Jared Kindred left his home and family at the age of eighteen, choosing to wander across America on freight train cars and live on the street. Addicted to alcohol most of his short life, and withholding the truth from many who loved him, he never found a way to survive. Through this ordeal, Dave Kindred's love for his grandson has never wavered. Leave Out the Tragic Parts is not merely a reflection on love and addiction and loss. It is a hard-won work of reportage, meticulously reconstructing the life Jared chose for himself--a life that rejected the comforts of civilization in favor of a chance to roam free. Kindred asks painful but important questions about the lies we tell to get along, and what binds families together or allows them to fracture. Jared's story ended in tragedy, but the act of telling it is an act of healing and redemption. This is an important book on how to love your family, from a great writer who has lived its lessons.

Jared Kindred left his home and family at the age of eighteen, choosing a life of riding train cars and making friends on the street. He was an addict for most of his short life, drinking far too much and lying about it; he was ultimately killed by an overdose. Yet he inspired the deepest love of Dave Kindred's life. Leave Out the Tragic Parts is not merely a reflection on love and addiction and loss. It is a hard-won, and remarkably fair-minded, account of the life Jared chose for himself and the colorful people around him--people with names like Puzzles, Stray, and Booze Cop; people with stories to tell. Kindred asks painful but important questions about the lies we tell to get along, and what binds families together or allows them to fracture. Jared's story ended in tragedy, but the act of telling it is an act of healing and redemption. This is an important book on how to love your family, from a great writer who has lived its lessons.

In this in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at "The Washington Post," Pulitzer Prize nominee Dave Kindred describes the turmoil and triumph of a news organization during the most chaotic media revolution in five hundred years.
"Morning Miracle" takes readers inside the heart of a legendary paper in transition from newsprint to the digital realm, capturing the ambition, enthusiasm, and commitment to excellence that remains at the heart of world-class daily journalism. This fascinating look into the professionalism that drives one of our nation's greatest papers demonstrates that though newsprint may vanish, great journalism will always matter.

A three-time All-Star, Cecil Travis (1913-2006) was well on his way to a Hall of Fame career when he was drafted for World War II in 1941. When he returned to the game in 1945, after three and a half years in the army, Travis was no longer the dominant player he had been. In the three seasons that followed-the last of his career-only once did Travis play in more than seventy-five games, and his offensive numbers plummeted. Yet his prewar accomplishments were such that he finished his twelve-year career with a .314 batting average, and baseball maven Bill James put Travis atop his list of players most likely to have lost a Hall of Fame career to the war. This biography documents Travis's life and dynamic career. It recounts his childhood years on his family's Riverdale farm in rural Georgia, his demonstration of talent during high school, the beginning of his professional career with the Minor League Chattanooga Lookouts in 1931, his rise with the Washington Senators, the historic 1941 season in which Travis led all of baseball in hits, his time as a soldier, the decline in his play from 1945 to 1947, and his retirement. In an epilogue Cecil Travis comments on his baseball career, the effects of the war, and his life in Riverdale, where he raised livestock on the farm that was his childhood home. Rob Kirkpatrick is a senior editor at Thomas Dunne Books and the author of several books, including 1969: The Year Everything Changed and Magic in the Night: The Words and Music of Bruce Springsteen. Dave Kindred has been a sportswriter for more than thirty-five years.

Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell were must-see TV long before that phrase became ubiquitous. Individually interesting, together they were mesmerizing. They were profoundly different -- young and old, black and white, a Muslim and a Jew, Ali barely literate and Cosell an editor of his university's law review. Yet they had in common forces that made them unforgettable: Both were, above all, performers who covered up their deep personal insecurities by demanding -- loudly and often -- public acclaim. Theirs was an extraordinary alliance that produced drama, comedy, controversy, and a mutual respect that helped shape both men's lives.
Dave Kindred -- uniquely equipped to tell the Ali-Cosell story after a decades-long intimate working relationship with both men -- re-creates their unlikely connection in ways never before attempted. From their first meeting in 1962 through Ali's controversial conversion to Islam and refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army (the right for him to do both was publicly defended by Cosell), Kindred explores both the heroics that created the men's upward trajectories and the demons that brought them to sadness in their later lives. Kindred draws on his experiences with Ali and Cosell, fresh reporting, and interviews with scores of key personalities -- including the families of both. In the process, Kindred breaks new ground in our understanding of these two unique men. The book presents Ali not as a mythological character but as a man in whole, and it shows Cosell not in caricature but in faithful scale. With vivid scenes, poignant dialogue, and new interpretations of historical events, this is a biography that is novelistically engrossing -- a richly evocative portrait of the friendship that shaped two giants and changed sports and television forever.