Monte Burke – författare

In 1932, a farmer named George Washington Perry decided it was too rainy to plow and went fishing. That day, George landed the largest largemouth ever recorded—twenty-two pounds four ounces. The fish has inspired and frustrated hundreds of anglers for decades. They’ve dedicated their lives to the pursuit of “Sowbelly”—a nearly mythical fish, whose swinelike girth holds the key to their dreams.

From an L.A. cop who came within ounces of besting the record to an Alabaman who has lost his marriage and his daughter to this pursuit, Burke takes readers along for the ride in this legendary race.

An instant New York Times bestseller—the “insidery, detailed, and absorbing” (Sports Illustrated) biography of Nick Saban, the polarizing University of Alabama football coach who not only transformed the college game, but might also be the best ever at winning.As the head coach of the University of Alabama’s football team, Nick Saban is perhaps the most influential—and polarizing—man in the sport. His program-building vision has delivered packed stadiums, rabid fans, legions of detractors, countless NFL draft picks, and a total of four national championships, including three in the last five years. He is the only coach in the college football’s modern era (since 1936) to win national championships at two different schools. Monte Burke’s Saban—the first major biography of the man who has come to epitomize the game—presents this towering figure with a never-before-seen human depth. Though a great deal is known about Nick Saban the coach, not much is known about Nick Saban the man. Little is written about his early climb through the coaching ranks as an assistant in college and in the NFL, or his head-coaching stints at Michigan State and Louisiana State and his struggles as a pro coach with the Miami Dolphins. Through unprecedented interviews with more than 250 friends, coworkers, rivals, former players, and others, Burke reveals the defining moments of the coach’s life, including the beginning of his recruiting career at age ten; his dramatic departures from three different high-profile football teams; and the building of championship programs at Louisiana State and Alabama. In Saban, “Burke has written a winning, definitive portrait of a fascinating character…. A no-holds-barred glimpse into the quest for perfection” (Publishers Weekly).

From the New York Times bestselling author of Saban and Lords of the Fly comes an exquisite collection of angling stories that span the twenty-first century.The thirty-one pieces in Rivers Always Reach the Sea—essays, as well as profiles of some of the biggest names in angling, including Lefty Kreh and Andy Mill—take the reader from the rainforests of Chile to the windswept tundra of Russia, from the remote mangrove-choked basins of Florida’s Everglades to the congested littoral zone of New York City, and to many places in between. The quarry includes trout, Atlantic salmon, tarpon, bonefish and striped bass, but the real quest is for something else entirely. Told in a voice described by the novelist, Carl Hiaasen, as “funny, wistful, and wonderful,” the stories in Rivers Always Reach the Sea keep the focus on the “why” of the sport of fly fishing, and not the “how.”