He intimidated people on and off the football field. He was brutal yet brilliant, narcissistic yet magnanimous, relentless yet unyielding. Most of all, he was the greatest football player of all time. He was Jim Brown.

Jim Brown was an astonishing physical specimen with tremendous skills and intelligence. An athlete who played a number of sports at Syracuse University, he ultimately discovered that it was the violence of football that appealed to him most. The idea of physically dominating other men, surviving ferocious battles on the field against opponents who would just as soon call him a nigger as try to gouge out his eyes fueled an astonishing, record-making NFL career that led to the Hall of Fame. He battled his defenses, sometimes his teammates, and often the Cleveland Browns' legendary head coach Paul Brown.

But Jim Brown had ambitions greater than football. He used his athletic brilliance to launch a movie career, becoming Hollywood's first black action hero, culminating in a scandalous love scene with America's sweetheart Raquel Welch. He leveraged his popularity into helping the NFL's black players and becoming a civil rights activist. Never shy about expressing his opinions, Brown would become the subject of FBI investigations and surveillance throughout parts of his life.

Then there were the women. The patient wife who was essentially a single mother and who endured public humiliation. The girlfriends he ran through and the scandalous accusations of violence made by some of them.

A complex and fascinating story, "Jim Brown" is a towering biography of a living legend.

The grocery business began as a complicated service industry. Random pricing, inconsistent quantities, and prescriptive salesman made grocery shopping burdensome. It took one brash Memphian with uncommon vision and unbridled ambition to change everything. Clarence Saunders worked his way out of poverty and obscurity to found Piggly Wiggly in 1916. With an unprecedented approach, he virtually invented the concept of the modern self-service grocery store. Stores flourished, franchises spread, and Saunders made millions. Yet just as the final bricks of Pink Palace his garish marble mansion were being laid, Saunders went bankrupt, and he was forced to sell Piggly Wiggly. A variety of new ventures helped Saunders out of bankruptcy, but he never duplicated his prior success. Memphis historian Mike Freeman tracks the remarkable life of this retail visionary.

The Legendary Life of Ken Stabler

Each year, every football team sets out to play a perfect season. Only one has ever succeeded in beating the odds.

The Miami Dolphins of the late 1960s were a laughingstock, a franchise where careers went to die. Then came Coach Don Shula. In just a few short years--through hard work, long practices, and his no-nonsense attitude--Shula transformed the team into a championship franchise. Led by such greats as Larry Csonka, Bob Griese, Nick Buoniconti, Larry Little, Mercury Morris, and Jake Scott, the team was undefeated in the 1972 regular season and went on to win Super Bowl VII. Along the way, the Dolphins became the team of the 1970s, with Miami as a fascinating backdrop.

Based on years of research and interviews, Undefeated, by award-winning journalist Mike Freeman, examines what is perhaps the single greatest accomplishment in team sports history: the unforgettable season in which the Dolphins didn't lose a single game. There has never been a football team like those Miami Dolphins, and there may never be again.

The definitive biography of Bobby Bowden, one of the greatest college football coaches of all time, and his enduring legacy

He is a giant among coaches, a Hall of Famer, and arguably the greatest Division I college football coach in history. Following a tumultuous but successful tenure at West Virginia University, Bowden accepted the head coaching post at Florida State University, a failing program in danger of being terminated. What Bowden accomplished at FSU is nothing short of miraculous: twenty-one bowl wins and two national championships. A brilliant tactician, he helped usher the pro-passing game into college football. An unrivaled recruiter, he produced thirty-one consensus all-Americans over the course of his tenure. Along the way he had to deal with devastating family tragedies, scandals, and the rise and fall of his own three sons' coaching careers.

Based on six years of research and interviews, Bowden by award-winning journalist and author Mike Freeman examines the remarkable life of Bobby Bowden and a stellar career that spanned six decades. It is the story of the making of a legend; a towering biography of a man who has left his indelible mark on the game of college football.

