Walter Foxx, Happening Beach, California's most feared bar brawler, works at Sea Lion Beach Liquor at night, attends Wong Beach State College in the day, and dishes out street justice in his spare time to the scumbags, posers, wannabes, and bullies of the world who violate his personal code of honor. Driving a 1987 Chevy Sprint with his faithful pit bull Adolf riding shotgun, Walter and his twisted crew of Poppa Chulo, Rolando, Big Cal, and Gonzo hold court at the Dead Grunion bar where they take on all comers. When Walter sees a man beating his girlfriend one night and steps in to assist her, he gets punched for his trouble and makes the perp pay. The man has friends in high places, though, and Walter soon finds himself facing felony assault charges that his 600 pound bench-press-fueled fighting skills alone can't beat. As he battles liars on the stand and his own hapless attorney John Wittless in a desperate bid to clear his name and avoid prison, Walter struggles to understand what his life means and what his future holds.Author David "Tank" Abbott, the "Huntington Beach Bad Boy" and the world's most famous brawler, had over 200 street fights before bursting onto the MMA scene in 1995 when he shocked the world by defeating larger opponents with crushing ferocity inside the cage to become a household name. He later went on to star in the most watched "Friends" episode of all time before becoming a fixture at Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling where he quickly became one of its most recognizable and popular personalities. He later returned to the cage with his trademark intensity, leaving an indelible and enduring legacy.This seminal three-novel work chronicles the adventures of fictional character Walter Foxx, who is at the crossroads of his life and who navigates the harsh worlds of bar brawling and street fighting with the goal of living his dream and following his passion and someday becoming a no-holds-barred fighter. Written from the ultimate insider's perspective, Tank Abbott takes readers from the parking lot to the cage with a realism and honesty about mixed martial arts never before told or exposed − until now!

As a bouncer in a biker bar and a participant in dozens of fights, Peyton Quinn knows the difference between fighting fact and fantasy. The result is a unique guide to self-defense that can save your ass in places where brawling is quick, dirty and very violent.

Now a major Amazon film directed by George Clooney and starring Ben Affleck, Tye Sheridan, Lily Rabe, and Christopher Lloyd, a raucous, poignant, luminously written memoir about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a bar, in the tradition of This Boy’s Life and The Liar’s Club—with a new Afterword. J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice. At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices. The alphas along the bar—including J.R.'s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler—took J.R. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle. They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fathering-by-committee. Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J.R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak—and eventually from reality. In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys. Named a best book of the year by The New York Times, Esquire, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, NPR's "Fresh Air," and New York Magazine A New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Booksense, and Library Journal Bestseller Booksense Pick Borders New Voices Finalist Winner of the Books for a Better Life First Book Award

There’s only one woman I truly care about: my daughter. Until Maisy Stratford flounces into the front office of the Tennessee Thunderbolts with a heartfelt smile and a tray of baked goods. As the Bolts’ newest hire, Maisy is optimistic, enthusiastic, and a goddess at manifestation. Everything I’m not. Known as Brawler, I’m a gruff, quiet, rough-around-the-edges, NHL defenseman. I haven’t dated in decades. I’ve never been married and my daughter’s a twenty-one-year-old mischief maker. I don’t know how to talk about feelings or place my trust in the hands of a woman. Even one with a heart of gold. With my daughter Lola egging me on, I finally ask Maisy out. But I don’t want to be her rebound; I want to be her forever. Even if I don’t know how to tell her that. Even if she’s not ready for me. If I’m being honest, I’m not ready for her either.

Isaac's parents have abandoned him for a trip to Italy in the final days before his bar mitzvah. And even worse, his hotheaded older brother, Josh, has been left in charge. An undefeated wrestler, MMA fighter, and bar brawler, Josh claims to be a "Son of the 613"—a man obedient to the six hundred and thirteen commandments in the Tanakh—and he has the tattoo to prove it. When Josh declares that there is more to becoming a man than memorization, the mad "quest" begins for Isaac. From jumping off cliffs and riding motorcycles, to standing-up to school bullies and surviving the potentially fatal Final Challenge, Josh puts Isaac through a punishing gauntlet that only an older brother could dream up. But when Isaac begins to fall for Josh's girlfriend, Leslie, the challenges escalate from bad to worse in this uproarious coming-of-age comedy.

Story of a recovery drug addict and alcoholic. Threatens to kill his father. who was a principle of the High School that he had to attend as a child. The name of the school was named after a famous President during the civil war. Pranks students play on statues during the sixty's and 70's to prove a point. Comes back home 30 years later to make peace with him. The healing of a tormented past. Involving family secrets during 60's and 70's of military and political issues. When a principle gets assasinated by a disgruntled student - he questions his own purpose in life. It's never to late to get honest with the ones you love. How does one explain to the world about how precious reading and writing is in America? Spiritual literature is banned (crime) in over 50 countries in this world. When this nation was at war with Iraq, an Islamic woman gave this Author the Quran. The Grandson of an worldwide theologian, senior Naval Commander chaplain at the Naval academny when Isreal was formed in 1948. How precious are our freedoms. Over 80 percent of this book is true. The timing of Erik Hainstock's shooting at Casenova,Wisconsin and what this author saw. This book is more of a public record than it is a fictious story. ONLY IN AMERICA !!!!

