Bluebacks and Silver Brights

From the mobbed-up steel city of Youngstown, Ohio, Mancini was cast as the savior of a sport: a righteous kid in a corrupt game, symbolically potent and demographically perfect, the last white ethnic. He fought for those left behind in busted-out mill towns across America. But most of all, he fought for his father. Lenny Mancini—the original Boom Boom, as he was called—had been a lightweight contender himself. But the elder Mancini’s dream ended on a battlefield in November 1944, when fragments from a German mortar shell nearly killed him. Almost four decades later, Ray promised to win the title his father could not. What came of that vow was a feel-good fable for network television.

But it all came apart November 13, 1982, in a brutal battle at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Mancini’s obscure Korean challenger, Duk Koo Kim, went down in the 14th round and never regained consciousness. Three months later, Kim’s despondent mother took her own life. The deaths would haunt Ray and ruin his carefully crafted image, suddenly transforming boxing’s All-American Boy into a pariah.

Now, thirty years after that nationally televised bout, Mark Kriegel finally uncovers the story’s full dimensions. In tracking the Mancini and Kim families across generations, Kriegel exacts confessions and excavates mysteries—from the killing of Mancini’s brother to the fate of Kim’s son. In scenes both brutal and tender, the narrative moves from Youngstown to New York, Vegas to Seoul, Reno to Hollywood, where the inevitably romantic idea of a fighter comes up against reality.

Ever since his astonishing victory in the 1991 PGA Championship, John Daly, known affectionately on the PGA Tour as "Big 'Un," has enthralled fans with his big drives, bigger personality, and "Grip It and Rip It" approach to golf -- and to life.

Long John, usually seen with a Marlboro Light dangling from his lip, is the unchained, unpredictable, unapologetic bad boy of professional golf. "The only rules I follow," JD likes to say, "are the Rules of Golf."

Daly's play-it-as-it-lays approach drives My Life in and out of the Rough, a thrillingly -- and sometimes shockingly -- candid memoir of a larger-than-life athlete battling assorted addictions (alcohol, gambling, chocolate, sex), his weight, and, perhaps worst of all, divorce lawyers. (He's been married four times.)

A two-time major winner before he turned thirty, John Daly is one of the most popular athletes in the world. Taking readers with him off the fairway and into his $1.5-million motor home for a rollicking ride through his life -- an ever-churning world of booze, burgers, casinos, country music, and breathtaking moonshots -- Daly reveals how a down-home Everyman from Arkansas managed to rise to the peak of the golf world, escape from the depths of abject depression, and, finally, take control of his life.

Well, sort of.

The unique life story of late golfer Moe Norman

Moe Norman has been called “The Mysterious Genius of Golf.” His swing, his mannerisms, and his lifestyle were unusual to say the least: Moe played very quickly, never took a practice swing, often repeated phrases when talking, and lived in motel rooms most of this life. Moe, who died in 2004 at age 75, suffered from crippling insecurity and introversion, which kept him from succeeding at the highest levels of play. Yet Tiger Woods has said that only Moe and Ben Hogan actually “owned” their swings, and Moe described himself as “the happiest guy on two feet.”

In Moe and Me, Lorne Rubenstein, a sports journalist who knew Moe for 40 years, examines Moe Norman’s unique swing, his character, and how he lived his life well, despite being limited in significant ways. Rubenstein also offers his views on what made Moe special and what this most sensitive and peculiar man meant to him and to others.