The PGA Tour is the most interesting subculture in sports, though you wouldn't know it from most golf books. The Tour is home to rowdy, randy young men often drunk with money and fame; fueled by alcohol and adrenaline, they barnstorm from town to town like rock stars, with all the attendant excesses. And in each player's shadow is his faithful caddie -- performing a thankless six-figure job that comes with all the security of a handshake deal. The PGA Tour offers fabulous rewards, but its good life does not come without a price. In Bud, Sweat, and Tees, Alan Shipnuck takes a no-holds-barred look at modern professional golf. Rich Beem, the hero of our story, joined the Tour as the most clueless of rookies, a logo-free rube only a couple of years removed from the straight world, where he made seven dollars an hour hawking cell phones. Beem took his winnings from big-money matches all across the state of Texas and scraped together enough to go out on Tour, but as he would quickly find out, getting to the big leagues is only half the battle. The fun-loving Beem, more likely to pound beers than range balls, first struggled to fit in among the country-club brats who populate the pro golf scene, and then had to fight to survive the cutthroat competition and crushing self-doubt. Staying true to his girl back home would prove equally challenging. Meanwhile, Steve Duplantis, the one-time golden boy of the Tour's caddie ranks, was enduring his own tribulations. At the tender age of twenty-one Duplantis began packing for Jim Furyk, and together they reached the pinnacle of the golf world, from Ryder Cup dustups to near misses at the Masters. But like Beem, Duplantis has a taste for the wild life, which helps explain how he wound up as a single dad, trying to balance the demands of fatherhood with the siren song of the road -- a juggling act that eventually cost him his lucrative job on Furyk's bag. Fate brought Duplantis and Beem together, and in their first tournament, the Kemper Open, they pulled off one of the most improbable triumphs in golf history. What happens next, at this unlikely intersection of lives and careers? How does a lifelong underdog like Beem handle overnight fame and fortune? Would Duplantis make good on this second chance and turn his career, and maybe his life, around? And would Beem and Duplantis's partnership survive the course of a turbulent season chock full of enough misadventures to land them in a Scottish jail? Bud, Sweat, and Tees is a sometimes bawdy, often hilarious, and always unpredictable account of a strange and magical year in the lives, on and off the course, of golfer and caddie. An exciting and often poignant story, it stands as the best insider's sports book since Jim Bouton's Ball Four, and marks Alan Shipnuck as a writer of extraordinary promise.

It's 1999 and although Rich Beem has just been nominated for Rookie of the Year following his first ever victory, he's still just another golfer on the PGA Tour desperately trying to break out from Tiger's shadow. Alan Shipnuck takes us inside Beem's world, exploring the complex relationship with his faithful caddie, Steve Duplantis, from being arrested together for drink-driving at Carnoustie, all the way to glorious and unexpected victory at the 2002 PGA Championship. In BUD, SWEAT & TEES Alan Shipnuck takes a no-holds-barred look at modern professional golf. Through the unlikely partnership of golfer Rick Beem and his caddie Steve Duplantis, Shipnuck shows all the highs and lows, temptations and pitfalls that await all players on the Tour. Reminiscent of Lawrence Donegan's bestselling FOUR-IRON IN THE SOUL (Penguin), BUD, SWEAT & TEES is an exciting and often poignant book that will leave readers with an unforgettable insight into a unique relationship.

Christina Kim is the brashest, bawdiest, funniest player on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour. Golf fans know her for her colorful wardrobe, even more colorful on-course antics, and an explosive game. But in this rollicking account of the 2009 season, Kim invites readers deep into her life, providing an intimate diary of a young woman's struggles on and off the golf course, and revealing the glory and heartbreak of life on the tour. Once known as a prodigy who shot a 62 in her first LPGA event some six years ago, Kim has newly rededicated herself to realizing her potential, and she takes readers between the ropes for all the action, including her nail-biting near misses at two major championships. She also goes inside the team room at the Solheim Cup, revealing the hijinks and late-night gab sessions that bonded the victorious U.S. team. Along the way we get intimate portraits of her close friends on tour, including tour leaders such as Michelle Wie, Lorena Ochoa, Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel, and Natalie Gulbis. In this courageous telling, no topic is out-of-bounds, as Kim dishes about the LPGA's sexual mores, the culture clash of an American-based tour increasingly dominated by Koreans, the tumultuous economic forces squeezing the players, and her own battles with body image and her traditional upbringing. Winsome and good-natured, but never afraid of a laugh line or choice profanity, Christina Kim provides a must-read for anyone who loves golf or has wondered about the inner self of a professional athlete.

