The Wisdom of Walk-Ons tells the true stories of three unrecruited college football players who-against overwhelming odds-played for some of the greatest programs and Hall of Fame coaches in history: the Alabama Crimson Tide with Paul "Bear" Bryant, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish with Dan Devine, and the Southern California Trojans with John Robinson. Former walk-ons Gordon Adams, Bob Bleyer, and Alan Pizzitola graduated from these storied universities in the 1970s and '80s with academic honors, national championship rings, practical skills, and a collection of winning strategies that helped them persevere and succeed in business and life in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. All of us can apply this walk-on wisdom and become more successful and fulfilled in our professional and personal lives.

This is an era of increasingly complex problems, fewer and fewer resources to address them, and failing solutions. Is it possible to find viable solutions to the challenges we face today as individuals, communities, and nations? This inspiring book takes readers on a learning journey to seven communities around the world to meet people who have “walked out” of limiting beliefs and assumptions and “walked on” to create healthy and resilient communities. These Walk Outs who Walk On use their ingenuity and caring to figure out how to work with what they have to create what they need. In India, we meet people from Shikshantar, a community that is rejecting the modern culture of money, with its emphasis on self-interest and scarcity, in favor of a gift culture based on generosity and reciprocity. In Zimbabwe, we discover the capacity people have to adapt and invent new ways of surviving and thriving in the face of total systems collapse. Through essays, stories, and beautiful color photographs, Wheatley and Frieze immerse us in these communities that are accomplishing extraordinary things by relying on everyone to be an entrepreneur, a leader, an artist. From Mexico to Greece, from Columbus, Ohio, to Johannesburg, South Africa, we discover that every community has within itself the ingenuity, intelligence, and inventiveness to solve the seemingly insolvable. “It’s almost like we discovered a gift inside ourselves,” one Brazilian said, “something that was already there.” “This book gives insight and beauty to the new world beyond consumerism and all of its side effects. Written with poetic and reflective grace, it is an intimate journey through communities that are creating a future with their own hearts, hands, and relationships.” —Peter Block, author of Community and coauthor of The Abundant Community The Enhanced Edition includes 25 minutes of animation, video, and audio. The animation shows the “Two Loops Theory of Change” with a voiceover from co-author Deborah Frieze. Three videos show inspirational “Walk On” communities in Brazil, South Africa, and India. This edition also includes the “Walk Out Walk On” theme song. Margaret Wheatley cofounded and led the Berkana Institute, a global foundation that partners with people developing healthy and resilient communities. Deborah Frieze succeeded her as Berkana’s president and created the Berkana Exchange with many of the people described in this book. Margaret is the author of several books, including Leadership and the New Science, A Simpler Way, Turning to One Another, Finding Our Way, and Perseverance.

The shoot-from-the-lip basketball superstar is back and badder than ever in his inimitable 'guide to living' - as outrageous and inflammatory as the day-glo rebounder himself - a jolting, original, and enlightening follow-up to his number one bestseller 'Bad As I Wanna Be' which sold 800,000 copies in hardback alone!

Brian Biada is a former walk-on and member of the 2009 - 2012 Florida Gator football teams. In "Gator Walk: How to Walk-On and Not Crawl Off," he uses his own experiences to shed light on the joys and heartaches of being a walk-on. While the primary beneficiaries of his writing are current and aspiring walk-ons, the stories he shares are light-hearted in nature and enjoyable to any reader in need of a good laugh.

