Adam Renfroe, Jr. is the Philadelphia Titan. "Adam said he was gonna tell the truth in a book one day, and boy, did he ever tell it in this book" (a quote from a friend). Starting with a book proposal entitled "No Justice, Just Us: What Went Wrong with Major League Baseball," former Philadelphia attorney and baseball fan Adam Renfroe, Jr. set out to tell his personal and career-ending story about his 1985 courtroom battle with MLB and the Federal Government. A number of National League baseball stars were in trouble that year for the use, solicitation, and participation of recreational cocaine and its league-wide distribution baseball stars who including Dave Parker, Keith Hernandez, Dale Berra, and Lonnie Smith. This Major League Baseball drug scandal was a sign of the times in the American 1980s when the entire country was struggling with recreational drug addictions. This scandal became infamously known as the Pittsburgh Drug Trials. Tough-nosed attorney Adam Renfroe, Jr. was stuck right in the middle of it, defending a fellow Philadelphian, Curtis "Chef Curt" Strong, a Phillies fanatic caterer who had been accused of selling cocaine to several Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates' baseball players. But when Curtis Strong was faced with the prospect of doing hard time, Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Uberroth and head of the United States Department of Justice Edwin Meese had worked out a deal with the accused baseball players to give them immunity for their confessions by naming not only Chef Curt but several Pittsburgh area drug dealers who had unfortunately befriended and associated with this group of popular, wealthy, and obviously pampered baseball players who had found themselves addicted to cocaine and hungry to find their next fix. With MLB and the Federal Government in collusion, Adam Renfroe, Jr. was strongly advised to leave the case alone, play nice, and walk away from it like every other attorney had previously done. He was told that Curtis Strong and the rest of the group of ragtag, petty drug dealers were not worth putting his career on the line for in a case that he couldn't possibly win. But Adam was a stand-up guy and a North Philadelphia loyalist, who had been trained to fight to the finish in defense of the common man who needed it. It was the reason why he had become a lawyer in the first place. And in the aftermath of a long, revealing, and nationally televised and debated case, Adam Renfroe, Jr.'s career all came crumbling down. This book not only tells the story of his historical courtroom battle with Major League Baseball and the Federal Government but unravels the personal and professional struggles of a man who had the audacity to go up against the multimillionaires of Major League Baseball and the intimidating power of the Federal Government in the first place. So we give you Philadelphia Titan: The Adam Renfroe, Jr. Story, the lawyer who took Major League Baseball to trial.

Whether referred to as mermaid, usalka, mami wata, or by some other name, and whether considered an imaginary being or merely a person with extraordinary abilities, the siren is the remarkable creature that has inspired music and its representations from ancient Greece to present-day Africa and Latin America. This book, co-edited by a historical musicologist and an ethnomusicologist, brings together leading scholars and some talented newcomers in classics, music, media studies, literature, and cultural studies to consider the siren and her multifaceted relationships to music across human time and geography.

In this book, Dan Dietz examines in detail every musical that opened on Broadway during the 2000s, including Avenue Q, Billy Elliott, The Full Monty, In the Heights, Jersey Boys, Mary Poppins, Next to Normal, The Producers, Rock of Ages, Spamalot, Spring Awakening, The 25th An...

From the first amateur leagues of the 1860s to the exploits of Livan and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, here is the definitive history of baseball in Cuba. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria expertly traces the arc of the game, intertwining its heroes and their stories with the politics, music, dance, and literature of the Cuban people. What emerges is more than a story of balls and strikes, but a richly detailed history of Cuba told from the unique cultural perch of the baseball diamond. Filling a void created by Cuba's rejection of bullfighting and Spanish hegemony, baseball quickly became a crucial stitch in the complex social fabric of the island. By the early 1940s Cuba had become major conduit in spreading the game throughout Latin America, and a proving ground for some of the greatest talent in all of baseball, where white major leaguers and Negro League players from the U.S. all competed on the same fields with the cream of Latin talent. Indeed, readers will be introduced to several black ballplayers of Afro-Cuban descent who played in the Major Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier once and for all. Often dramatic, and always culturally resonant, Gonzalez Echevarria's narrative expertly lays open the paradox of fierce Cuban independence from the U.S. with Cuba's love for our national pastime. It shows how Fidel Castro cannily associated himself with the sport for patriotic p.r.--and reveals that his supposed baseball talent is purely mythical. Based on extensive primary research and a wealth of interviews, the colorful, often dramatic anecdotes and stories in this distinguished book comprise the most comprehensive history of Cuban baseball yet published and ultimately adds a vital lost chapter to the history of baseball in the U.S.

Pamela Gillilan was born in London in 1918, married in 1948 and moved to Cornwall in 1951. When she sat down to write her poem Come Away after the death of her husband David, she had written no poems for a quarter of a century. Then came a sequence of incredibly moving elegies. Other poems followed, and two years after starting to write again, she won the Cheltenham Festival poetry competition. Her first collection That Winter (Bloodaxe, 1986) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize.

If you ever needed proof that a magazine can have a love affair with a musician, you're holding it in your hands. For DownBeat, the preeminent publication of the jazz world, Miles Dewey Davis was one of its most cherished subjects. Since it began covering the jazz scene in 1939, no other artist has been more diligently chronicled in its pages than Davis. The beauty of this collection is seeing the development of an artist over time. The reviews of his music go from quietly introducing a new talent to revering, perhaps, the greatest jazz artist of his generation. The feature articles begin with a very young, very polite Davis lamenting, “I've worked so little. I could probably tell you where I was playing any night in the last three years.” As he develops, the interviews show Davis gaining confidence and stature, showing swagger and becoming the over-the-top, say-it-like-it-is showman that made every interview an event. The Miles Davis Reader compiles more than 200 news stories, feature articles, and reviews by some of the greatest writers in jazz into one volume. It delivers a patchwork of his words and music – in the moment, as they happened. With several lengthy features added along with a dozen new photographs, this new edition is a beautiful series of snapshots, a year-by-year ride through the many phases of Davis as an artist and as a man.

From the "New York Times" bestselling author and winner of the 2001 NAACP Award for Outstanding Fiction comes a gripping story of a promising young college student with dreams and ambitions far darker than anyone could have imagined.