Seth Kaufman – författare

On September 26, 2017, the biggest recruiting scandal in college basketball history sent shock waves through the world of sports. Caught up in a massive FBI and NCAA investigation—and the intense media spotlight—was Rick Pitino, the Louisville Cardinals'' Hall of Fame coach.Here, from Pitino himself, comes the real story of the ongoing case and the hard truth about how college hoops has been pushed to the brink of disaster by greed, bad actors, and shoe company money.Rick Pitino has spent a lifetime in basketball. He is the recruiting and coaching maestro behind Final Four appearances with three different teams, and National Championships at two of them. He worked the early days of the legendary Five-Star camp and scouted players without the influence of agents, runners, or shoe companies. And he has run today''s recruiting gauntlet of sports apparel marketing, corrupted assistant coaches, unethical youth coaches, and powerful organizations hellbent against him. Rick Pitino has seen it all, dealt with it all, and now tells it all.Pitino is the story of an epic coaching career and the evolution of NCAA basketball to the multi-billion-dollar enterprise it is today. It is also a master''s course on the arts of coaching and recruiting. And in the telling, the one and only Rick Pitino lays all his cards on the table in addressing scandals of his past and the current headline-grabbing investigation that led a packed Board of Directors at Louisville to derail his career.

Famous Arabic translator Oona Noor receives a mysterious manuscript from Cairo entitled The Seductive Lady Vanessa of Manhattanshire and realizes she has discovered a masterpiece. The book, written by an unknown author named Aisha Benengeli, spins the tale of Maxine More, a divorced, romance novel–obsessed New Yorker who envisions herself as a Georgian Lady and sees the world entirely through the prism of her beloved books. Designating her cleaning lady Magdalena Cruz as her lady-in-waiting, Lady Vee embarks on a series of misadventures. She mistakes a plumber for a famous alpha male; pursues her poodle-owning crush, Nelson Dodge; dispenses misguided advice to the lovelorn and goes man-hunting on New York's Upper East Side. Heartbroken when the manuscript ends abruptly, translator Noor journeys to Cairo, hunts for the concluding pages, and uncovers a stunning confession from Lady Vee's creator Benengeli about her own romantic troubles. As the author struggles to find happiness for her crazed character and herself, the translator desperately searches for the elusive writer. In the end, this delightfully inventive novel unspools three tales about three very different women, each on a quest for a perfect love story.

A provocative, entertaining but ultimately serious examination of rock''s most essential questions: Beatles or Stones? Which is the best air guitar to play? Does Rush suck? And what is the meaning of Billy Joel? Metaphysical Graffiti is a book for music fans, humor fans, and, if a meaningful ontological category, fans of philosophy too. It is a provocative, inflammatory, hilarious, but ultimately serious book about the essential questions of rock—Beatles or Stones? What Kind of Air Guitar Do You Play? Does Rush Suck? and, of course, The Meaning of Billy Joel. In a rich mix of original pieces, Kaufman not only examines the essential issues facing all rock fans, but delves into the deeper, metaphysical roots of these questions. The book''s title is a riff on the classic Led Zeppelin album, Physical Graffiti, while the book itself is an innovative, critical work that in many ways mirrors the best rock ''n'' roll. Funny, audacious, irreverent, and relentlessly creative, it stretches the parameters of traditional criticism by incorporating short fiction, "Moronic Dialogues," and even a short mini-play, "Godot, The Musical," in order to explore philosophical concepts of Reality, Authenticity, Hype, and, ultimately, the purpose of music criticism itself.