Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps said, "I used this book as an inspiration for the biggest win of my career when we ended UCLA's all-time 88-game winning streak in 1974."

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. Click the Book to read the players telling their stories in their own words. This is the book that UCLA Athletic Director J.D. Morgan tried to ban.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information.

My Kid Could Paint That (7/10)

by Tony Medley

            Marla Olmstead, born in 2000, began painting when she was 2-years-old. In less than two years, she became famous. I saw her on the CBS Sunday Morning show. Her parents, Mark & Laura Olmstead, seem like uncomplicated, attractive people.

            Unfortunately, they were naïve. They trusted the muckracking CBS TV show, 60 Minutes, and interviewer Charlie Rose. Anybody who has ever seen Rose on his PBS interview show knows that this is a man who is more full of himself than any person who has ever lived. He is the master of the five-minute question that can be answered “yes, I agree; that’s what I said (or did or believe)." Then Charlie goes on to show his audience and his guest how much more he knows with another monologue-type question that can be answered monosyllabically.

            Rose and 60 Minutes know a victim when they see one. So, just when Marla was on the verge of really making something of whatever talent she had, they devoted a substantial part of their report on Marla to a critic who questioned the validity of Marla’s paintings, causing the world of the Olmsteads to come crashing down.

            Even worse, they trusted director Amir Bar-Levy, who got permission from the Olmstead’s to make a documentary about Marla. He started before the 60 Minutes hit, so had his cameras pointed at Mark and Laura while the show was being broadcast.

            This is an indictment of modern art, on the one hand. To think that a 4-year-old girl could create great art is pretty ludicrous. As some have said, it points out the absurdity of treating incomprehensible blotches of paint on a canvass a something special. It might be pretty, but is the person doing it a genius, or is she just a little girl following her instincts that are basically immature and juvenile?

            On the other hand it shows the danger of trusting the media. The Olmsteads seem like nice, gentle people who got in over their head and didn’t realize what inviting the media into their lives could do to their daughter and their family.

            As to Bar-Levy, his conclusions defy analysis. There is absolutely nothing he shows in this film that can lead to a conclusion that Marla did not do her paintings by herself. There is not one iota of evidence anybody else added a drop of paint or anything else to her work. All that’s there is a mean-spirited art critic and a self-absorbed TV interviewer. But Bar-Levy refuses to take a position, a position that the Olmsteads finally needed. This is an interesting film, but shame on Bar-Levy (not to mention Rose and his critic).