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. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their 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. Also available on Kindle.

The Bourne Legacy (5/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 134 minutes.

OK for children.

This is a movie in search of a story. For 100 minutes, this is a slam-bang, humdinger of a movie. But then when you sit through 30 minutes of a mindless chase through the Philippines, on foot and vehicle, it dawns on you that writer/director Tony Gilroy doesn't have a clue about where he's going with this.

It starts out with Renner in search of meds given him by an evil government agency (the NRAG, National Research Assay Group, apparently some sort of offshoot of the CIA and the DOD), run, apparently, by Edward Norton and Stacy Keach, who has decided to terminate the program and the six or seven people who had volunteered to take the meds.

For 100 minutes it's engrossing. But then it just fades to black with the 30-minute chase and ends with nothing resolved, probably yearning for a sequel, a sequel in which I have little or no interest. I don't like to be played like this. That's a shame because Jeremy Renner (replacing Matt Damon as the star, although Jeremy isn't named Bourne, but Aaron Cross) gives a terrific performance. So does his companion, Dr. Mara Shearing (Rachel Weisz), who is also being chased by the evil agency. Damon made a conscious decision not to participate and so did director Paul Greengrass, who took over after the first film and really made the Bourne films into something special. Those were good decisions by both men, although Greengrass probably would have insisted on an ending.

Films like this, with no satisfactory conclusion, do a disservice to movie fans. This is like a Perils of Pauline serial, with the story never coming to an end. I was surprised Gilroy didn't add "tune in next year" before the end credits.

It might be a good idea to take a timer with you and leave after the first 100 minutes, unless you're a male between 15-35, at which movies like this are targeted. That's when the story ends and the special effects-laden chase begins. You won't be any the wiser if you sit through to the end. But if you like mindless chases that have no cohesion or reason, racing over rooftops, motorcycles and cars cutting in and out of traffic, all the silly stuff you've seen thousands of times since Bullitt started it all in 1968 (for all the car chases that have been forced on movie-goers since 1968, the only two that stand out as high quality filming are Bullitt and The French Connection in 1971) this could be your cup of tea.