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. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their 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. Also available on Kindle.

Little White Lies (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 154 minutes.

OK for children

Writer/director Guillaume Canet directed the hit film adaptation of Harlan Coben's bestselling novel Tell No One (2006). After putting that together he was stricken almost immediately with septicemia and depression. He says, "Shooting and editing the movie had taken so much out of me that I picked up the first virus going. I spent a month in the hospital. It finally occurred to me that my whole existence couldn't begin and end with my work. That made me realize how much I'd deceived myself over the years about what I really wanted, and how much energy I'd devoted to my work in order to avoid having to think about things."

The result was this film, which appeared in France in 2010, clearly influenced by America's The Big Chill (1983), about a group of friends vacationing while a dear friend, Ludovic (Jean Dujardin of The Artist), lies mortally ill in a hospital. Canet admits that the film is autobiographical and based on his circle of friends, even down to the gorgeous setting in Cap Ferrat, where they all hang. While there, the group, including Marion Cotillard, François Cluzet (a Dustin Hoffman lookalike), Gilles Lellouche, and several others interact during which their petits mouchoirs, their "little white lies" (OK, petits mouchoirs really means little handkerchiefs) slowly bubble to the surface, threatening their heretofore placid existence.

Canet shot the film with two cameras to make the actors feel as free as possible and not to have to worry about going in and out of frame as they moved about the set in scenes.

The movie has a terrific sound track of old songs, but even though the film is entirely in French, the songs are sung in English.

I'm not one to sit idly through a movie that approaches three hours without squirming a lot, but the acting in this is captivating. There are many moments of humor, one actually had me laughing out loud, despite the serious undertones. On the downside, there is a running homosexual gag that got a bit tiresome. Worse, one of the great mistakes is to have a writer direct his own screenplay. About the only one of whom I am aware who has the courage to cut is Woody Allen, who valiantly tries to get his films in at 90 minutes. Canet falls victim to the problem of apparently not being able to cut a word he wrote. Another director could have cut an hour off the runtime without losing much, if anything. Still, I found it entertaining. In French.