When The Cheering Stopped

The poignant true story of an American president struck by tragedy at the height of his glory. This New York Times bestseller vividly chronicles the stunning decline in Woodrow Wilson’s fortunes after World War I and draws back the curtain on one of the strangest episodes in the history of the American presidency. Author Gene Smith brilliantly captures the drama and excitement of Wilson’s efforts at the Paris Peace Conference to forge a lasting concord between enemies, and his remarkable coast-to-coast tour to sway national opinion in favor of the League of Nations. During this grueling jaunt across 8,000 miles in less than a month, Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke that left him an invalid and a recluse, shrouding his final years in office in shadow and mystery. In graceful and dramatic prose, Smith portrays a White House mired in secrets, with a commander in chief kept behind closed doors, unseen by anyone except his doctor and his devoted second wife, Edith Galt Wilson, a woman of strong will with less than an elementary school education who, for all intents and purposes, led the government of the most powerful nation in the world for two years. When the Cheering Stopped is a gripping true story of duty, courage, and deceit, and an unforgettable portrait of a visionary leader whose valiant struggle and tragic fall changed the course of world history.

A heartfelt account of the difficulties football players face after they leave the NFL. The NFL is the nation’s most popular sport, but the athletes who make the league rich suffer greatly once they step off the field. In When the Cheering Stops: Life after the NFL, players open up about the adversities they face after retirement. Long after the lights have dimmed on their playing days, NFL players face emotional distress, physical injuries, and cognitive decline, often suffering on their own. Personal interviews with former players reveal that many struggle with finances, finding a second career, addiction, depression, and violence. While success stories are also shared, the unfortunate truth is that there are far more players left hurt and broken after retirement. Written by former Tampa Bay Buccaneers president and founder of the Retired Player Assistance program Gay Culverhouse, this book provides a unique inside perspective on the NFL and the long-term physical and emotional toll playing in the league takes on the players who make it great.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, "a brilliant biography"* of the 28th president of the United States. *Doris Kearns Goodwin One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize–winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson—the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the twenty-eighth President. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents in the Wilson Archives, Berg was the first biographer to gain access to two recently discovered caches of papers belonging to those close to Wilson. From this material, Berg was able to add countless details—even several unknown events—that fill in missing pieces of Wilson’s character, and cast new light on his entire life. From the visionary Princeton professor who constructed a model for higher education in America to the architect of the ill-fated League of Nations, from the devout Commander in Chief who ushered the country through its first great World War to the widower of intense passion and turbulence who wooed a second wife with hundreds of astonishing love letters, from the idealist determined to make the world “safe for democracy” to the stroke-crippled leader whose incapacity—and the subterfuges around it—were among the century’s greatest secrets, from the trailblazer whose ideas paved the way for the New Deal and the Progressive administrations that followed to the politician whose partisan battles with his opponents left him a broken man, and ultimately, a tragic figure—this is a book at once magisterial and deeply emotional about the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments, and failings. This is not just Wilson the icon—but Wilson the man. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

Former NFL wife Cyndy Feasel tells the tragic story of her family’s journey into chaos and darkness resulting from the damage her husband suffered due to football-related concussions and head trauma—and the faith that saved her. “If I’d only known what I loved the most would end up killing me and taking away everything I loved, I would have never done it.” – Grant Feasel Grant Feasel spent ten years in the NFL, playing 117 games as a center and a long snapper mostly for the Seattle Seahawks. The skull-battering, jaw-shaking collisions he absorbed during those years ultimately destroyed his marriage and fractured his family. Grant died on July 15, 2012, at the age of 52, the victim of alcohol abuse and a degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Cyndy Feasel watched their life together become a living hell as alcohol became Grant’s medication for a disease rooted in the scores of concussions he suffered on the football field. Helmet-to-helmet collisions opened the door to CTE and transformed him from a sunny, strong, and loving man into a dark shadow of his former self. In this raw and emotional memoir that takes a closer look at the destruction wrought by a game millions love, Cyndy describes in painful and excruciating detail what can happen to an NFL player and his family when the stadium empties and the lights go down. A powerful tale of warning for football moms and NFL wives everywhere, After the Cheering Stops is also a story of the hard-won hope found in God’s presence when everything else falls apart.

