William Roger Clemens, nicknamed "Rocket", is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 24 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), most notably with the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, and New York Yankees. He was one of the most dominant pitchers in major league history, tallying 354 wins, a 3.12 earned run average (ERA), and 4,672 strikeouts, the third-most all time. An 11-time MLB All-Star and two-time World Series champion, Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, more than any other pitcher in history. Clemens was known for his fierce competitive nature and hard-throwing pitching style, which he used to intimidate batters.
Miguel Odalis Tejada is a Dominican former professional baseball shortstop who played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). He played for six teams, most notably the Oakland Athletics and Baltimore Orioles, before short stints with the Houston Astros, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, and Kansas City Royals.
The Ghost Writer is a 1979 novel by the American author Philip Roth. It is the first of Roth's novels narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, one of the author's putative fictional alter egos, and constitutes the first book in his Zuckerman Bound trilogy. The novel touches on themes common to many Roth works, including identity, the responsibilities of authors to their subjects, and the condition of Jews in America. Parts of the novel are a reprise of The Diary of Anne Frank.
Michiko Kakutani is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Malinda Gayle McCready was an American country music singer. Active from 1995 until her death in 2013, she recorded a total of five studio albums. Her debut album, 1996's Ten Thousand Angels, was released on BNA Records and was certified 2× Platinum by the RIAA, while 1997's If I Don't Stay the Night was certified Gold. 1999's I'm Not So Tough, her final album for BNA, was less successful, and she left the label. A self-titled fourth album followed in 2002 on Capitol Records. McCready's fifth and final studio album, I'm Still Here, was released in March 2010 on Iconic Records.
Nathaniel Philbrick is an American author of history, winner of the National Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His maritime history, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, is based on what inspired Herman Melville to author Moby-Dick, won the 2000 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was adapted as a film in 2015.
Molly Worthen is a journalist and historian of American religion. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and a tenured professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History is a 2006 memoir by Jonathan Franzen, who received the National Book Award for Fiction for his novel The Corrections in 2001.
The Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball, informally known as the Mitchell Report, is the result of former Democratic United States Senator from Maine George J. Mitchell's 20-month investigation into the use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) in Major League Baseball (MLB). The 409-page report, released on December 13, 2007, covers the history of the use of illegal performance-enhancing substances by players and the effectiveness of the MLB Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. The report also advances certain recommendations regarding the handling of past illegal drug use and future prevention practices. In addition, the report names 89 MLB players who are alleged to have used steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.
Brian Gerard McNamee is a former New York City police officer, personal trainer, and Major League Baseball strength-and-conditioning coach. He is notable for providing performance-enhancing drugs to Major League Baseball players, and also for testifying against former New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens at a 2008 United States Congressional hearing that concerned the veracity of the 2007 George J. Mitchell Report.
Jeff Novitzky is the current Senior Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance for the UFC, the world's largest mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion. He previously served as a special agent for the Food and Drug Administration, investigating the use of steroids in professional sports. Before April 2008 he was a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service who investigated the use of steroids for over five years. Novitzky's work has been credited with "changing the face of sports."
Mark Paoletta is an American attorney who notably served in roles in the Donald Trump administration. From January 8, 2018 to January 20, 2021, Paoletta served as general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Prior to this, Paoletta served as chief counsel and assistant to Vice President Mike Pence from January 20, 2017, to January 5, 2018.
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is a non-fiction book by American author David Grann. Published in 2009, the book recounts the activities of the British explorer Percy Fawcett who, in 1925, disappeared with his son in the Amazon rainforest while looking for the ancient "Lost City of Z". In the book, Grann recounts his own journey into the Amazon, by which he discovered new evidence about how Fawcett may have died.
Robert Hilburn is an American pop music critic, author, and radio host. As critic and music editor at the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles appeared in publications around the world. Hilburn has since written a memoir and best-selling biographies of Johnny Cash and Paul Simon. He was a member of the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for more than twenty years, and lives in Los Angeles.
American Rust is a novel by American writer Philipp Meyer, published in 2009. It is set in the 2000s, in the fictional town of Buell in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, which is in a rural region referred to as "the Valley" of dilapidated steel towns. The novel focuses on the decline of the American middle class and well-paying manufacturing jobs, and the general sense of economic and social malaise. Meyer's novel received positive reviews, and many publications ranked it one of the best novels of the year.
A Hologram for the King is a 2012 American novel written by Dave Eggers. In October 2012, the novel was announced as a finalist for the National Book Award.
David Meyer Wessel is an American journalist and writer. He has shared two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism. He is director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution and a contributing correspondent to The Wall Street Journal, where he worked for 30 years. Wessel appears frequently on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.
American Icon may refer to:
Moonglow is a 2016 novel by Michael Chabon. The book chronicles the life of Chabon's grandfather, a WW2 soldier, engineer and rocket enthusiast who marries a troubled Jewish survivor from France and lives a challenging, wandering life in postwar America. Chabon tells the story using a mixture of strict memoir and creative fiction writing. The narrator functions as a proxy for the author, Chabon.
M Train is a 2015 memoir written by Patti Smith. Smith's audiobook recording of M Train earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Album.