Father. Fighter. Champion. Outlaw. Hailed as an “exhilarating debut” by Publishers Weekly, Bare Knuckle by former Rolling Stone editor Stayton Bonner (nominated for the Dan Jenkins Medal of Excellence in Sportswriting) takes readers into a previously unknown world: the underground circuit of illegal bare-knuckle fighting. Bare Knuckle is the remarkable true tale of Bobby Gunn, the 73–0 undisputed champion of bare-knuckle boxing. An inspiring underdog story that reads like a real-life Rocky. Bobby Gunn has been fighting for his existence since a childhood spent living under the hand of his volatile father, and would do anything to give his seven-year-old daughter a better life—including betting on himself in the underground world of bare-knuckle boxing. In 1984, Gunn was an eleven-year-old boxer in Ontario when his father woke him in the middle of the night to fight grown men in motel parking lots for money, his old man pocketing the cash. From there, Gunn traveled to Las Vegas, Tijuana, and beyond, competing in ringed matches as well as in biker bars and mobster dens on the side, brawling to make ends meet. But it was only with the birth of his daughter—and his desire to help her avoid his fate—that Gunn entered the big-time world of underground Russian-mob matches of up to $50,000 a night in New York City, hoping to finally raise his family above the fray. Former Rolling Stone editor Stayton Bonner travels the underground for years with Gunn, the world champion of bare-knuckle boxing with a 73–0 record, shining a light on a secret circuit that’s never before been revealed. Along the way, we explore the fascinating history of this first sport in America, Gunn’s Irish Traveler community—a sect of religious fighters best known through Brad Pitt’s depiction in Snatch—as well as his part in the improbable rise of the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, the first legal revival of the sport. Bare Knuckle, a tale of triumph, loss, and a father’s love for his family, is a heartbreaking but ultimately inspiring story that will have you rooting until the end.

Most studies of musical improvisation focus on individual musicians. But that is not the whole story. From jazz to flamenco, Shona mbira to Javanese gamelan, improvised practices thrive on group creativity, relying on the close interaction of multiple simultaneously improvising performers. In Making It Up Together, Leslie A. Tilley explores the practice of collective musical improvisation cross-culturally, making a case for placing collectivity at the center of improvisation discourse and advocating ethnographically informed music analysis as a powerful tool for investigating improvisational processes. Through two contrasting Balinese case studies—of the reyong gong chime’s melodic norot practice and the interlocking drumming tradition kendang arja—Tilley proposes and tests analytical frameworks for examining collectively improvised performance. At the micro-level, Tilley’s analyses offer insight into the note-by-note decisions of improvising performers; at the macro-level, they illuminate larger musical, discursive, structural, and cultural factors shaping those decisions. This multi-tiered inquiry reveals that unpacking how performers play and imagine as a collective is crucial to understanding improvisation and demonstrates how music analysis can elucidate these complex musical and interactional relationships. Highlighting connections with diverse genres from various music cultures, Tilley’s examinations of collective improvisation also suggest rich potential for cross-genre exploration. The surrounding discussions point to larger theories of communication and interaction, creativity and cognition that will be of interest to a range of readers—from ethnomusicologists and music theorists to cognitive psychologists, jazz studies scholars, and improvising performers. Setting new parameters for the study of improvisation, Making It Up Together opens up fresh possibilities for understanding the creative process, in music and beyond.

In the 1920s they were called stags, smokes, or blue movies;todayit's adult films. But until now, apart from brief summaries infilm historiesand scholarlyarticles, there has been no complete history ofthepornographic film industry. That gap is fill.

Welcome to Brawlers Bar... They said men only get better with age, all distinguished and all that BS, but Archer "Bulletproof" Woods hadn't gotten better. At fifty-six he was still as much an asshole as he'd been in his twenties and thirties, hell, maybe he was worse. Being a bouncer at a bar called Brawlers suited him just fine and he even tolerated the rest of the crew who'd taken up residence in his house when they'd had nowhere else to go. He was big, growly and homely that kept the parade of men passing through Brawlers at arm's length for the past decade. One night changed all that. What he'd thought was happily ever after turned into a nearly five year nightmare. Gregory Charles appeared to have it all, a successful business, sophistication, and a perfect marriage. His friend and best employee, Landon, begged him to come out to a friend's bar to celebrate Landon's engagement. What could it hurt? A night without contemplating the hell that would come down on him the moment he served his husband with divorce papers would do him good. That is until he met the brooding older man staring into a whiskey straight ignoring everyone around him. Watching for trouble was his job and Gregory screamed mistake as soon as the long, lean and handsome man sat down beside him. But he also knew when someone was in over their head and Gregory needed someone to watch his back. That someone was Bull, only time would tell if he'd have to fight Gregory as much as the man after him.