A poignant portrayal of professional ballplayers' lives on and off the field during the sport's golden years in the 1950's.

Story of baseball player Henry Wiggen throwing a baseball for the sake of his pocket, his family, his teammates, and dying friend.

Speed is a first-person novel about two brothers growing up half a century ago--the story of the narrator and his brother Speed, a magnificent boy in every respecct, except one. And Speed's one defect leads him to a mad act of nihilism that is remembered by his brother for a lifetime.

Henry Wiggen, the bedraggled six-foot-three, 195-pound, left-handed pitcher for the New York Mammoths, returns to narrate another novel in his inimitable manner. Fans who loved him in Bang the Drum Slowly, The Southpaw, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch (all Bison Books) will cheer his comeback. Wiggen is now thirty-nine, a fading veteran with a floating fastball, a finicky prostate, and other intimations of mortality. Released from the Mammoths after nineteen years, the twenty-seventh winningest pitcher in baseball history (tied at 247 victories with Joseph J. "Iron Man" McGinnity and John Powell), Wiggen is not ready to hang up his glove. What impels Henry to pitch against Pate, to trek to California and as far as Japan? He still has a few seasons, a few innings left anyway. Is he principled or possessed? You'll have to decide for yourself as author Mark Harris plays out Wiggen's midlife crisis on familiar American turf: the baseball diamond.

From Robert Bly, author of the groundbreaking bestseller Iron John, and famed Jungian analyst Marion Woodman comes an interpretation of a primordial folktale that takes the message behind Iron John to its next phase: the reunion of masculine and feminine. Bly and Woodman interpret the archetypal symbols embedded in an ancient Russian story, The Maiden King, a tale woven of an absent father, a possessive stepmother, a false tutor, and a young man over-whelmed by a beautiful maiden. When the young man's weak response to the maiden ss her retreating in anger, he must go on a quest for self-discovery that leads to Baba Yaga, the fierce yet empowering old woman of Russian folk tradition. The male tency toward impotence in the face of feminine magnificence, the female fear of power and abandonment that leads to rage, the need to get beyond oppositional thinking en route to the Divine, these are issues the book addresses with wisdom and lyricism. The true heir to Iron John, The Maiden King may be the intellectual answer to Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

Covers the history of drumming, different drum types, how to care for them, and basic skills and tips for playing different types of music.

REMARKABLE BIOGRAPHY OF AN ICON There’s little debate that Robert De Niro is one of the greatest screen actors of his generation, perhaps of all time--if not, in fact, the greatest. His work, particularly in the first 20 years of his career, is unparalleled. Mean Streets, the Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, the Deer Hunter, and Raging Bull all dazzled moviegoers and critics alike, displaying a talent the likes of which had rarely--if ever--been seen. De Niro became known for his deep involvement in his characters, assuming that role completely into his own life, resulting in extraordinary, chameleonic performances. Yet little is known about the off-screen De Niro--he is an intensely private man, whose rare public appearances are often marked by inarticulateness and palpable awkwardness. It can be almost painful to watch at times, in powerful contrast to his confident movie personae. In this elegant and compelling biography, bestselling writer Shawn Levy writes of these many De Niros--the characters and the man--seeking to understand the evolution of an actor who once dove deeply into his roles as if to hide his inner nature, and who now seemingly avoids acting challenges, taking roles which make few apparent demands on his overwhelming talent. Following De Niro's roots as the child of artists (his father, the abstract painter Robert De Niro Sr., was widely celebrated) who encouraged him from an early age to be independent of vision and spirit, to his intense schooling as an actor, the rise of his career, his marriages, his life as a father, restauranteur, and businessman, and, of course, his current movie career, Levy has written a biography that reads like a novel about a character whose inner turmoil takes him to heights of artistry. His many friendships with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Harvey Keitel, Shelley Winters, Francis Ford Coppola, among many others, are woven into this extraordinary portrait of DeNiro the man and the artist, also adding a depth of understanding not before seen. Levy has had unprecedented access to De Niro's personal research and production materials, creating a new impression of the effort that went into the actor's legendary performances. The insights gained from DeNiro’s intense working habits shed new perspective on DeNiro’s thinking and portrayals and are wonderful to read. Levy also spoke to De Niro's collaborators and friends to depict De Niro's transition from an ambitious young man to a transfixing and enigmatic artist and cultural figure. Shawn Levy has written a truly engaging, insightful, and entertaining portrait of one of the most wonderful film artists of our time, a book that is worthy of such a great talent.