Jay Scot Bilas

The definitive biography of enigmatic golfer, commentator, and performer David Feherty—one of the most universally beloved figures in the game. John Feinstein, who has spent four decades finding intriguing sports characters and narratives and turning them into classic books, chronicles the life and career of David Feherty. The two have known each other for years, beginning with Feinstein’s work on A Good Walk Spoiled, researched and written at a time when Feherty was an excellent player, who won five times in Europe and was on the '91 Ryder Cup team, but also a functioning alcoholic. In retirement from the game, Feherty has sobered up, while his golf world persona has only grown in stature. Feherty is now a grand ambassador for golf, a man who is feted by US Presidents and respected by every big name in the game. Feinstein tells hilarious true tales about Feherty’s time in the limelight and interactions with stars such as Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Payne Stewart, and Seve Ballesteros. He also details Feherty’s struggles with alcoholism, the death of his son who was lost to addiction, and the highs and lows of Feherty’s marriages. Feinstein captures the human being behind the athlete, and his triumphant rebound as a golf commentator after his athletic career fell apart. Feherty is fall-down-funny, self-deprecating, and a lifelong underdog who has thrived as a commentator and television interview host, and most recently as a touring standup comic, using the difficult experiences of his life as a source for humor and understanding, which Feinstein mines with an expert’s touch.

Based on dozens of shocking interviews with some of the most influential names in sports, this is the urgent and revelatory examination of racial inequality in professional athletics America has been waiting for. Commentators, coaches, and fans alike have long touted the diverse rosters of leagues like the NFL and MLB as sterling examples of a post-racial America. Yet decades after Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a display of Black power and pride, and years after Colin Kaepernick shocked the world by kneeling for the national anthem, the role Black athletes and coaches are expected to perform—both on and off the field—still can be determined as much by stereotype and old-fashion ideology as ability and performance. Whether it’s the pre-game moments of resistance, the lack of diversity among coaching and managerial staff, or the consistent undervaluation of Black quarterbacks, racial politics impact every aspect of every sport being played—yet the gigantic salaries and glitzy lifestyles of pro athletes often disguise the ugly truths of how minority players are treated and discarded by their White bosses. John Feinstein crisscrossed the country to secure personal interviews with quarterbacks, coaches, and more, revealing the stories none of us have heard (but all of us should know). Seventy-five years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line, race is still a central and defining factor of America's professional sports leagues. With an encyclopedic knowledge of professional sports, and shrewd cultural criticism, bestselling and award-winning author John Feinstein uncovers not just why, but how, pro sports continue to perpetuate racial inequality. “None of us are trying to make race an issue. Race IS an issue.” (From the Foreword by Doug Williams)

LARRY MILLER is the tough-as-nails, fun-loving, working class bad boy who in the 1960s saved young North Carolina coach Dean Smith's job by winning his first two ACC titles and a trip to the National Championship game. A two-time All American, Miller is still the only Tar Heel ever named ACC Player of the Year twice. He was also the first heartthrob of the modern ACC before moving on to become "the Joe Namath of the ABA," setting the pro league's All-Time Single Game scoring record. And then he simply disappeared. Now, for the first time, North Carolina's foundational player shares priceless stories from the locker rooms, road trips, parties and fights of the teams that established Dean Smith's Tar Heel legacy… and from the raffish early days of modern pro basketball. It's all here: The charm of yesteryear's tiny Catasauqua, Pa., where a high school hero's blue collar hunger made him the most coveted recruit in the nation… The bribes dangled by unscrupulous colleges… The mysterious pills that caused young Larry to skip his H.S. All America Award banquet… The time he risked getting thrown out of college to save a buddy… The party at Kentucky that was so wild Coach Smith threatened to yank the entire team's scholarships… The game that so impressed Pat Conroy that he later wrote in My Losing Season, "I will never forget the dark fire of Larry Miller" – unaware that just hours later Miller almost fell out of a thirteenth-floor window in a girls' dorm… The night he upstaged Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels in concert… How Coach Smith negotiated a monster pro contract for him… Why Larry skedaddled from UNC one credit shy of graduation to escape a Duke frame-up… The flower power years in LA, playing 1-on-1 with the great Jim Brown and his staff of naked Swedish girls, dating Clint Eastwood's secretary, winning "The Dating Game," and the scuttlebutt behind Wilt Chamberlain's claim of bedding 20,000 women… The chaotic management of the ABA and the dark side of colorful coach Bones McKinney… Wild times with the early creators of NASCAR, and how he "stole" a night honoring Richard Petty… The jinxed playboy pad where Miller and others nearly died… How he outsmarted his vindictive draft board… Decades of Dean Smith's letters still coaching his most beloved and wayward player… and much, much more. Larry Keith of Sports Illustrated calls Larry Miller Time "the great untold story of Carolina basketball… a fascinating tale with an unexpected ending." Coach Roy Williams says, "Larry Miller was one of those mythical figures to me… he was one of my heroes." Charles Scott claims, "Larry was the winner who made Coach Smith a winner. Like Bill Russell started the Boston Celtics tradition, Larry Miller is the tradition that Carolina talks about. Everything starts with him." Featuring over 40 vintage photos and original interviews with teammates Billy Cunningham, Charles Scott, Big-10 commissioner Jim Delany, Coach Williams, and many others, Larry Miller Time is a candid, immersive narrative for every follower of UNC and classic basketball lore, and a Brigadoon of America's good old days.

