Our current LOG info (not BLOG info) features two recent books from Max & Co. authors.
We don't want to have a blog feature. Who has the time or wants the stress to keep the material fresh? Plus, with practically everyone spewing opinions about practically everything, who really wants or needs another one? Though...you should vote for Obama. This area will be devoted to ongoing author appearances and their most recent reviews.
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HERO OF THE UNDERGROUND
Jason Peter with Tony O’Neill.
St. Martin’s, $24.95
(304p)
ISBN 978-0-312-37576-8
Hero of the Underground, on sale July 8th, is already getting some strong pre-publication reviews.
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From LIBRARY JOURNAL: "Peter, a star at the University of Nebraska’s storied football program in the late 1990s and a first-round NFL draft pick, details his short, frenzied life as a drug user and veteran of the treatment center circuit. It started with painkillers in college, which turned into a full-blown addiction as he battled an array of injuries that ended his career by his late 20s. With plenty of money and time available, Peter’s partying escapades eventually led him to freebasing cocaine and turning his upscale New York City apartment into arguably the world’s most expensive heroin retreat, complete with a live-in junkie stripper girlfriend. Avoiding self-help urgings and self-congratulations, Peter (who is now clean) and O’Neill have crafted an unflinching look at the dark side of a life devoted to pleasure. The book’s power lies in his honesty in detailing the depths of his despair from seeking the next high." (July)
From PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: "A former NFL player tells how he bottomed out with drugs. An East Coast kid who never really wanted to do much other than follow his brothers into football, Peter made it big early on, garnering a co-captaincy spot on the powerhouse Nebraska Cornhuskers. Although the Huskers gave Peter the opportunity to shine as a leader and prove his worth to the all-important NFL draft following graduation, the team’s doctor helped start him down another path by giving him painkillers. It would take a few years for Peter’s serious addiction to bloom, but he enjoyed the experience right from the start. And not just because it was an almost necessary block to the daily beating his body was taking, he admits: "All I knew was how much better life looked when you saw it through the haze of opiates." After graduation, Peter was a first-round draft pick of the Carolina Panthers. But he was unable to enjoy the moment, as loneliness and growing addictions made it impossible to enjoy anything other than getting high. When a series of surgeries failed to resolve his injuries, Peter was out of the NFL forever. He had a raging drug problem, more money than he knew what to do with and a lot of free time to spend destroying himself. He did it all the usual ways—strippers and blow, lying to his family, going in and out of rehab—but the bruising way he describes them, aided by co-author O’Neill, is more harrowing than usual. Peter’s narrative relentlessly focuses on the brutalizing facts, and it is free from the macho posturing and self-congratulatory navel-gazing common in recovery memoirs. Nightmarishly honest."
From JERRY STAHL, best-selling author of PERMANENT MIDNIGHT, PERV, and I-FATTY: "Hero of the Underground gives us a portrait of red-blooded jock as monster dope fiend. It's a savage, unsparing, eye-popping ride through the dark soul of big money, endless drugs, American manhood and our national past time -- self-destruction. Ex-Cornhusker Jason Peters writes like a soulful badass, and we're lucky he lived to tell the tale. Had Hunter Thompson been a football player, instead of a fan, this is the book he'd have written. Flat-out, mash-your-face-in-the-dirt amazing."
From POE BALLANTINE, Pushcart & O'Henry award-winning author of 501 MINUTES TO CHRIST, GOD CLOBBERS US ALL, and THINGS I LIKE ABOUT AMERICA — and Nebraska resident: "I enjoyed the hell out of his book, sped through it like a crack fiend. There will be a lot of interest in this part of the world because of his Cornhusker ties. Nebraska is God's country, but God, as Peter says, is Tom Osborne."
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MY PARACHUTE IS BEIGE
by Ken Brown
ISBN = 978-0-8109-9539-0
PRICE = $12.95
The book went on sale, Tuesday March 18th. Please go buy a bunch of copies. It is a career guide for untalented & unmotivated cubicle dwellers that want nothing more than to hang onto their low paying, soul sucking, shit job...forget about moving up any ladder or thinking outside any box. Good to Great? Staying stuck at second-rate and insignificant is just fine, thank you. Includes job-acquiescing tips such as:
- How to survive role-playing at your company's off-site seminar
- How to look busy (wandering in a Mobius-strip pattern, holding a stack of excel spread sheets, works best!)
