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.

Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime120 minutes.

OK for children.

One Sunday morning in early 1971 I was walking west on Santa Monica Boulevard back from church, around 7:30. There was nobody on the street but a block in front of me was a Rolls Royce and a bearded man standing beside it, watching me. As I walked by he kept looking at me, so I said, “Good morning.”  “Good morning,” he responded.” “Nice car,” said I. “Thanks,” he said.

As I walked on I realized it was Steve McQueen and I wondered what he was doing standing alone on Santa Monica Blvd. next to his Rolls Royce. Little did I realize that he had just crossed the pinnacle of his career and was ready to careen down the slippery slope.

This is the story of the movie he had just completed when we passed that morning, the movie that caused his fall from grace, his effort to film a realistic racing car movie based on the Le Mans race.

McQueen had almost total control when he went to France to film the movie. But it ran into big problems mainly because it had not script and not story. And poor Steve acted like the huge movie star he was, cavorting with loose women even though his wife of 13 years, Neile Adams, came to be with him, destroying his marriage, finally driving the director, John Sturges who had directed McQueen in The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, to throw up his hands and leave the film. Finally the delays and costs grew so bad that the studio take over the film from McQueen.

The story is told with archival films and frank interviews with many of those involved, including Adams, his son Chad, and one of the women with whom he was cheating in France. After becoming maybe the biggest star in Hollywood with hits like The Great Escape, Bullitt, and The Thomas Crowne Affair on his resume, his star dimmed. Le Mans crashed at the box office. In ten years, after two more marriages and one hit film, The Towering Inferno, he was dead. This is a fascinating look at what unchecked ego can do to a gifted person.