The former football player for the Miami Dolphins recounts his battle with post-football financial disaster, cocaine addiction, incapacitating medical problems, and a conviction for hyped-up drug charges that he fought all the way to State Supreme Court

Against the Grain

Fiffer, Steve

Morris, Eugene "Mercury"

Biographies & Memoirs

McGraw=Hill

Have you ever had a million-dollar idea that someone else made a million on? So You've Got a Great Idea can help you be that one person who cashes in on an innovative product, service, business, or novelty item. Like Marvin Rosenblum, who made the most of Spiro Agnew's reputation (he also produced the movie 1984), and Ann Moore, who created the Snugli, you too can take your idea from the drawing board to the bank. Steve Fiffer shows you how to tell whether your idea is a winner or a clunker and, through entertaining profiles of successful innovators, helps you decide how to follow through on it: Should you sell the idea to an established business or go into business for yourself? Do you want to work on the idea full-time or part-time? At home or in an office? You'll also discover the advantages and disadvantages of professional services, whether to apply for a patent, how to use government agencies and find financing. Here are stories of ordinary people who have had extraordinary ideas that have changed their lives. You will read about:
<ul>
<li>Gordon and Carole Segal, who were struck with the idea for Crate and Barrel over their kitchen sink</li>
<li>Kip Fuller, who created the Servitron Robot because he couldn't afford a caterer at his Christmas party</li>
<li>Jeffrey Ullman, who combined his talent for making documentaries with a knack for sales and opened one of the first video dating services in America</li>
<li>Lynn Tatar, whose talent for chocolate novelties transformed her kitchen into The Amazing Chocolate Factory</li>
<li>and more</li>
</ul>
 Having a great idea is one thing; making a great idea make money is what this book is all about.

So You've Got A Great Idea: Here's How To Develop It, Sell It, Market It Or Just Cash In On It

Business & Money

Management & Leadership

Balance

What would you do if you were seventeen years old and broke your neck? Steve Fiffer had his whole life ahead of him in December 1967 when he fractured his fifth cervical vertebra in a wrestling accident at school, shattering his dreams. The diagnosis was quadriplegia, and his parents were told that he would never walk again. Within five months he was out of the hospital, within seven he was on crutches, and within nine he was beginning his freshman year at Yale University. And most remarkable of all, he never lost his wisecracking sense of humor or his hunger for all that life has to offer. Three Quarters, Two Dimes, and a Nickel is Steve Fiffer's story of his coming of age, and of how he created a normal life for himself despite his injury. We join him around the dinner table as he rebuilds his once distant relationship with his father and gains a new appreciation of their bond; we agonize with him as he tries to find true love (or at least lose his virginity) despite his self-consciousness about his physical awkwardness, and we join him at the Lawson YMCA in downtown Chicago, where he rebuilds his body under the watchful eye of the manic physical-fitness coach Dick Woit.

THREE QUARTERS, TWO DIMES, AND A NICKEL: A MEMOIR OF BECOMING WHOLE

Community & Culture

Free Press

Over 65 million years ago in what is now Cheyenne River Sioux territory in South Dakota, a Tyrannosaurus rex matriarch locked in a ferocious battle fell mortally wounded into a riverbed. In 1990, her skeleton was found, virtually complete, in what many call the most spectacular dinosaur fossil discovery to date. 
And then another battle began--a "Survival of the Fittest" free-for-all involving commercial dinosaur hunters, gun-toting law officers, an ambitious federal prosecutor, a Native American tribe, jealous academics, an enterprising auction house, major museums, and corporate giants, all making their claim for the dinosaur named Sue (after the field paleontologist who first spotted her bones). At stake: not just Sue's wealth of scientific riches, but her grant-drawing power and vast commercial potential as well. 
Before it was over, there would be claims and counterclaims; charges of checkbook-polluted science, criminal larceny, and vengeful prosecutions; and devastating prison terms. And the gavel would come down on the largest-ever ($8.36 million) auction price tag for a fossil, paid by Chicago's Field Museum, with help from Disney and McDonald's. 
Now, as her May, 2000, museum unveiling nears, Sue is not only poised to be a scientific phenomenon but a main attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom and (fittingly enough for the world's greatest meat eater) a marketing superstar for McDonald's. Meanwhile, the man whose team actually unearthed Sue--professional dinosaur hunter Peter Larson--remains hauntingly, touchingly obsessed with the 41-foot-long, dead-for-millions-of-years T-rex. 
Sue is not just another dinosaur, and Tyrannosaurus Sue is not just another dinosaur book. It is a fascinating introduction to the centuries-old history of commercial fossil hunting, a legal thriller, and a provocative look at academic versus commercial science and the chase for the money that fuels both. And, in the case of Peter Larson, through whose eyes most of the story is revealed, a kind of love story. Steve Fiffer, an attorney as well as an author who has followed the story for the past seven years, has captured the whole range of characters and issues embroiled in the fight for Sue. Ranging the prehistoric Badlands to the hallowed halls of justice, academia, and merchandising tie-ins, Fiffer communicates both the excitement over Sue's discovery and the motivations, maneuverings, and absurdities of the various forces attempting to control her destiny.

Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought over T-Rex Ever Found

History

Americas

W.H.Freeman & Co.

Over 65 million years ago in what is now South Dakota, a battle-scarred Tyrannosaurus rex matriarch―perhaps mortally wounded in a ferocious fight―fell into the riverbed and died. In 1990 her skeleton was found, virtually complete, in what many have called the most spectacular dinosaur fossil discovery to date.
And then another battle began - a "survival of the fittest" free-for-all involving commercial dinosaur hunters, gun-toting law officers, an ambitious federal prosecutor, a Native American tribe, jealous academics, an enterprising auction house, major museums, and corporate giants, all making their claim for the dinosaur named Sue. Before it was over, there would be claims and counterclaims; charges of checkbook-polluted science, criminal larceny, and vengeful prosecutions; and devastating prison terms. And the gavel would come down on the largest-ever ($8.36 million) auction price tag for a fossil, paid by Chicago's Field Museum, with help from Disney and McDonald's.
Capturing the whole range of characters and issues embroiled in the fight for Sue, author Steve Fiffer communicates both the excitement over Sue's discovery and the motivations, maneuverings, and absurdities of the various forces attempting to control her destiny.

Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found

W.H.Freeman

A guide to the enjoyment of baseball games includes discussions of pitching, hitting, defense, base stealing, and the job of the manager

How to Watch Baseball: A Fan's Guide to Savoring the Fine Points of the Game

Sports & Outdoors

Baseball

FACTS ON FILE+

Speed: Baseball in High Gear

Redefinition

Fred Karger is not your average Republican candidate for president in 2012. For one thing, he's moderate. For another, he's Jewish. And for another, he's gay. While he never hid his politics or religion from the world, he did keep his homosexuality a secret for years. He was 41 when he finally came out to his family. And in his 27 years at one of the most highly regarded political consulting firms in the U.S., he never told his peers. Only after Karger retired in 2004 did he reveal himself. The revelations coincided with a new found social activism that blossomed in 2008 when Karger became involved in the effort to save same sex marriage in California (the battle over Proposition 8). In "outing" the Mormon Church's secret funding of the campaign to eliminate same sex marriage, Karger found himself the subject of international headlines; vitriolic condemnation by the Church and its front, the National Organization for Marriage; and even received a death threat. He also received numerous messages from gay men and women--many of them young--thanking him for his efforts. Having worked on hundreds of political campaigns, including nine presidential races, Karger was energized to run for president. As he makes clear in this book, crashing the party is nothing new to him. In his youthfully exuberant days, he crashed the stage at the Academy Awards twice, Hubert Humphrey's campaign plane, and, yes, even the White House. "When you are a closeted gay person, you learn to be creative," he explains. In FRED WHO, Karger--with uncommon candor and poignant humor--answers the question that everyone from Sir David Frost to Rachel Maddow, from the New York Times to Politico, has been asking for the last several months: Who the hell is Fred Karger? He painstakingly relates what it is like to live in the closet, afraid to tell family, friends, colleagues, and the candidates for whom he works. He shares the lessons learned working for the likes of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And he offers wonderful stories about life on the political trail and in Hollywood (where he was an actor before turning to politics. Sound familiar?) By the end of this memoir, the reader will indeed know who Fred Karger is and have new insights into the many worlds that he has inhabited. You may even want to support his candidacy.

Fred Who?: Political Insider to Outsider

Karger, Fred

Leaders & Notable People

Fred Karger

Tyrannosaurus Sue

In 1990, Peter Larson, with his team of commercial fossil hunters from the Black Hills Institute, discovered the most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex specimen in history. He dubbed it "Sue" after the field paleontologist who first saw it sticking out of a sandstone cliff on the ranch of Maurice Williams, a Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe member in South Dakota's badlands. Because the skelton was 90% complete, its study promised to yield up priceless information on the life and habits of the T Rex. Larson made out a check to Williams for $5,000 to purchase the bones, and planned to make Sue the centerpiece of a museum that he and his brother had dreamed for years of building. In 1992, however, federal agents raided the Institute and seized Sue, triggering the greatest custody battle in paleontological history. In the end, Sue would be auctioned off to Chicago's Field Museum. Tyrannosaurus Sue is the definitive insider's look at how this dramatic discovery, and the ensuing legal struggle, played out. Everyone from the Jurrasic Park crowd of dinosaur lovers to those who delight in a well-told, exciting true story will enjoy this audiobook.

Regional U.S.

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

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