Sweet Lou and the Cubs chronicles from the inside-out Lou Piniella’s stirring and celebrated quest to reverse the team’s fortunes after a record 100 years without a World Series championship. Drawing on the story of Piniella’s Cubs debut in 2007 and his history as baseball’s ultimate firebrand, veteran Cubs reporter George Castle gives fans the real story behind the building of the best Cubs team in decades. In riveting detail he traces how the Cubs swept into the 2008 playoffs as the favorite to represent the National League in the World Series, but then went down in shocking defeat—leaving millions of fans to pin their wounded hopes on the prospects of their remade team finally turning the tide in 2009. . . . This is sports writing at its best, focusing on Piniella’s old-school style and baseball scientist’s mind; wild swings in the Cubs’ win-loss fortunes; the inside scoop on a Cubs’ front office that has been dramatically more aggressive than its predecessors; the byplay of daily clubhouse life and profiles of key players; and Piniella’s colorful proclamations and homespun philosophy, along with his interactions with his coaches, the team, ball-club executives, media, fans, and celebrity hangers-on.

A comprehensive biography on the personal and professional life and career of Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella, describing his background, family, and early years as a player and manager.

In this “powerful” blockbuster of a novel (The New York Times), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day introduces his most beloved character, failed novelist turned sportswriter Frank Bascombe, during an Easter weekend, as he moves through the great losses of his life. As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people—men, mostly—who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses of a career, a son, and a marriage. In the course of the Easter week in which Ford's moving novel transpires, Bascombe will end up losing the remnants of his familiar life, though with his spirits soaring.

Bibsys life changes forever when she falls in love after a chance meeting in a Harlem bar in 1952. The tranquil, free-spirited lifestyle she casually enters into with Jake Tucker collides with intractable memories of a difficult past, a new community fated for development and heartbreaking loss. This multifaceted and riveting historical novel gives greater insight into the complexity of African American lives. With New York States major road and bridge construction in the background, rural enclaves become casualties of suburbanization.

My autobiography is about my life involved with gambling, sex, alcohol, drugs, prison, loansharking & court trials. My father was a cop, my mother a housewife. I am the middle of 3 sons. My uncle is Benny (The Hat) Sparano, the man who sued the h.b.o. Sopranos show. I talk about my 15 years as a fugitive, surrendering in 2009. My life now includes writing this book to defer other want-to-be wiseguys from this lifestyle. I began a Remembrance charity softball game to honor all the guys who died from my hometown area due to drugs, suicides, cancer, murders & accidents. Wasted talent is the epitome of a lifetime spent watching over my shoulder.

This trilogy of brilliant novels - The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land - that charts the life and times of one of the most beloved and enduring characters in modern fiction. When we meet Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter, his unguarded voice instantly wins us over and pulls us into a life that has been irrevocably changed by the loss of a marriage, a career, a child. We then follow Frank, ever brilliantly and hilariously observant, through Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, witnessing his fortune's rise and his family's fragmentation and reintegration. With finely honed prose and an eye that captures the most subtle nuances of the human condition in all its pathos, humour, beauty and strangeness, Richard Ford transforms Frank Bascombe's life into a riveting moving parable of life in America today.