A New York Times–bestselling author’s “lively” account of a family of famous actors—who became notorious after the assassination of President Lincoln (The New Yorker). Junius Booth and his sons, Edwin and John Wilkes, were nineteenth-century America’s most famous theatrical family. Yet the Booth name is forever etched in the history books for one terrible reason: the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. In American Gothic, bestselling historian Gene Smith vividly chronicles the triumphs, scandals, and tragedies of this infamous family. The preeminent English tragedian of his day, Junius Booth was a madman and an alcoholic who abandoned his wife and young son to move to America and start a new family. His son Edwin became the most renowned Shakespearean actor in America, famously playing Hamlet for one hundred consecutive nights, but he suffered from depression and a crippling fear of inheriting his father’s insanity. Blessed with extraordinary good looks and a gregarious nature, John Wilkes Booth seemed destined for spectacular fame and fortune. However, his sympathy for the Confederate cause unleashed a dangerous instability that brought permanent disgrace to his family and forever changed the course of American history. Richly detailed and emotionally insightful, American Gothic is a “ripping good tale” that brings to life the true story behind a family tragedy of Shakespearean proportions (The New York Times).

“By turns surprising, poetic, and stark, The Story That Cannot Be Told is one that should most certainly be read.” —Alan Gratz, New York Times bestselling author of Refugee “A mesmerizing debut.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A powerful middle grade debut with three starred reviews that weaves together folklore and history to tell the story of a girl finding her voice and the strength to use it during the final months of the Communist regime in Romania in 1989. Ileana has always collected stories. Some are about the past, before the leader of her country tore down her home to make room for his golden palace; back when families had enough food, and the hot water worked on more than just Saturday nights. Others are folktales like the one she was named for, which her father used to tell her at bedtime. But some stories can get you in trouble, like the dangerous one criticizing Romania’s Communist government that Uncle Andrei published—right before he went missing. Fearing for her safety, Ileana’s parents send her to live with the grandparents she’s never met, far from the prying eyes and ears of the secret police and their spies, who could be any of the neighbors. But danger is never far away. Now, to save her family and the village she’s come to love, Ileana will have to tell the most important story of her life.

“Year Zero is a remarkable book, not because it breaks new ground, but in its combination of magnificence and modesty.” —Wall Street Journal A marvelous global history of the pivotal year 1945 as a new world emerged from the ruins of World War II Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the great drama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and a new, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come on a global scale: across Asia (including China, Korea, Indochina, and the Philippines, and of course Japan) and all of continental Europe. Out of the often vicious power struggles that ensued emerged the modern world as we know it. In human terms, the scale of transformation is almost impossible to imagine. Great cities around the world lay in ruins, their populations decimated, displaced, starving. Harsh revenge was meted out on a wide scale, and the ground was laid for much horror to come. At the same time, in the wake of unspeakable loss, the euphoria of the liberated was extraordinary, and the revelry unprecedented. The postwar years gave rise to the European welfare state, the United Nations, decolonization, Japanese pacifism, and the European Union. Social, cultural, and political “reeducation” was imposed on vanquished by victors on a scale that also had no historical precedent. Much that was done was ill advised, but in hindsight, as Ian Buruma shows us, these efforts were in fact relatively enlightened, humane, and effective. A poignant grace note throughout this history is Buruma’s own father’s story. Seized by the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he spent much of the war in Berlin as a laborer, and by war’s end was literally hiding in the rubble of a flattened city, having barely managed to survive starvation rations, Allied bombing, and Soviet shock troops when the end came. His journey home and attempted reentry into “normalcy” stand in many ways for his generation’s experience. A work of enormous range and stirring human drama, conjuring both the Asian and European theaters with equal fluency, Year Zero is a book that Ian Buruma is perhaps uniquely positioned to write. It is surely his masterpiece.