I never tire of reading books about basketball in the NBA's golden age (70s to early 90s), and I've read countless biographies and autobiographies from the central figures of the era. But I'd never read a meaningful account of Jordan's life until I read Roland Lazenby's meticulously researched book. Jordan is perhaps the most transformative American athlete ever, and Lazenby paints him as a complex figure.

"It's not every day that I'm blown away by a book about a sports figure. But MICHAEL JORDAN: THE LIFE, by Roland Lazenby, ranks up there with the very best: The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn, Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger, and Joe DiMaggio by Richard Ben Cramer. The depth of reporting, his frequent ascent into poetry, and his intelligent analysis of the life of this complicated, fascinating American icon deserve Pulitzer Prize consideration. For the first time I understand what makes Michael Jordan tick. I was captivated, fascinated and beguiled from beginning to end." -- Peter Golenbock, New York Times-bestselling author of George and In the Country of Brooklyn The definitive biography of a legendary athlete The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game. Michael Jordan is responsible for sublime moments so ingrained in sports history that they have their own names. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his body totally in sync with the ball -- hitting nothing but net. But for all his greatness, this scion of a complex family from North Carolina's Coastal Plain has a darker side: he's a ruthless competitor and a lover of high stakes. There's never been a biography that encompassed the dual nature of his character and looked so deeply at Jordan on and off the court -- until now. Basketball journalist Roland Lazenby spent almost thirty years covering Michael Jordan's career in college and the pros. He witnessed Jordan's growth from a skinny rookie to the instantly recognizable global ambassador for basketball whose business savvy and success have millions of kids still wanting to be just like Mike. Yet Lazenby also witnessed the Michael Jordan whose drive and appetite are more fearsome and more insatiable than any of his fans could begin to know. Michael Jordan: The Life explores both sides of his personality to reveal the fullest, most compelling story of the man who is Michael Jordan. Lazenby draws on his personal relationships with Jordan's coaches; countless interviews with Jordan's friends, teammates, and family members; and interviews with Jordan himself to provide the first truly definitive study of Michael Jordan: the player, the icon, and the man.

I'll read anything Bill Bryson writes, but this is the book I come back to time and time again. Bryson is more a human anthropologist than a novelist, and his observational skills (and wit) are on full display as he turns his focus to his own childhood.

From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the middle of the United States in the middle of the last century. A book that delivers on the promise that it is laugh-out-loud funny. Some say that the first hints that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came from his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of peoples hands from a distance, and wear his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman. Bill Brysons first travel book opened with the immortal line, I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. In this hilarious new memoir, he travels back to explore the kid he once was and the weird and wonderful world of 1950s America. He modestly claims that this is a book about not very much: about being small and getting much larger slowly. But for the rest of us, it is a laugh-out-loud book that will speak volumes especially to anyone who has ever been young. From the Hardcover edition.

A book that will upend your thoughts about innovation and problem-solving. The writers' approach has had an enormous impact on my life and career, and I employ the strategies in this book to tackle problems large and small. A must for anyone working in a business where innovation is valued.

The inside-the-box approach can reveal key opportunities for innovation that are hiding in plain sight (Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive). The traditional attitude toward creativity in the American business world is to think outside the boxto brainstorm without restraint in hopes of coming up with a breakthrough idea, often in moments of crisis. Sometimes it works, but its a problem-specific solution that does nothing to engender creative thinking more generally. Inside the Box demonstrates Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), which systemizes creativity as part of the corporate culture. This counterintuitive and powerfully effective approach to creativity requires thinking inside the box, working in ones familiar world to create new ideas independent of specific problems. SITs techniques and principles have instilled creative thinking into such companies as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and other industry leaders. Inside the Box shows how corporations have successfully used SIT in business settings as diverse as medicine, technology, new product development, and food packaging. Dozens of books discuss how to make creative thinking part of a corporate culture, but none takes the innovative and unconventional approach of Inside the Box. With inside the box thinking, companies of any size can become sufficiently creative to solve problems even before they develop and to innovate on an ongoing basis. Its a system that works! Boyd and Goldenberg explain the basic building blocks for creativity and by doing so help all of us better express our potential (Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational).

I'll read everything in the Bill Bryson catalog, most books more than once. Bryson has the ability to transport you to another time and place with clarity and a heavy dose of humanity. In One Summer, Bryson delivers you to America in 1927, a seminal year in our history, rich with unforgettable events and characters.

A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book A GoodReads Reader's Choice In One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life. The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin Shipwreck Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve daysa new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true talking picture, Al Jolsons The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression. All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order. From the Hardcover edition.

A rare sports memoir in its unflinching and unaffected take on former Red Sox manager Terry Francona's momentous years with the team. It's surprising to find so much candor in the kind of book that a reader would expect to be one-sided. A credit to the teaming of an unpretentious author and a respected sports journalist.

From 2004 to 2011, Terry Francona managed the Boston Red Sox, perhaps the most scrutinized team in all of sports. During that time, every home game was a sellout. Every play, call, word, gesture—on the field and off—was analyzed by thousands. And every decision was either genius, or disastrous. In those eight years, the Red Sox were transformed from a cursed franchise to one of the most successful and profitable in baseball history—only to fall back to last place as soon as Francona was gone. Now, in Francona: The Red Sox Years, the decorated manager opens up for the first time about his tenure in Boston, unspooling the narrative of how this world-class organization reached such incredible highs and dipped to equally incredible lows. But through it all, there was always baseball, that beautiful game of which Francona never lost sight.

A tribute to the human spirit and a book that should be required reading in schools. Wonder's protagonist is born with a facial deformity that draws out middle-school cruelties in painful ways, but R.J. Palacio's work is ultimately a paean to decency and acceptance.

Auggie Pullman is an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face. Born with a terrible abnormality, he has been homeschooled and protected by his loving family from the cruel stares of the outside world. Now he must attend school with other students for the first time - but can he get his classmates to see that he's just like them, underneath it all? This warm, funny and wonderfully written story, told in the voices of Auggie, his sister, and his new friends, will move and engage studentsfrom the first page to the last.