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.

The Merry Gentleman (3/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 93 minutes.

Not for children.

What happened to Michael Keaton? He is an actor with terrific comedic timing, good looking, good heritage, actually much more talented than his namesake, Diane (whose name Michael John Douglas appropriated after reading an article about her). So what happened? He is rarely seen, and when he is, he chooses material like this that squanders his talent.

Here he directs a disappointing script by Ron Lazzeretti in a movie that has one of the slowest first hours I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through and an ending that isn’t.

Frank Logan (Keaton) is a cold-blooded hit man. Kate Frazier (Kelly Macdonald) is an unfortunate Irish lass who married an abusive husband, runs away, and then is pursued by an interested cop, Dave Murcheson (Tom Bastounes) and Frank, not to mention her psycho husband. What a life!

The first hour is unbelievably slow. I walked into the movie predisposed to like it and feeling great. After about 30 minutes, I was fighting torpor. This thing is a great antidote for insomnia. Then, for about 15 minutes, the interest picks up. But when it ends, it doesn’t, which leads one to the conclusion that sitting through this is a complete and total waste of time.

Wasted are very good performances by Macdonald and Bastounes. Keaton displays constant, cold emotionless. We learn nothing about Frank. We don’t know why he’s killing people or how he came to be an assassin or what he thinks about it. We don’t know how he got to where he is. We don’t know why he finds himself attracted to Kate. We know and learn nothing about him.

We also don’t know why Kate is such a victim, or why she chooses such losers. In short, this is a shallow film that presents characters with no rhyme, reason, or explanation for who they are. In the end the only thing one learns from the movie is that it has wasted 93 perfectly good minutes.