- The Art of the Fabricated Excuse
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| The book makes a perfect gift for anyone that's recently graduated, recently down sized, or has a job. You must know someone that has a job. Buy them a copy. If your local bookseller doesn't have copies, demand that they do. Tell them that if they don't, you're going to start covertly leaving unwanted things inside all their copies of books by Ann Coulter and/or Tom Clancy. |
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An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport*
*With Other Random Thoughts from Childhood to Fatherhood
by Kenny Mayne
ISBN = 978-030739615-0
PRICE = $24.95
ESPN’s Kenny Mayne, called "The funniest guy on TV" by Jerry Seinfeld, has written the first book in his impending oeuvre. AN INCOMPLETE & INACCURATE HISTORY OF SPORT will be on-sale April 22nd. Other days as well. |
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Thursday-Saturday, 4/24-4/26 Los Angeles
- 4/24, 7:30PM: Barnes & Noble (The Grove)
- 4/26, 12:00PM: LA Times Book Festival, Center Stage
Tuesday, 4/29 New Jersey
- 4/29, 7:00PM: Bookends (Ridgewood)
Wednesday, 4/30 New York City
- 4/30, 1:00PM: Borders (Wall Street, 100 Broadway)
- 4/30, 9:30PM: Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre...An Incomplete & Inaccurate Evening with Kenny Mayne
Thursday, 5/1 Louisville
- 5/1, 7:00PM: Carmichael's Bookstore
Thursday, 5/8 Vermont
- 5/8, 7:00PM: Northshire Bookstore (Manchester Center)
Monday-Tuesday, 5/12-5/13 Seattle
- 5/12, 6:00PM: Costco (Kirkland)
- 5/13, 7:30PM: Elliot Bay Book Company
Thursday-Friday, 5/22-5/23 Connecticut
- 5/22, 7:00PM: RJ Julia Booksellers (Madison)
- 5/23, 7:30PM: Barnes & Noble (West Hartford )
In addition, the book has so far received two pre-publication reviews. One, by a brilliant and astute reviewer, WES LUKOWSKY, wrote very good things in his Booklist review.
WES LUKOWSKY wrote, among other things:
Mayne is familiar to ESPN viewers as a SportsCenter anchor, feature reporter, and event host. His droll delivery peppered with non sequiturs and a sly smile embraces viewers who share his little secret that for the most part sports are not at all to be taken seriously. His book is the same as he wanders from tackle football--in which he shares his experiences as a high-school star and college backup--to snowball fighting, skateboarding, and dodgeball. Many of his observations are spot-on. In Mayne's world, for example,dodgeball is a form of junior-high torture in which the weak are mercilessly bombarded with stinging rubber balls for an hour while the gym teacher wanders off to the lounge to hit on the cute student teachers. Readers who like Mayne's television persona will enjoy this printed extension.
Meanwhile, another reviewer afraid to attach their name to the review, was less kind. We have since learned in writing that this particular reviewer belongs to a church where the pastor spews obscenities and racial slurs about Canadians. As Kenny’s book is dedicated to Canadians, spotting the reviewer’s hidden agenda does not take night vision goggles. That the written source uncovering this reviewer’s dirty little secret happens to be a speculative email written by me does not make the foul nature of the review any less so.
The review, however, cannot refrain from admitting the following:
Mayne, known for his sarcasm on ESPN's SportsCenter, submits in his debut ...is the greatest...in the world and everyone knows it. Stories from Mayne's life as a sports-loving kid in Washington State, a quarterback and father to two little girls round out the book...entertaining...comedic observations...generating laughs.
Note to future book reviewers: If you jump ugly with our authors, we will jump ugly on you. That reviewer afraid to attach their name, by the way, we also hear plagarized their senior thesis and gets turned on by bestiality. |
