Mixed martial arts is America's fastest-growing sport--around the country, new gyms open their doors and enthusiastic viewers tune in to UFC matches. Although some dismiss it as brutal combat, its fighters are among the most dedicated athletes in any arena. But MMA also takes a heavy toll on the body, and it's a rare fighter who can earn a living in the sport's top ranks.Beast follows four high-level fighters at one of the sport's elite gyms, Florida's American Top Team. D...

The experiment was dreamed up by two fathers, one white, one black. Whatwould happen, they wondered, if they mixed white players from an elite Seattleprivate school - famous for alums such as Microsoft's Bill Gates - and blackkids from the inner city on a basketball team? Wouldn't exposure to privilegegive the black kids a chance at better opportunities? Wouldn't it open the eyesof the white kids to a different side of life?The 1986 season would b...

The history of basketball contains all the drama inherent in America's long struggle with racial intolerance and quest for equality. In ten focused chapters that highlight characters both famous (Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird) and more obscure (John McLendon, Earl Lloyd, Holcombe Rucker), this book explores how what's happened on the basketball court has mirrored race relations in the United States—and often preceded changes off of it.

What do Dr. Seuss, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Andrei Sakharov, and James Michener have in common? They were all published by Bob Bernstein during his twenty-five-year run as president of Random House, before he brought the dissidents Liu Binyan, Jacobo Timerman, Natan Sharansky, and Václav Havel to worldwide attention in his role as the father of modern human rights.Starting as an office boy at Simon & Schuster in 1946, Bernstein moved to Random House in 1956 and succeeded Ben...