Why are the best leaders the ones who are most adept at following? What should we expect of those who have the privilege of leading? And what may leaders expect of those who follow them? Drawing upon a military career spanning more than four decades, General Martin Dempsey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, examines the limits of loyalty, the necessity of sensible skepticism, and the value of responsible rebelliousness, and explains why we actually should sweat the small stuff. No Time for Spectators takes readers behind the closed doors of the Situation Room, onto the battlefields of Iraq, and to the East German border at the height of the Cold War. It contends that relationships between leaders and followers―employers and employees, politicians and constituents, coaches and athletes, teachers and students―are most productive when based on certain key mutual expectations. The book begins from the premise that life is not a spectator sport. Especially not today, especially not at a time when issues are so complex, information is so pervasive, scrutiny is so intense, and the stakes are so high. No Time for Spectators may not be the answer to all of our problems, but it is a clarion call for those who are actually interested in solving them.

Thirty years ago after changing the sports book landscape with his mega-hit, A Season on the Brink, #1 New York Times bestselling author John Feinstein returns to his first love--college basketball--with a fascinating and compelling journey through a landscape of unsung, unpublicized and often unknown heroes of Division-1 college hoops. John Feinstein has already taken readers into the inner circles of top college basketball programs in The Legends Club. This time, Feinstein pulls back the curtain on college basketball's lesser-known Cinderella stories--the smaller programs who no one expects to win, who have no chance of attracting the most coveted high school recruits, who rarely send their players on to the NBA. Feinstein follows a handful of players, coaches, and schools who dream, not of winning the NCAA tournament, but of making it past their first or second round games. Every once in a while, one of these coaches or players is plucked from obscurity to continue on to lead a major team or to play professionally, cementing their status in these fiercely passionate fan bases as a legend. These are the gifted players who aren't handled with kid gloves--they're hardworking, gritty teammates who practice and party with everyone else. With his trademark humor and invaluable connections, John Feinstein reveals the big time programs you've never heard of, the bracket busters you didn't expect to cheer for, and the coaches who inspire them to take their teams to the next level.

MP3 CD Format Elite level coaches, business owners, CEOs, and difference-makers from all walks of life share a common trait: they are masters at the process of evaluating. Film sessions are the life blood of any successful sports team, whether following a soaring win or a crushing loss. Nothing goes unchecked, and nothing gets taken for granted. They understand and respect a simple fact: the film doesn't lie. If you watched your personal “game film,"" would it show someone who is accountable to himself and his family, who turns belief into action? Or would you see someone complacent, out of balance or distracted from God's word? Film reveals the truth, and embracing truth is what leads to change, growth, and improvement. ESPN broadcaster and coach Jimmy Dykes guides readers through a tough but crucial evaluation process, incorporating wisdom from both sports and scripture as he demonstrates how to search your heart like a coach scrutinizes game film. Whether you're experiencing a difficult period in life or simply feel called to something greater, The Film Doesn't Lie is certain to provoke men to live with passion, conviction, and bold determination

