Sportswriter, storyteller, humorist - Ring Lardner was an American original, and in this affectionate, entertaining, and authoritative biography, Pulitzer Prize winning critic Jonathan Yardley gives us a new look at Lardner's all too short life and career.

This classic sports book takes readers inside the 1967 season of the Green Bay Packers, following that storied team from training camp to their dramatic victory in Super Bowl II.
Candid and often amusing, Jerry Kramer describes from a player's perspective a bygone era of sports, filled with blood, grit, and tears. No game better exemplifies this period than the classic "Ice Bowl" conference championship game between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, which Kramer, who made the crucial block in the climactic play, describes in thrilling detail. We also get a rare and insightful view of the Packers' legendary leader, coach Vince Lombardi.
As vivid and engaging as it was when it was first published, "Instant Replay "is an irreplaceable reminder of the glory days of pro football.

In the summer of 1959, A. J. Liebling, veteran writer for the New Yorker, came to Louisiana to cover a series of bizarre events that began with Governor Earl K. Long's commitment to a mental institution. Captivated by his subject, Liebling remained to write the fascinating yet tragic story of Uncle Earl's final year in politics. First published in 1961, The Earl of Louisiana recreates a stormy era in Louisiana politics and captures the style and personality of one of the most colorful and paradoxical figures in the state's history. This updated edition of the book includes a foreword by T. Harry Williams, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Huey Long: A Biography, and a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Yardley that discusses Liebling's career and his most famous book from a twenty-first-century perspective.

Graham Greene's first published novel represented for the author ?one sentimental gesture towards his own past, the period of ambition and hope.? It tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. "The Man Within" offers a foretaste of Greene's recurring theme of religion and the individual's struggles against cynicism and the indifferent forces of a hostile world.

It may be that the song most baby boomers identify from July 1956 is a simple twelve-bar blues, hyped on national television by a twenty-one-year-old Elvis Presley and his handlers. But it is a very different song, with its elongated fourteen-bar choruses of rhythm and dissonance, played on the night of July 7, 1956, by a fifty-seven-year-old Duke Ellington and his big band that got everybody on their feet and moving as one. More than fifty years later, ""Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,"" recorded at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, still makes a profound statement about postwar America - how we got there and where it all went.""Backstory in Blue"" is a behind-the-scenes look at this epic moment in American cultural history. It is the story of who and what made Ellington's composition so compelling and how one piece of music reflected the feelings and shaped the sensibilities of the postwar generation. As John Fass Morton explains, it was music expressed as much by those who performed offstage as by those who performed on.Written from the point of view of the audience, this unique account draws on interviews with fans and music professionals of all kinds who were there and whose lives were touched, and in some cases changed, by the experience. Included are profiles of George Avakian, who recorded and produced Ellington at Newport 1956; Paul Gonsalves, the tenor sax player responsible for the legendary twenty-seven choruses that enabled the rebirth of Ellington's career; and the ""Bedford Blonde,"" Elaine Anderson, whose dance ignited both the band and the crowd.Duke Ellington once remarked, ""I was born at Newport."" Here we learn that Newport was much more than the turning point for Ellington's career. It was the tipping point for a generation and a musical genre.