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.

Thumbnails June 07

by Tony Medley

Show Business: The Road to Broadway (10/10): A fascinating, backstage story of four musicals (including the smash hit “Wicked”) as they wend their way from auditions to opening night on Broadway through The Tony Awards at the end of the 2003-2004 season. Cameras followed all the principals capturing the highs and the heartaches, but mostly the hard work, creativity, and love that go into a Broadway musica.l While the camera unobtrusively follows the creators of the plays, the film is diminished only by four lunches contrived by Director Dori Berinstein among theater critics. If it weren't for Berinstein these lunches and their self-serving, calculated conversations would not have taken place.  The critics come across as so self-important, it draws a telling dichotomy between these people who express little but disdain for what they are seeing, and the love and devotion of the people who are putting on the shows.

Lucky You (9/10): Another in a growing line of good sports movies. The hands in this poker movie are all from famous hands played in tournaments. Good performances by Eric Bana, Robert Duvall, and Drew Barrymore highlight a film I hated to see end.

Georgia Rule (7/10): While it has all the ingredients of the worst of the chick flick genre, lots of talk, a bad male, and women in crisis, this doesn’t degenerate into total bathos, thanks mainly to the electric Lindsay Lohan, who is as hot as any actress who has ever appeared on the screen with her clothes on, and that includes Monroe and Harlow and Tierney. Without Lohan, this would be a dud.

Brooklyn Rules (7/10): A chick flick for guys with an unrealistic, sympathetic treatment of the Mob (but what else is new for Hollywood that has a long history of glorifying mobsters?). There is a lot of talk, and they are unmasculinely touchy-feely with one another, even though they use the “f” word constantly. Bad language doesn’t necessarily keep it from qualifying as a chick flick. Despite that, however, this was a well-written, well-directed, well-acted movie that held my attention and had me caring about the characters.

La Vie en Rose (7/10): Another misguided, depressing film that minimizes the music of a legendary singer, diminutive (4’8”) Edith Piaf (the movie mystifyingly ignores her height), with a story of her life fictionalized by the omission of the many characters, like Cocteau and Montand, that made her life so entrancing, rising, as she did, from abject poverty to become the queen of Paris. But watch for a scene near the end where a graphic says it is 1955 but they are driving a 1956 Chevy. Oops! A bravura performance by Marion Cotillard makes it worth seeing, but don’t expect a concert. Two of her most popular songs, Milord and the title song, are sung as background to dialogue. Mon Dieu! In French. Opens June 8.

Even Money (6/10): An almost A-list cast, including Kim Basinger, Forest Whitaker, and Tim Roth, along with director Mark Rydell, present a pretty good dark story about gambling that loses its nerve and cops out with a Hollywood ending.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (3/10): It’s said that if you put 1,000,000 monkeys at the 1,000,000 typewriters, one will type Hamlet. The script for this film (Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio) is what the other 999,999 will produce. This is just the same infantile, unfunny film as the other two, only at over 2:45 it’s longer, hard as that might be to believe if you sat through the others.

The Ex (1/10): A silly film aimed at kindergarten-level intellect without any redeeming entertainment value. Some woman will have to explain to me how Zach Braff can be cast and recast as a romantic leading man. Am I missing something?