Earl "The Pearl" Monroe is a basketball legend whose impact on the game transcends statistics, a player known as much for his unorthodox, "playground" style of play as his championship pedigree. Observers said that watching him play was like listening to jazz, his moves resembling freefloating improvisations. "I don't know what I'm going to do with the ball," Monroe once admitted, "and if I don't know, I'm quite sure the guy guarding me doesn't know either." Traded to the New York Knicks before the 1971–72 season, Monroe became a key member of the beloved, star-studded 1972–73 Knicks team that captured the NBA title. And now, on the 40th anniversary of that championship season—the franchise's last—Monroe is finally ready to tell his remarkable story. Written with bestselling author Quincy Troupe (Miles, The Pursuit of Happyness) Earl the Pearl will retrace Monroe's life from his upbringing in a tough South Philadelphia neighborhood through his record-setting days at Winston-Salem State, to his NBA Rookie of the Year season in 1967, his tremendous years with the Baltimore Bullets and ultimately his redemptive, championship glory with the New York Knicks. The book will culminate with a revealing epilogue in which Monroe reflects on the events of the past 40 years, offers his insights into the NBA today, and his thoughts on the future of the game he loves.
Her platinum blonde hair and distinctive birthmark have become cultural icons. Her rise from small-town girl to glamorous film superstar, her torrid romances, and her untimely and mysterious death have captured the imagination of people around the world for decades. Now take a fresh look at the life and times of Marilyn Monroe through newly discovered photographs and fascinating text filled with quotes from Marilyn Monroe herself as well as from the people who knew and loved her. Taken from the body of work of Earl Leaf a famous paparazzo photographer of the fifties and sixties, the exquisite images in this volume offer the fascinating illustrated life story of an incredible woman. Although thousands of reels of film were devoted to Marilyn during her lifetime few professionals photographed her over the span of time that Earl Leaf did. He was with her in 1950 before stardom came and was still on the some in 1962 when her life hit the rocks. Because of this, his work offers an unforgettable glimpse into the life and career of an unforgettable woman.
A memoir of hard lessons learned in the racially segregated and sometimes outright racist NBA of the early ‘60s by celebrated NBA player and the first Black Coach of the Year, Ray Scott. Introduced by Earl "the Pearl" Monroe. “There’s a basic insecurity with Black guys my size,” Scott writes. “We can’t hide and everybody turns to stare when we walk down the street. … Whites believe that their culture is superior to African-American culture. ... We don’t accept many of [their] answers, but we have to live with them.” Ray Scott was part of the early wave of Black NBA players like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who literally changed how the game of professional basketball is played—leading to the tremendously popular financial blockbuster the NBA is today. Scott was a celebrated 6’9” forward/center after being chosen by the Detroit Pistons as the #4 pick of the 1961 NBA draft, and then again after he was named head coach of the Pistons in October 1972, winning Coach of the Year in the spring of 1974—the first black man ever to capture that honor. Scott’s is a story of quiet persistence, hard work, and, most of all, respect. He credits the mentorship of NBA player and coach Earl Lloyd, and talks about fellow Philly native Wilt Chamberlain and friends Muhammad Ali and Aretha Franklin, among many others. Ray has lived through one of the most turbulent times in our nation’s history, especially the time of assassinations of so many Black leaders at the end of the 1960s. Through it all, his voice remains quiet and measured, transcending all the sorrows with his steadiness and positive attitude. This is his story, told in collaboration with the great basketball writer, former college player and CBA coach Charley Rosen.
THE KNICKERBOCKER HOTEL Built between 1923 and 1925, the famous Hollywood Hotel Knickerbocker was in its early days, a mainstay in the life of Hollywood’s most glorious celebrities. But, looking at this aging hotel on Ivar Avenue, you probably wouldn’t guess that it had much of a Hollywood history. Similarly, looking at Earl Watson, an unassuming man, residing in Fresno, California, you probably wouldn’t guess that he too, was a part of Hollywood’s golden history. But, you’d be dead wrong. Hollywood’s elite came to the Knickerbocker and was greeted by the ever-smiling Earl Watson. From 1946 to 1962, Watson worked as a doorman at the famed hotel. Where most people only dream of seeing such celebrities as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, Earl Watson rubbed elbows with them. Today, the Hotel Knickerbocker is an apartment house for senior citizens, but back in the 1920s, it was in the heart of Hollywood and played a key role in Tinsel town’s history. The Hotel was closed and the rooms converted to apartments in 1971. In 1991, the hotel bar was re-opened as the “All Star Theatre Cafe And Speakeasy,” a coffee house nestled in the plush atmosphere of a glamorous past. And although the entrance to the hotel is closed to the public, you can still look through the glassed doors and imagine the splendor and magic that was the Knickerbocker. Just as the All Star Theatre Café and Speakeasy allows the spectator to revisit Hollywood’s elegant past, Earl Watson, doorman to the stars, can bring the past to life with his tales of hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite. His home in Fresno California is a museum filled with memorabilia of those days in Hollywood. But there is much more to Earl Watson, the man, who grew up in Chicago’s South Side during the depression years. As a young man, he served proudly with the Armed Forces in Europe and fought in the fiercest battles of the war, first at Normandy and then in the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of the Rhine River. There is more to this modest gentleman from Chicago than a story about the past vestiges of the Knickerbocker and the famous people who lived there. It is the story of lives interwoven in the tapestry of Hollywood’s grandeur as seen and experienced by the always-smiling Earl of the Knickerbocker Hotel. Just ask E Entertainment, the worldwide syndicated television show out of Hollywood. They wanted to do a piece about Hollywood and the old Knickerbocker Hotel. They went to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and were referred to Johnny Grant, who had been the mayor of Hollywood for many years. When they contacted Johnny Grant, he told them that they should call “Earl Watson” because he was there in that era. They contacted Earl and set up an interview in his home in Fresno, California. They spent a couple of hours with Earl and collected 55 years of history. Writers who did not know the hotel or the employees have written many untrue stories about the Hotel over the years.... but Earl Watson lived it.