Winning the NBA Championship in 2008. Losing in the NBA Finals in 2010. Though they were completely different endings, emotionally, both were amazing learning opportunities that author, Kevin Eastman, experienced as a member of the Boston Celtics coaching staff. These events, and many others from Kevin’s forty-plus years in the game, have motivated him to write Why the Best Are the Best. Kevin will take you behind the scenes and share an up-close look at how and why the best are the way they are. Why the Best Are the Best examines strategies to help you overcome mistakes and failures, as well as ways to turn them into your own personal success plan. More importantly, this book will help you see that these same mindsets, habits, and strategies are not just for elite athletes or the otherwise famous. We can all insert them into our lives and careers to help us become our best. The best are the best, in part, because of the words they choose to live by. The best individuals and teams define their words, respect the power of those words, and use those words as a foundation for all they do. This book provides the 25 Power Words that will help you learn from the best to create a framework and mindset to become your best.

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST-SELLING BOOK NAMED BY THE WASHINGTON POST AS ONE OF THE 11 LEADERSHIP BOOKS TO READ IN 2018 Radical Inclusion: What the Post-9/11 World Should Have Taught Us About Leadership examines today’s leadership landscape and describes the change it demands of leaders. Dempsey and Brafman persuasively explain that today’s leaders are in competition for the trust and confidence of those they lead more than ever before. They assert that the nature of power is changing and should not be measured by degree of control alone. They offer principles for adaptation and bring them to life with examples from business, academia, government, and the military. In building their argument, Dempsey and Brafman introduce several concepts that illuminate both the vulnerability and the opportunity in leading today: Radical Inclusion. Fear of losing control in our fast-paced, complex, highly scrutinized environment is pushing us toward exclusion―exactly the wrong direction. Leaders should instead develop an instinct for inclusion. The word “radical” emphasizes the urgency of doing so. The Era of the Digital Echo. The speed and accessibility of information create “digital echoes” that make facts vulnerable, eroding the trust between leader and follower. Relinquishing Control to Preserve Power. Power and control once went hand in hand, but no longer. In today’s environment, control is seductive but unlikely to produce optimum, affordable, sustainable solutions. Leaders must relinquish and share control to build and preserve power. The principles discussed in Radical Inclusion are memorable and the book is full of engaging stories. From a young vegan’s confrontation with opponents in Berkeley to a young lieutenant’s surprising visitor during the Cold War, from a reflection on the significance of Burning Man to a discussion of challenges faced in the Situation Room, Radical Inclusion will provide you with leadership tools to address real leadership challenges.

What makes a coach great? How do great coaches turn a collection of individuals into a coherent “us”? Seth Davis, one of the keenest minds in sports journalism, has been thinking about that question for twenty-five years. It’s one of the things that drove him to write the definitive biography of college basketball’s greatest coach, John Wooden, Wooden: A Coach’s Life. But John Wooden coached a long time ago. The world has changed, and coaching has too, tremendously. Seth Davis decided to embark on a proper investigation to get to the root of the matter. In Getting to Us, Davis probes and prods the best of the best from the landscape of active coaches of football and basketball, college and pro—from Urban Meyer, Dabo Swinney, and Jim Harbaugh to Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Izzo, Jim Boeheim, Brad Stevens, Geno Auriemma, and Doc Rivers—to get at the fundamental ingredients of greatness in the coaching sphere. There’s no single right way, of course—part of the great value of this book is Davis’s distillation of what he has learned about different types of greatness in coaching, and what sort of leadership thrives in one kind of environment but not in others. Some coaches have thrived at the college level but not in the pros. Why? What’s the difference? Some coaches are stern taskmasters, others are warm and cuddly; some are brilliant strategists but less emotionally involved with their players, and with others it’s vice versa. In Getting to Us, we come to feel a deep connection with the most successful and iconic coaches in all of sports—big winners and big characters, whose stories offer much of enduring interest and value.