Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps said, "I used this book as an inspiration for the biggest win of my career when we ended UCLA's all-time 88-game winning streak in 1974."

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. Click the Book to read the players telling their stories in their own words. This is the book that UCLA Athletic Director J.D. Morgan tried to ban.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information.


Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)(8/10):

by Tony Medley

They’re rioting in Africa
They’re starving in Spain
There’s hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
 
The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles
...
Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much
They're rioting in Africa.
There's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.

They’re Rioting in Africa, The Merry Minuet, Sheldon Harnick,1958; sung by The Kingston Trio

We live in a cocoon. All around us are worlds with people living lives of which we have little concept, often of quiet desperation. This brilliant documentary by first-timer Jason Kohn presents what life is like in Sao Paolo, Brazil, a city teeming with 20 million inhabitants, the vast majority of whom live in slums.

Kohn tells the story of the everyday horror of normal people living in this hellhole through several people, all of whom, with the exception of the corrupt politician, tell their experiences in their own words. Interlaced are the tales of Mr. M, a businessman who talks of all the steps he has taken to protect himself from being kidnapped on the street, including driving a bullet-proof car and considering the insertion of a chip that could be used to locate him at all times.

Then there’s a lovely young woman who actually was kidnapped, who had her ears cut off, one at a time, and sent to her family with a ransom demand. She tells of her 16-day horror with a smile on her face, but the brutality will be with her for the rest of her life.

There’s a heroic plastic surgeon who replaces the ears of victims who have been abused as the young woman was. We see almost the entire surgery, interspersed throughout the film, including the incision in the chest to get the cartilage, the cutting of the cartilage, and the insertion of the cartilage as the new ear. This is not a film for the squeamish, but the surgery is fascinating and shown without exploitation.

Kohn has extensive interviews with a masked, sociopathic kidnapper who shows no emotion for the mutilations he performs on his victims, all the while rationalizing what he does by saying that he gives much of what he gets to the poor in the slums.

Finally there is the tale of the corrupt politician, one of Brazil’s most powerful. We see those trying to bring him to justice and learn his fate.

This is a mesmerizing, tense, exciting documentary that makes one appreciate life in America. It is only playing in a very few theaters and for a short period of time, but it is a film that should not be missed.

September 3, 2007

 

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