This new first volume proposes that the British North American colonists' desire for expansion, security and prosperity is the essence of American foreign relations.
This is the story of a man, a treaty, and a nation. The man was John Quincy Adams, regarded by most historians as America's greatest secretary of state. The treaty was the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, of which Adams was the architect. It acquired Florida for the young United States, secured a western boundary extending to the Pacific, and bolstered the nation's position internationally. As William Weeks persuasively argues, the document also represented the first determined step in the creation of an American global empire. Weeks follows the course of the often labyrinthine negotiations by which Adams wrested the treaty from a recalcitrant Spain. The task required all of Adams's skill in diplomacy, for he faced a tangled skein of domestic and international controversies when he became secretary of state in 1817. The final document provided the United States commercial access to the Orient—a major objective of the Monroe administration that paved the way for the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Adams, the son of a president and later himself president, saw himself as destined to play a crucial role in the growth and development of the United States. In this he succeeded. Yet his legendary statecraft proved bittersweet. Adams came to repudiate the slave society whose interests he had served by acquiring Florida, he was disgusted by the rapacity of the Jacksonians, and he experienced profound guilt over his own moral transgressions while secretary of state. In the end, Adams understood that great virtue cannot coexist with great power. Weeks's book, drawn in part from articles that won the Stuart Bernath Prize, makes a lasting contribution to our understanding of American foreign policy and adds significantly to our picture of one of the nation's most important statesmen.
Since their first publication, the four volumes of the Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations have served as the definitive source for the topic, from the colonial period to the Cold War. This entirely new first volume narrates the British North American colonists' pre-existing desire for expansion, security and prosperity and argues that these desires are both the essence of American foreign relations and the root cause for the creation of the United States. They required the colonists to unite politically, as individual colonies could not dominate North America by themselves. Although ingrained localist sentiments persisted, a strong, durable Union was required for mutual success, thus American nationalism was founded on the idea of allegiance to the Union. Continued tension between the desire for expansion and the fragility of the Union eventually resulted in the Union's collapse and the Civil War.
Winner of the Colonel Richard W. Ulbrich Memorial Book Award Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award Civil War Supply and Strategy stands as a sweeping examination of the decisive link between the distribution of provisions to soldiers and the strategic movement of armies during the Civil War. Award-winning historian Earl J. Hess reveals how that dynamic served as the key to success, especially for the Union army as it undertook bold offensives striking far behind Confederate lines. How generals and their subordinates organized military resources to provide food for both men and animals under their command, he argues, proved essential to Union victory. The Union army developed a powerful logistical capability that enabled it to penetrate deep into Confederate territory and exert control over select regions of the South. Logistics and supply empowered Union offensive strategy but limited it as well; heavily dependent on supply lines, road systems, preexisting railroad lines, and natural waterways, Union strategy worked far better in the more developed Upper South. Union commanders encountered unique problems in the Deep South, where needed infrastructure was more scarce. While the Mississippi River allowed Northern armies to access the region along a narrow corridor and capture key cities and towns along its banks, the dearth of rail lines nearly stymied William T. Sherman’s advance to Atlanta. In other parts of the Deep South, the Union army relied on massive strategic raids to destroy resources and propel its military might into the heart of the Confederacy. As Hess’s study shows, from the perspective of maintaining food supply and moving armies, there existed two main theaters of operation, north and south, that proved just as important as the three conventional eastern, western, and Trans-Mississippi theaters. Indeed, the conflict in the Upper South proved so different from that in the Deep South that the ability of Federal officials to negotiate the logistical complications associated with army mobility played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the war.
In this fresh survey of foreign relations in the early years of the American republic, William Earl Weeks argues that the construction of the new nation went hand in hand with the building of the American empire. Mr. Weeks traces the origins of this initiative to the 1750s, when the Founding Fathers began to perceive the advantages of colonial union and the possibility of creating an empire within the British Empire that would provide security and the potential for commercial and territorial expansion. After the adoption of the Constitution—and a far stronger central government than had been popularly imagined—the need to expand combined with a messianic American nationalism. The result was aggressive diplomacy by successive presidential administrations. From the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida to the Mexican War, from the Monroe Doctrine to the annexation of Texas, Mr. Weeks describes the ideology and scope of American expansion in what has become known as the age of Manifest Destiny. Relations with Great Britain, France, and Spain; the role of missionaries, technology, and the federal government; and the issue of slavery are key elements in this succinct and thoughtful view of the making of the continental nation.
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