Michael Bamberger

“Fascinating...[Bamberger] knows the world of professional golf, and the pressures it exacts, like few others.” —The Wall Street Journal It’s one of the greatest comebacks of all time. And for Tiger Woods—his game, his body, and his life in shambles—getting back to the winner’s circle was only half the story. Here’s the rest of it. Tiger Woods’s long descent into a personal and professional hell reached bottom in the early hours of Memorial Day in 2017. Woods’s DUI arrest that night came on the heels of a desperate spinal surgery, just weeks after he told close friends he might never play tournament golf again. His mug shot and alarming arrest video were painful to look at and, for Woods, a deep humiliation. The former paragon of discipline now found himself hopelessly lost and out of control, exposed for all the world to see. That episode could have marked the beginning of Tiger’s end. It proved to be the opposite. Instead of sinking beneath the public disgrace of drug abuse and the private despair of a battered and ailing body, Woods embarked on the long road to redeeming himself. In The Second Life of Tiger Woods, Michael Bamberger, who has covered Woods since the golfer was an amateur, draws upon his deep network of sources inside locker rooms, caddie yards, clubhouses, fitness trailers, and back offices to tell the true and inspiring story of the legend’s return. Packed with new information and graced by insight, Bamberger’s story reveals how this iconic athlete clawed his way back to the top. Here you’ll meet the people who have shaped and saved Tiger’s life. It’s a disparate group: a Florida police officer, an old friend from Tiger’s boyhood, his girlfriend, his manager, his caddie. You’ll go inside the ropes and see Tiger’s interactions with fellow pros, with broadcasters and rules officials and Tour executives, with legends young (Rory McIlroy) and old (Jack Nicklaus) and in between (Fred Couples). On the Sunday before Masters Sunday, you’ll join Tiger as he takes a long, slow, contemplative walk across Augusta National, and you’ll be with him again seven days later in the splendid isolation of the tee at thirteen, in the rain, his right foot slipping while he swings his driver at 120 miles per hour. This is an intimate portrait of a man who has spent his life in front of the camera but has done his best to make sure he was never really known. Here is Tiger, barefoot, in handcuffs, showing a police officer a witty and self-deprecating side of himself that the public never sees. Here is Tiger on the verge of tears with his children at the British Open. Here is Tiger trying to express his gratitude to his mother at a ceremony at the Rose Garden. In these pages, Tiger is funny, cold, generous, self-absorbed, inspiring—and real. The Second Life of Tiger Woods is not only the saga of an exceptional man but also a celebration of second chances. Bamberger’s bracingly honest book is about what Tiger Woods did, and about what any of us can do, when we face our demons head-on.

The Second Life of Tiger Woods

Alan Shipnuck

A sports hero seeks a comeback in this wildly funny and ultimately redemptive novel. His name, as we all know, is Herbert X. “Tree” Tremont, and he’s the richest and most celebrated athlete of our time—a multicultural golfing icon with fifty-three Tour wins, thirteen major victories, a smoking hot wife, and two adorable kids. But when a reporter uncovers evidence that Tree’s sexual appetites are as prodigious as his tee shots, his public and private lives collide, producing the juiciest scandal in sports history. In this wickedly funny novel that takes readers between the ropes and the sheets of the PGA Tour as never before, the only thing more entertaining than Tree’s downfall is his quest for redemption.

A Novel

The Swinger

M. Night Shyamalan

An insider's narrative of the creative process of filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, told through his creation of the movie "Lady in the Water," describes his writing practices, his on-location work with his crew, and his difficult decision to change studios.

Or, how M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale

The Man who Heard Voices,

"Was golf better (to use one of Tiger's favorite phrases) back in the day? In [this book], Michael Bamberger, who fell for the game as a teenager in its wild Sansabelt-and-persimmon 1970s heyday, goes on a quest to try to find out. The result is a candid, nostalgic, intimate portrait of golf's greatest generation--then and now"--Dust jacket flap.

Men in Green

A behind-the-scenes look at the groundbreaking filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan In his relatively young career, M. Night Shyamalan has achieved phenomenal commercial and critical success. His films The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village have grossed over $1.5 billion and reinvented the thriller genre. Because Shyamalan has worked outside of the Hollywood system, however, his filmmaking habits and personality have remained largely unknown. But reporter Michael Bamberger obtained unprecedented access to Shyamalan during the tumultuous production of his film Lady in the Water, and in The Man Who Heard Voices exposes the struggles and triumphs of this modern-day Hitchcock at work. From revising the screenplay to shooting on location and evaluating the crucial initial test screening, The Man Who Heard Voices tracks all stages in the life of Shyamalan’s film. Bamberger delves into Shyamalan’s relationship with the actors and the studio (he moved from Disney to Warner Bros. for this film) while also profiling various players on set. The result is a fascinating insider portrait of creative genius—and the real-life story behind a Hollywood thriller.

Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale and Lost

The Man Who Heard Voices

Reflections on the game by the Sports lllustrated writer and national-bestselling author of The Swinger. Michael Bamberger has lived the game of golf as few others have—from his experience as one of the first white, college-educated caddies in 1985, to hanging out with Arnold Palmer at the Masters. This Golfing Life brings together Bamberger’s acclaimed, intimate profiles of stars (Tiger, Jack, and Annika to name a few), as well as the behind-the-scenes people who make the game what it is. In his last round of golf before an amputation, Bamberger’s high school golf coach, John Sifaneck, makes his first hole in one; John Stark gets Bamberger to relearn the game as a Scotsman; Bob Rubin, a Wall Street master-of-the-universe, builds his own golf course—one so difficult he can’t break one hundred on it; Bruce Edwards continues to caddie for Tom Watson while dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Bamberger interweaves these stories with his own life in a way that will remind golfers why they love the game.

This Golfing Life

Jos Vaessen

Estelle Raimondo

Recognizing that complexity calls for innovative, conceptual, and methodological solutions, Dealing with Complexity in Development Evaluation by Michael Bamberger, Jos Vaessen, and Estelle Raimondo offers practical guidance to policymakers, managers, and evaluation practitioners on how to design and implement complexity-responsive evaluations that can be undertaken in the real world of time, budget, data, and political constraints. Introductory chapters present comprehensive, non-technical overviews of the most common evaluation tools and methodologies, and additional content addresses more cutting-edge material. The book also includes six case study chapters to illustrate examples of various evaluation contexts from around the world.

A Practical Approach

Dealing With Complexity in Development Evaluation

Scott Parris

The Structure of Social Networks in the Zona Sur Oriental of Cartagena

The instant New York Times bestseller from acclaimed Sports Illustrated writer Michael Bamberger—a warm, nostalgic, intimately reported account of golf’s greatest generation, and “maybe the best golf book I’ve ever read” (Bill Reynolds, The Providence Journal). With “exceptional insight into some of America’s greatest players over the last half-century” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Men in Green is to golf what Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer was to baseball: a big-hearted account of the sport’s greats, from the household names to the private legends, those behind-the-curtain giants who never made the headlines. Michael Bamberger, who has covered the game for twenty years at Sports Illustrated, shows us the big names as we’ve never seen them before: Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Curtis Strange, Fred Couples—and the late Ken Venturi. But he also chronicles the legendary figures known only to insiders, who nevertheless have left an indelible mark on the sport. There’s a club pro, a teaching pro, an old black Southern caddie. There’s a tournament director in his seventies, a TV director in his eighties, and a USGA executive in his nineties. All these figures, from the marquee names to the unknowns, have changed the game. What they all share is a game that courses through their collective veins like a drug. Was golf better back in the day? Men in Green weaves a history of the modern game that is personal, touching, inviting, and new. This meditation on aging and a celebration of the game is “a nostalgic visit and reminiscence with those who fashioned golf history…and should be cherished” (Golf Digest).

David Mamet

Chronicles one year in the life of the students, parents, and teachers of Pennsbury High School in eastern Pennsylvania, leading up to the single most important annual event--the prom.

An American Fable and Mr. Happiness : Two Plays

The Water Engine

Pennsbury High School would be like any other were it not for one thing: its prom. Its spring dance is considered to be one of this country's best legacies. Wonderland is the inspiring true story of a dance floor and the kids who fill it: a tale of hope, sex, love, and loss. For one year, the students, parents, and teachers of Pennsbury invited Michael Bamberger, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, into their classrooms, their homes, their parties, and their dreams. He discovered an extraordinary and disparate group of everyday teenagers whose stories were touching, odd, funny, and beautiful. In Wonderland, lives intersect in unpredictable ways and are never what they appear to be. The star quarterback hides the pain of not knowing where his father is. A student with cerebral palsy is desperate to learn to tie Eagle Scout knots, despite a useless left hand. And then there is Bob Costa, who dreams of bringing glory to the school by convincing John Mayer, whose song "Your Body Is a Wonderland" is an anthem for the students, to perform at the prom. Critically acclaimed in hardcover, Wonderland is published in paperback with a new afterword by the author.

Michael Bamberger

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