For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, W.K. Stratton's definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute.Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the jo...

In 1956, at age 21, Floyd Patterson became the youngest boxer to win the title of world heavyweight champion and then, later, the first ever to lose and regain it.Here, acclaimed author W.K. Stratton chronicles the life of 'The Gentle Gladiator' - an athlete overshadowed by Ali's theatrics and Liston's fearsome reputation, and a civil-rights activist overlooked in the who's who of race politics.From the Gramercy Gym and wild-card manager Cus D'Amato to a final rematch again...

Reaching the top in any sport requires a long, hard climb. But when you start with the baggage of years of family dysfunction and incarceration in a hellish mental hospital, the climb is especially steep. Yet even with such weights to carry, Anissa Zamarron won not one, but two, world championships in women's boxing. Her story, as dramatically intense as the Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby, is one of tremendous courage and determination to overcome the odds against her as ...

The moving and personal story of one woman's journey into the remote and rugged Tanami Desert with the matriarchs of her husband's family. Shortlisted for both The Age Book of the Year and The Australian Human Rights Commission Literature Award. 'This big land, Australia. It's big enough for everyone!' calls Annie Karrakayn across the pre-dawn campfire to the other Law women stirring from the perfect quiet of a still, desert night. 'Strong Dreamin' ' she whispers. So begins the intimate di...

This is the story of Ivan Bender, growing up in a new resources rich country - Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), during one of the most violent periods of African history from 1948 to 1980. After a threatening encounter with a crocodile, an Ndebele warrior is assigned the job of being Ivan's guardian. A strong friendship develops between the warrior and the boy.Ivan's father is stricken by malaria and the family is forced to move to the city. There, two black waifs are taken into t...

Levels of the Game is John McPhee's astonishing account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968.It begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games."This may be the high point of American sports journalism"- Robert Lips...

In the Clearances of the 19th century, crofts - once the mainstay of Highland life in Scotland - were swept away as the land was put over to sheep grazing. Many of the people of the Highlands and islands of Scotland were forced from their homes by landowners in the Clearances. Some fled to Nova Scotia and beyond.David Craig sets out to discover how many of their stories survive in the memories of their descendants. He travels through 21 islands in Scotland and Canada, many thousand...

When A'Lelia Walker died in 1931 after a midnight snack of lobster and chocolate cake washed down with champagne, it marked the end of one of the most striking social careers in New York's history. The daughter of rags-to-riches multi-millionaire Madame C.J. Walker (the washerwoman who marketed the most successful straightening technique for African American hair), A'Lelia was America's first black poor little rich girl, using her inheritance to throw elaborate, celebrity-packed parties in...

"Told through an intimate family portrait . . . a moving account of a vivid historic migration; an unyielding and dogged journey of the human spirit." — Walter Mosley, New York Times–bestselling authorNow an award–winning film directed by Jeanette KongThis powerful debut tells the story of Paula Williams Madison's Chinese grandfather, Samuel Lowe. He became romantically involved with a Jamaican woman, Paula's grandmo...

Short-listed for the 2003 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-FictionA world exists on the nighttime streets that the average person cannot envision. Taxi driver Peter McSherry recounts tales of his thirty years of experience driving cabs at night on the hard-bitten streets of Canada’s largest city. Drunks, punks, con artists, hookers, pimps, drug addicts, drug pushers, thugs, nymphomaniacs, snakes, politicians, celebrities . . . he’s experienced them all. McSherry serves...

This is the story of the Japanese who immigrated to Hawaii around the turn of the present century, worked as forced laborers on the sugar plantations, and afterwards remained in Hawaii to work as free men and to raise families. It is the story also of their children, born and raised in Hawaii, and who, during World War II, won fame and glory for themselves and their country on the bloody battlefields of Italy and southern Europe.But more than all of this, it is the story of the fat...

This book of bush tales vividly evokes an era now gone, when people struggled in isolation to tame the land and when camaraderie and mateship were everything.Young Brian Taylor was a ringer on Queensland cattle stations some fifty-five years ago. He worked on huge properties where the big mobs used to run and many of the people he met there had a larger-than-life quality. There was Dangerous Dan Smith, a hard, self-reliant man who wrote bush poetry; Father Peter, a...