John Dunn never expected that his summer job as a caddie at the local course in Connecticut might turn into something more. The lifers who plied the loops were an ensemble of misfits and degenerates who made the caddie yard look more like a gambling hall than a country club. But Dunn came of age in those yards and on those courses, and the magnetism of the game and the lifestyle proved irresistible. One adventure after another kept him coming back summer after summer, until he found himself migrating with the seasons, looping at some of the most exquisite and exclusive golf locations in the world. Dunn crisscrossed the country on his own big loop, working inside the privet hedges while camping on the mountains, following the back roads and stumbling across unexpected moments of profound natural beauty, and embracing the freedom of what he calls the last vagabond existence in America, all while trying to decide whether to quit the loop and get a real job. Maybe next season...

The controversy began with a seemingly innocuous private letter, and spiraled into the biggest media event in golf history. The Augusta National membership dispute dominated headlines and watercooler conversation for nearly a year, propelled by twenty-first-century hot-button issues and a pair of perfectly drawn foils in Hootie Johnson and Martha Burk. But a year after Burk's messy Masters week protest, the meaning of the membership controversy remains elusive. In The Battle for Augusta National, Alan Shipnuck -- who reinvented the PGA Tour narrative with the rollicking Bud, Sweat, & Tees -- provides the definitive account of what really happened and why. In this lively, irreverent, ambitious book, Shipnuck chases the story from the chairman's office at Augusta National to the living room of the One Man Klan, along the way bringing to life a vivid cast of characters and revealing subplots aplenty. With meticulous reporting and penetrating insights, Shipnuck provides a nuanced look into the complex and contradictory worlds of Hootie and Martha, who were drawn together like moths to a flame; reveals Augusta National's secret plots to undermine the press and the accompanying turmoil at The New York Times, including an exclusive interview with the Times's disgraced executive editor, Howell Raines; and explores the Southern politics that led to Burk's Masters week banishment, drawing on Senate confirmation hearings and campaign contribution documents to link local politicians and a federal judge to Augusta National. From Tiger Woods to Jack Welch, Sandra Day O'Connor to Bryant Gumbel, Treasury Secretary Snow to Jesse Jackson, the gang's all here in this withering look at a story that never stopped churning. Along the way, many of the membership controversy's mysteries are revealed. How did Augusta National's top-secret membership roll become public? Who was the shadowy protester identified by hoodwinked reporters as Heywood Jablome? Did Burk lie about a vast right-wing conspiracy to undermine her demonstration? All of this and much more can be found in The Battle for Augusta National, a book that captures the passion and absurdity of a great national debate that continues to simmer.

Edited by Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir, and featuring contributions from experts on everything from breakfast cereal and movie gunfights to First Ladies and bald guys, The Final Four of Everything celebrates everything that's great, surprising, or silly in America, using the foolproof method of bracketology to determine what we love or hate-and why. As certain to make you laugh as it will start friendly arguments, The Final Four of Everything is the perfect book for know-it-alls, know-a-littles, and anyone with an opinion on celebrity mugshots, literary heroes, sports nicknames, or bacon. Bracketology is a unique way of organizing information that dates back to the rise of the knockout (or single elimination) tournament, perhaps in medieval times. Its origins are not precisely known, but there was genius in the first bracket design that hasn't changed much over the years. You, of course, may be familiar with the bracket format via the NCAA basketball tournament pairings each March. If you've ever watched ESPN or participated in a March Madness office pool, you know what a bracket looks like. The Final Four of Everything takes the idea one step further, and applies the knockout format to every category BUT basketball. In areas where taste, judgment, and hard-earned wisdom really matter, we've set out to determine, truly, the Final Four of Everything.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.