Having spent forty years harried by ageless questions of mortality and creation, Mike Freeman suddenly found himself a stay-at-home father in New York City after living for the last decade in Alaska. Unsure of himself as a parent, he reflects upon both his own upbringing and adulthood. While unraveling a lifetime fishing, birding, hunting, and trapping with his father, he realizes how fortifying the outdoors are to all relationships, secular and otherwise. Neither Mountain nor River is a testament to this understanding, and how an acceptance of uncertainty can equally strengthen marital and parental bonds, as well as that to God. Written with depth and beauty, Freeman takes us both outside, into the wild, and inside, into the soul. As he struggles with passing on what he's learned to his own children, we get a unique glimpse into a man who lives purely for the wonders the world brings.

Rather than a nation split cleanly into ideological absolutes, America is a country made up of individual citizens first, all of whom constitute a mixture within themselves when it comes to today's most divisive topics. No one, then, is all conservative or all liberal, but a combination of the two. In A Marbled People, A Marbled Nation, the author explores this condition through an honest portraiture of his own views, from the United Nations to oil dependence to health care to Iraq to many others. Liberal on some counts, conservative on others, the blending represents the national patch-work as a whole and exposes the useful but ultimately limited red and blue model for the largely harmful outlay it has become. Rather than just opinion pieces, however, the book's essays offer solutions to many of the nation's most pressing rifts. While individual readers will find here both agreement and disagreement, these solutions should at least provoke thought, the most useful and powerful tool in a free, active society.

Award-winning sportswriter Mike Freeman goes beyond day-to-day newspaper journalism and ESPN highlights to take us deep inside the game and reveal the NFL in ways that will surprise the most avid football fans. He travels to the sidelines and into the locker rooms to interview hundreds of players and coaches on their expertise. Breaking the game down to its essential elements -- coaching, offense, and defense -- Freeman profiles in depth three of today's football elite: Jon Gruden, head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Michael Strahan, defensive end for the New York Giants; and Emmitt Smith, the legendary running back.

Bloody Sundays goes behind the scenes of the "secret society" of gay players who play in fear of their lives and careers, studies how the violence of the game ravages the bodies of players, and takes us into the owners' offices to look at the darker side of the sport.

Part tribute, part expose, Bloody Sundays is a vivid portrait of professional football that "gives you so much to think about that you might find yourself switching off a game to read" (New York Times Book Review).

An understanding of the fundamental principles of geometrical and physical optics is essential for any student engaged in the study of the visual sciences, but the non-physicist needs a text which clearly explains these notoriously difficult concepts in order to apply them to the practical and clinical aspects of vision. Optics by Freeman and Hull fulfils this requirement admirably. Comprehensive information on optics makes this book the definitive source on the subject. A bright, two-color design enhances the text and aids the reader's understanding. Completely updated and revised to present the latest information in the field. All illustrations are now highlighted with a second color to aid understanding. A new color plate section provides clear, excellent-quality photographs to vividly illustrate important concepts. More information is included on aspheric lenses, with a new chapter on aspheric lenses. Many new questions and exercises reinforce important points and help readers understand the material. The contents have been entirely reorganized for a more logical, easy-to-follow approach. A new glossary defines all key terms from the chapters for convenient reference.

Undefeated explores the Miami Dolphins' legendary 1972 season, the only perfect season in NFL history, and the journey to the championship--a story of heartbreaking injuries, miraculous finishes, and tested relationships.

Coach Don Shula transformed the team--through hard work, long practices, and his no-nonsense attitude toward the game--from a laughingstock expansion team, where careers went to die, into a championship franchise. Led by such greats as Larry Csonka, Bob Griese, Nick Buoniconti, Larry Little, Mercury Morris, and Jake Scott--the Dolphins were undefeated in the regular season and went on to win Super Bowl VII, in one of the greatest feats of toughness, perseverance, and discipline the NFL has ever seen.

Based on years of research and interviews, Undefeated examines what is perhaps the single greatest accomplishment in team sports history: the unforgettable NFL season in which the Dolphins never lost a single game. There has never been a football team like those Miami Dolphins, and there may never be again.