom Landry strolling the sidelines in his trademark fedora and the unflappable Staubach barking signals. He led the NFL in passing five times, and when he retired at age thirty-seven he departed the game in possession of the highest quarterback rating of all time. After his retirement from football, he pretty much left the game behind, forsaking a shot at coaching or television commentary to focus his energies on the corporate world as chairman and CEO of the Staubach Company, a diversified commercial real estate company.

Roger Staubach: Captain America is an oral history of Staubach's life, times, and career. It is told in the words of dozens of former teammates and opponents, friends, business associates, civic leaders, acquaintances, and others who have known him over the years. Staubach turned sixty in 2002, and this book offers a touching and telling testimonial to a true American hero and role model.

If ever there was a perfect meshing of franchise, coach, and on-field leader, it was the silver-white-and-blue Cowboys of the seventies with Tom Landry strolling the sidelines in his trademark fedora and the unflappable Staubach barking signals. He led the NFL in passing five times, and when he retired at age thirty-seven he departed the game in possession of the highest quarterback rating of all time. After his retirement from football, he pretty much left the game behind, forsaking a shot at coaching or television commentary to focus his energies on the corporate world as chairman and CEO of the Staubach Company, a diversified commercial real estate company.

Roger Staubach: Captain America is an oral history of Staubach's life, times, and career. It is told in the words of dozens of former teammates and opponents, friends, business associates, civic leaders, acquaintances, and others who have known him over the years. Staubach turned sixty in 2002, and this book offers a touching and telling testimonial to a true American hero and role model.

On July 17, 1981, Coach Bryant sat in his office at Memorial Coliseum reminiscing with sports columnist Al Browning of the Tuscaloosa News. Contemplating the twilight of his career, he calmly said, ""They'll forget me as soon as I croak and am buried"". When Browning objected, Coach smiled slightly and said, ""No, that's the way it is. Life moves on, and people find interest in other things"".

While Bryant's memory may have faded slightly, he certainly has not been forgotten, and I Remember Paul ""Bear"" Bryant is a glowing testimony to the love that those who knew him best continue to have for him to this day. Here dozens of his contemporaries, former players, childhood friends, family, competitors, opponents, and his ""boys"" offer in their own words their favorite memories of this man they loved so much. They recall ordinary moments as well as extraordinary ones; they recall moments of joyful victory and bitter defeat; they recall memories of the gridiron discipline he dished out and the thoughtful, helpful guidance he offered to his players, even long after they had graduated and gone on to their own careers.

While Bryant has moved on from this life, he has not been forgotten, and the personal memories included in IRemember Paul ""Bear"" Bryant proves it beyond doubt.

While that Cinderella story was Valvano's only national championship, he quickly came to symbolize the exuberance and excellence of the exciting world of college basketball. Valvano transcended his sport, touching millions as he emerged as one of the most charismatic and, ultimately, courageous figures in American life who touched millions.

Diagnosed with bone cancer, he joined ESPN to comment on college basketball games. Later he received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at ESPN's first ESPY Awards, where he announced that he was starting the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Shortly after receiving the award, he died at the age of forty-seven. In I Remember Jim Valvano, he is remembered by former players, fellow coaches, a variety of other basketball experts, close associates, and many others as one of college basketball's great movers and shakers, a man with a heart as big as his popularity. Valvano's life is the classic story of courage and determination as borne out in his memorable line: Don't give up. Don't ever give up"".

DiMaggio's baseball career began in 1932 when he filled in at shortstop at midseason for a minor league team. In 1934 he became the property of the New York Yankees, which marked the beginning of his road toward greatness in the nation's most famous city on one of the most hallowed fields in the sport. Off the field, his life was marked by a famous marriage to and divorce from Marilyn Monroe, a late-1960s popular song, and a somewhat unhappy retirement.

On baseball's one hundredth anniversary in 1969, he was voted the greatest living player of the game, and the Yankees erected a plaque to him among the memorials to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. On March 8, 1999, at the age of eighty-four, DiMaggio died after a five-month battle with cancer.

In I Remember Joe DiMaggio, dozens of the great ballplayer's contemporaries, teammates, coaches, fans, friends, and relatives recall their favorite memories and anecdotes of this man who became an icon of America. It is a warm, entertaining, and inspiring book about a man whose fame has been the stuff of legend for more than half a century.

In this exposition of Lewis's legacy, Terry Glaspey offers a clear view of the character of this extraordinarily gifted man who believed that his sharp mind and rich imagination were to be accompanied by a sense of responsibility to the wider world. Thus this book demonstrates why, two generations after his death, Lewis continues to be numbered among our best-selling authors and our most influential thinkers.

First published in hardcover asThe Women in Lincoln's Life,this paperback is a revised and expanded version with a foreword by Frank Williams, chairman of the prestigious Lincoln Forum, sidebars, and an appendix on the Lincoln-Rutledge romance and engagement.

Abraham Lincoln was no ladies' man. Part of his awkwardness with women was due to his lanky, rough appearance, but he also floundered in no small part due to the emotional burdens he bore after the death of his mother when he was only nine years old, the death of his sister when he was eighteen, and the death of his first love, Ann Rutledge, shortly after they had become engaged (a point that author H. Donald Winkler explores and asserts).

As a result, Lincoln cultivated an emotional barrier that antagonized some women who tried to be close to him. He may even have been incapable of loving anyone as he did Ann Rutledge, and so he fumbled his way through other courtships and two rejected proposals of marriage. Then he stumbled into an unlikely relationship with aristocratic Mary Todd. Their tumultuous twenty-three years together were the scuttlebutt of Springfield and the gossip of Washington.