Best Kept Secrets was written by an athlete for athletes and those with an athletic or personal development mindset. At the macro level, this book is for people who have felt or feel marginalized and/or ostracized because they aren’t the superstar in their respective space. At the micro and more personal level, Best Kept Secrets is a book by a walk-on, for walk-ons, about walk-ons, and the power that we possess to move from feelings of invisibility to life champions. While the context of Best Kept Secrets highlights the sports journey, it is not only about sports. It is also about life. The life game we play is not for the weak. It is for the battle tested. It is for the courageous. It is for those who understand their why. Transitioning from best kept secret to life champion is about more than throwing a ball through a hoop, lifting weights, running a ball into an end zone, kicking a ball into or hitting a ball over a net. The transition is about the journey from caterpillar to butterfly. In order to become a life champion, significant effort is required. Craftsmanship and personal mastery are foundational. The mandates to become artisans of our own fortunes, the best of the best, examples of human potential, and love personified are calls to action. Fear and love cannot live in the same place. To transition from best kept secret to life champion, a willingness to carry on despite the odds stacked against you is imperative. Best Kept Secrets is an outpouring of love. This is a manifesto for my forgotten tribe members. This is a clarion call for athletes and non-athletes who aspire to summit their chosen mountains.

Al McGuire was the Mark Twain of college basketball. Never was there a figure in the game so quoted and so quotable, on sports and on the human condition. This book collects more than a hundred of McGuire's most colorful quotations, plus photographs from his life and career, in a tribute that is funny, poignant, and brimming with his streetwise sagacity. McGuire, a brash and fiery New Yorker who grew up working in his parents' saloon, played a rough and tumble game of basketball at St. John's University and briefly in the NBA before entering the coaching ranks. He reached the pinnacle of his profession and gained national fame at Marquette University in Milwaukee, where in thirteen seasons he compiled a 295-80 record, appeared in nine NCAA tournaments, and won eighty-one home games in a row. He was a fine coach who cared deeply about his players and was beloved by his teams and fans alike, but his flamboyance and his mouth sometimes got him into trouble. The end of his coaching career captivated the nation: McGuire wept on the bench as his Marquette Warriors won the national title. McGuire then began a ground-breaking career in network broadcasting, adding a zest and unconventionality that the college game had never seen. His sometimes bizarre and always entertaining commentary kept viewers tuned in even after the outcome of a lopsided game was a foregone conclusion. When Al McGuire died of leukemia in 2001, the sports world lost a true original.

"One Fantastic Ride" is a behind-the-scenes portrait of the unforgettable journey of the University of North Carolina's men's basketball program to its 2009 NCAA Tournament title.

A dual biography crafted around the famous encounter between the French philosopher who wrote about power and the Russian empress who wielded it with great aplomb. In October 1773, after a grueling trek from Paris, the aged and ailing Denis Diderot stumbled from a carriage in wintery St. Petersburg. The century’s most subversive thinker, Diderot arrived as the guest of its most ambitious and admired ruler, Empress Catherine of Russia. What followed was unprecedented: more than forty private meetings, stretching over nearly four months, between these two extraordinary figures. Diderot had come from Paris in order to guide—or so he thought—the woman who had become the continent’s last great hope for an enlightened ruler. But as it soon became clear, Catherine had a very different understanding not just of her role but of his as well. Philosophers, she claimed, had the luxury of writing on unfeeling paper. Rulers had the task of writing on human skin, sensitive to the slightest touch. Diderot and Catherine’s series of meetings, held in her private chambers at the Hermitage, captured the imagination of their contemporaries. While heads of state like Frederick of Prussia feared the consequences of these conversations, intellectuals like Voltaire hoped they would further the goals of the Enlightenment. In Catherine & Diderot, Robert Zaretsky traces the lives of these two remarkable figures, inviting us to reflect on the fraught relationship between politics and philosophy, and between a man of thought and a woman of action.

From the bestselling author of A Ladder to the Sky—“a darkly funny novel that races like a beating heart” (People)—comes a new novel that plays out across all of human history: a story as precise as it is unlimited. This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons, one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of two thousand years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across fifty countries to a life among the stars in the third, the world will change around them, but their destinies remain the same. It must play out as foretold. From the award-winning author of The Heart’s Invisible Furies comes A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom, an epic tale of humanity. The story of all of us, stretching across two millennia. Imaginative, unique, heartbreaking, this is John Boyne at his most creative and compelling.