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 stories in their own words.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

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by Tony Medley

Horrible Bosses 2 (9/10): There is a fine line between truly funny and truly idiotic. People like Will Ferrell don’t recognize this line and cross it constantly. As a result their films are so fatuous they are insulting.

This film approaches the line time and again but never crosses it. The result is a film with more laughs than any I’ve seen in a long time. It was hard for me to tell who was the funniest. The triumvirate of dummies, Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day have their moments. When Chris Pine was onscreen, I thought it was maybe he. The always extraordinary Christoph Waltz is in the running. Jennifer Anniston plays a sex-crazed woman impeccably. Her scenes do contain some language that some might find offensive, but it is its offensiveness that brings the humor. But, wait, I was laughing all the time that Jamie Foxx and Kevin Spacey were onscreen, too. You’ll just have to decide for yourself.

The Theory of Everything (9/10): Fine performances by Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne highlight this whitewashed, highly romantic account of Stephen Hawking’s marriage to Jane Wilde Hawking based on her second, revised book. A film on her first book, which told the real story, would have been far more interesting. I thought it one of the best films I had ever seen until I did some research and discovered the truth exemplified by her statement that the only thing that kept her from suicide was her children, an attitude you don’t get from this film.

Nightcrawler (9/10): Tightly written and directed by Dan Gilroy, Jake Gyllenhaal gives a tour de force buttressed by atmospheric cinematography and tension enhancing music. Shot at KTLA (renamed KWLA), which is Los Angeles’ iconic TV station, pioneering “Time for Beany” and “Space Patrol,” among others, at the dawn of the TV age in the late ‘40s, it is also a wonderful homage to the city of Los Angeles with 75 different locations.

Pioneer (8/10): Director Erik Skjolbjærg gets first class performances from his cast in this thriller about Norwegian divers going deep down 500 meters beneath the surface of the ocean to build a pipeline. When Aksel Hennie’s brother dies in what appears to be an accident, Aksel thinks otherwise and opens a whole barrel of worms trying to find the truth. This is a tense film that never drags. In English and Norwegian.

The Homesman (7/10): It was a stark life on the Great Plains in 1855, and director/star Tommy Lee Jones, Hilary Swank, and the rest of the cast, along with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto show it with admirable realism. Jones and production designer Meredith Boswell, did a painstaking job of recreation using photographs of Solomon Butcher, who spent 40 years documenting the living conditions of the settlers of the Prairie in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

The Imitation Game (7/10): Despite “Hollywood” scenes of dubious veracity (like purloining and converting the story of Churchill’s refusal to inform the public of the Nazi raid on Coventry) this is an interesting tale of computer pioneer Alan Turing and his sexuality with top performances by Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode and the rest of the cast in breaking the Enigma Code in WWII.

Interstellar (5/10): Way too long, the first two hours are tolerable, but it’s done in by the unfortunate influence of co-executive producer Kip Thorne, a Cal Tech physicist and great friend of Stephen Hawking. His almost hour-long ending requires an advanced degree in theoretical physics to understand, and even then it would be ludicrous.

Foxcatcher (3/10): Although “based on a true story,” this is your quintessential long, slow Hollywood movie without an iota of pace, despite a fine performance by Steve Carell, eschewing comedy for drama. Further detracting is that it doesn’t explain a thing about Olympic wrestling, a sport with arcane rules that could use some explaining.