Yet there were other women in Lincoln's life, and Winkler cites thirty of them in this book. Though they were not always romantic relationships, they affected his personally and professionally. And despite his awkwardness, these relationships were as positive for the women as they were for Lincoln himself.

Attracted to the Virginia Military Institute in 1851, he resigned his commission in the army a year later. He left VMI in 1861 to join the Confederate army. Immediately commissioned a colonel, within months he had been promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He was mortally wounded by friendly fire at the May 1863 battle of Chancellorsville and died a week later.

Revered as a brilliant military leader, tactician, and one of the most adroit Confederate commanders, Jackson is a study in contrasts. He was justifiably feared by his enemies and totally beloved by his men. Yet his humble and sincere faith seemed at odds with his reputation as a ferocious warrior.

All Things for Good is a thoughtful new volume in the Leaders in Action Series. In it J. Steven Wilkins challenges some of the myths that surround Stonewall Jackson and celebrates his devout Christian faith.

In 1647 the Reverend John Woodbridge, her brother-in-law, sailed for England with a manuscript of Anne's poetry, unbeknownst to her. While there, he arranged to have the book published under the title of The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.

When the book was presented to her after publication, Anne was thoroughly embarrassed but also pleased. Eventually she owned up to the volume as her rambling brat."" Subsequent generations have valued her gifts as a poet, and her poetry remains in print to this day.

Beyond Stateliest Marble is a look at the personal qualities of Anne Bradstreet, the vibrant poetry she created, and her contributions to the way of life of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Even to those who know something of her, Anne Bradstreet remains an enigmatic figure. For one thing, there is no surviving portrait of her. To the modern mind she seems an odd combination -- a dedicated Puritan and a gifted poet.

An Inspiration for Anyone Who Wonders If the Time for Adventure Has Passed

This is the story of a middle-aged businesswoman who left a successful career to see if she could find something more meaningful to do with her life. A noncyclist, Eloise Hanner joined the first Big Ride (sponsored by the American Lung Association), in which more than seven hundred bicycle riders crossed the country from Seattle to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1998. To Hanner, the ride represented a new beginning fraught with challenges and opportunities.

Starting from zero, she trained for several months to work up to where she could ride and average of more than eighty miles a day. What started as a bicycle odyssey, however, developed into a distilled version of life, where storms became life-threatening and strong friendships formed in days instead of weeks or months.

More than a travelogue, Hanner's account of the inaugural Big Ride is an examination of career and values and what to do with the second half of life—a question asked by many baby boomers as they approach fifty.

George "Bugs" Moran was the last of Chicago's spectacular North Side gang leaders, a colorful and violent dynasty that began with Dean O'Banion in 1920. In The Man That Got Away, author Rose Keefe provides the first in-depth look at the enigmatic gangster's charmed and wacky life from his Minnesota childhood to his early years as a horse thief. She chronicles his two marriages, his rise and fall in Chicago's Prohibition-era underworld, his life as an independent outlaw in the 1930s and '40s, and his last days in Leavenworth Penitentiary.

In the process of telling Moran's story, some of the twentieth century's most fascinating and bewildering gangland figures are revisited: Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, Dean O'Banion, Vincent "the Schemer" Drucci, Earl "Hymie" Weiss, showboating Chicago Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, the gang-hating but oddly pro-Moran Judge John H. Lyle, Virgil Summers, and Albert Fouts.

History did not record the details of Moran's Last confession, but the public record and Rose Keefe's interviews with Moran's former associates now allow us to form an educated guess.

In recent years historians have generated a more factual look at the life and times of the various Depression-era desperados. Until now Baby Face Nelson has remained as enigmatic and one-dimensional as he was then, portrayed by J. Edgar Hoover and newsmen as a trigger-happy punk who looked like a choirboy and killed without a conscience. Finally the full story of his short life can be told.

Using new information that comes from the formerly classified files of the FBI, the Nelson who emerges from the pages of Baby Face Nelson: Portrait of a Public Enemy is a more paradoxical and interesting figure than one might expect. Obviously addicted to crime in his youth and evidently intoxicated with violence near the end of his life, he came from an ordinary, honest middle-class family. In a surprising departure from the gangster norm, Nelson and his wife remained fiercely devoted to one another, and between holdups they often lived a quiet domestic life with their two children and, at times, Nelson's mother.

The main focus of this biography is on Nelson's remarkable criminal career, from sensational bank robberies and blazing gun battles up to his death at the age of twenty-five. Many misconceptions are corrected and some of the abuses of the FBI are exposed.

In recent years historians have generated a more factual look at the life and times of the various Depression-era desperados. Until now Baby Face Nelson has remained as enigmatic and one-dimensional as he was then, portrayed by J. Edgar Hoover and newsmen as a trigger-happy punk who looked like a choirboy and killed without a conscience. Finally the full story of his short life can be told.

Using new information that comes from the formerly classified files of the FBI, the Nelson who emerges from the pages of Baby Face Nelson: Portrait of a Public Enemy is a more paradoxical and interesting figure than one might expect. Obviously addicted to crime in his youth and evidently intoxicated with violence near the end of his life, he came from an ordinary, honest middle-class family. In a surprising departure from the gangster norm, Nelson and his wife remained fiercely devoted to one another, and between holdups they often lived a quiet domestic life with their two children and, at times, Nelson's mother.

The main focus of this biography is on Nelson's remarkable criminal career, from sensational bank robberies and blazing gun battles up to his death at the age of twenty-five. Many misconceptions are corrected and some of the abuses of the FBI are exposed.