The book that inspired Harrison Ford in his portrayal of Branch Rickey in the hit movie "42"

In a brilliant match between author and subject, this latest addition to the Penguin Lives series features the inimitable Jimmy Breslin telling the rags-to-riches tale of Branch Rickey, the legendary manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers who integrated baseball by putting Jackie Robinson into the major leagues. Moving from the dusty Midwest towns where Rickey built baseball's farm system to the Brooklyn streets where he hatched his most famous plan, Breslin brilliantly captures the heady days when baseball became the national pastime. What emerges is the irresistible story of a schemer and redeemer, a great American who remade a sport-and dreamed of remaking a country. See Branch Rickey's life brought to the screen in the hit movie "42" in theaters everywhere now.

Call it a miracle, fate, pure luck, or just another day in the city where nothing is usual, but in 1991 Jimmy Breslin narrowly escaped death - which inspired him to write this book about his life. Two years ago, Breslin was having trouble getting his left eyelid to open and close. This was too peculiar to ignore, so Breslin decided to pay a rare visit to his doctor. As it turned out, the eyelid was a matter of nerves. But extensive testing revealed something unrelated and life-threatening: he had an aneurysm in his brain - a thin, ballooned artery wall that could burst and kill him at any moment unless he opted for a risky surgical procedure. Breslin agreed to the surgery and at age sixty-five, grateful for this miracle (what else could you call it?), began taking stock of his remarkable life.

They Must Fall: Muhammad Ali and the Men He Fought features powerful and often moving images and stories of Muhammad Ali and the men he fought in the ring, by award-winning photographer Michael Brennan. "Around 1978, I had been in Houston, Texas photographing former Ali opponent George Foreman who had then reinvented himself as a roadside preacher. On the plane back to NYC, I thought, 'If that's what George is doing, I wonder what the rest of his opponents are up to?' I set out to track down as many of the old guys as I could find." Brennan spent decades locating Ali's former opponents to discover what had become of them. This unique book is a look through Brennan's remarkable archive, containing numerous never-before- seen photos plus poignant stories illuminating the images and contextualising Ali's powerful role in the world of sport. Includes a special introductory essay by the late, great Jimmy Breslin. "Michael Brennan's iconic 1977 portrait photograph of Muhammad Ali captures something far bigger and deeper than just the beautiful face of a beautiful man. It is a detailed map of the personal journey of one whose incomparable talents and audacity caused literati to swoon, taught a generation to question authority, and ultimately altered the path of a society which had never before seen a man exactly like him. To look at him the way he was then is to remember, with joy and sorrow, who we all once were." - Jim Lampley, discussing the cover image (Boxing commentator, HBO Sports)

In his inimitable New York voice, Pulitzer Prize winner Jimmy Breslin gives us a look through the keyhole at the people and places that define the Mafia--characters like John Gotti, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso (named for his weapon of choice), and Jimmy "the Clam" Eppolito--interwoven with the remarkable true-crime saga of the good rat himself, Burt Kaplan of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the star witness in the recent trial of two NYPD detectives indicted for carrying out eight gangland executions. Through these unforgettable real-life and long-forgotten Mafia stories, Jimmy Breslin captures the moments in which the mob was made and broken.

Here, back in print, is Jimmy Breslin's marvelous account of the improbable saga of the New York Mets' first year, as Bill Veeck notes in his Introduction, "preserving for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure." Indeed the 1962 Mets were the worst major league baseball team ever to take the field. (The title of the book is a quote from Casey Stengel, their manager at the time.) Breslin casts the Mets, who lost 120 games out of a possible 162 that year, as a lovable bunch of losers. And, he argues, they were good for baseball, coming as a welcome antidote to "the era of the businessman in sports...as dry and agonizing a time as you would want to see." Although they were written forty years ago, many of Breslin's comments will strike a chord with today's sports fan, fed up with the growing commercialism of the games. Against this trend Breslin sets the exploits of "Marvelous" Marv Throneberry, Stengel, and the rest of the hapless Mets. "Wonderful."—Charles Salzberg, New York Times. "A touching, enjoyable, and interesting addition to anybody's sports reading list."—Patrick Conway

As fresh and outrageously entertaining as when it first drew America's attention to the comic underbelly of New York City's criminal underworld, Jimmy Breslin's bestselling first novel focuses on a Mafia turf war (its focus, in turn, is a Brooklyn bicycle race) and introduces the most hilariously unsavory cast of characters that ever tossed a guy into Sheepshead Bay with a jukebox around his neck.

The legendary newspaperman Jimmy Breslin remembers: Riding in a helicopter with the Beatles . . . Interviewing JFK's gravedigger . . . Spreading the news, at age eleven, of his mother's suicide attempt . . . Catching Joe McCarthy in a lie . . . Confronting the prospect of brain surgery . . . Escaping a Brooklyn race riot . . . Falling in love at first sight, in a Queens bar, with a woman he would marry . . . Running for public office on a ticket with Norman Mailer . . .

What it all adds up to: an extraordinary life, movingly and hilariously recalled in a memoir written with all the brashness, candor, and style that have distinguished Jimmy Breslin's celebrated newspaper columns and made him one of the most admired and enjoyed journalists of our time.

Of course Pulitzer Prize winner Jimmy Breslin recognized Burton Kaplan right away as the Mafia witness of the ages. Breslin comes from the same Queens streets as mob bosses John Gotti and Vito Genovese. But even they couldn't match Kaplan in crime--and neither could anybody else.

In his inimitable New York voice, Breslin, "the city's steadiest and most accurate chronicler" (Tom Robbins, "Village Voice"), gives us a look through the keyhole at the people and places that define the mafia--characters like Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Gaspipe Casso (named for his weapon of choice), Thomas "Three-Finger Brown" Lucchese, and Jimmy "The Clam" Eppolito, interwoven with the good rat himself, Burt Kaplan of Bensonhurst, the star witness in the recent trial of two New York City detectives indicted for acting as hit men in eight gangland executions.

Breslin takes us to the old-time hangouts like Pep McGuire's, the legendary watering hole where reporters and gangsters (all hailing from the same working-class neighborhoods) rubbed elbows and traded stories; the dog-fight circles and body dumps at Ozone Park; and the back room at Midnight Rose's candy store, where Murder, Inc., hired and fired.

Most compelling of all, Breslin captures the moments in which the Mafia was made and broken--Breslin was there the night John Gotti celebrated his acquittal at his Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry, having bribed his way to inno-cence only to incite the wrath of the FBI, who would later crush Gotti and others with the full force of the RICO laws.

As in his unforgettable novel "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," Breslin brings together these real-life and long-forgotten Mafia stories to brilliantly create a sharp-eyed portrait of the mob as it lived and breathed, as it sounded and survived.