Michael Sokolove has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.9★ across 131 ratings. The most-rated is Rapture.
Rapture
Summary
Nick Nurse distills the wisdom, insight, and experiences that helped him lead the Toronto Raptors to the NBA championship in his first year as head coach. Foreword by Phil Jackson. NBA fans had low expectations for rookie coach Nick Nurse and his Toronto Raptors. But what those naysayers didn't realize was that Nurse had spent the past 30 years proving himself at every level of the game, from youth programs and college ball to the NBA D League and Britain's struggling pro circuit. While few coaches have taken such a circuitous path to pro basketball's promised land, the journey - which began at Kuemper Catholic high school in Carroll, Iowa - forged a coach who proved to be as unshakable as he is personable. On the road, he is known to bring his guitar and keyboard for late-night jazz and blues sessions. In the locker room, he's steadfast and even-keeled regardless of the score. On the court, he pulls out old-school tactics with astounding success. A rookie in name but a veteran in attitude, Nurse is seemingly above the chaos of the game and, with only two seasons on his résumé, has already established himself as one of the NBA's most admired head coaches. Now, in this revealing new book - equal parts personal memoir, leadership manifesto, and philosophical meditation - Nurse tells his own story. Given unprecedented access inside the Raptors' locker room, listeners get an intimate study of not only the team culture he has built, but also of a rookie coach's unique dynamic with the star players - such as Kawhi Leonard, Kyle Lowry, and Pascal Siakam - who helped trailblaze the 2019 championship run. As much for listeners of Ray Dalio as for fans of John Wooden and Pat Summitt, Rapture promises to be a necessary listen for anyone looking to forge their own path to success. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Nick Nurse, Michael Sokolove and Phil Jackson (P)2020 Little, Brown & Company
Assata
Summary
In 2013 Assata Shakur, founding member of the Black Liberation Army, former Black Panther and godmother of Tupac Shakur, became the first ever woman to make the FBI's most wanted terrorist list. Assata Shakur's trial and conviction for the murder of a white State Trooper in the spring of 1973 divided America. Her case quickly became emblematic of race relations and police brutality in the USA. While Assata's detractors continue to label her a ruthless killer, her defenders cite her as the victim of a systematic, racist campaign to criminalise and suppress Black nationalist organisations. This intensely personal and political autobiography reveals a sensitive and gifted woman, far from the fearsome image of her that is projected by the powers that be. With wit and candor, Assata recounts the formative experiences that led her to embrace a life of activism. With pained awareness she portrays the strengths, weaknesses and eventual demise of Black and white revolutionary groups at the hands of the state. A major contribution to the history of Black liberation, destined to take its place alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou. Foreword written by Angela Davis.
©2017 Assata Shakur (P)2017 Audible, Ltd
Players First
Summary
In Players First, John Calipari relates for the first time anywhere his experiences over his first four years coaching the Kentucky Wildcats, college basketball's most fabled program, from the doldrums to a national championship, drawing lessons about leadership, character, and the path to personal and collective victory. At its core, Calipari's coaching philosophy centers on keeping his focus on the players - what they need to get the best out of themselves and one another. He is beloved by his players for being utterly honest with them and making promises that he always keeps, no matter what. He knows that in this age, they come to Kentucky to prepare for the NBA; every year he gets players who in a previous era would have gone directly into the pros from high school but now have to play college basketball for one year. Calipari has fought against this system, but he has to play within it, and so he does, better than anyone. The result is an extraordinary leadership challenge: every year Coach Cal gets a handful of eighteen-year-old kids who have been in a bubble for the previous four years at least, filled with hype about their own greatness, and they come to Kentucky feeling sure that they will play for their coach only for seven months before they go on to greater glory. Every year, he has to reinvent his team. After his 2012 NCAA championship, it was particularly dramatic; he lost his first six players in the first round, meaning that someone who couldn't even start for Kentucky was a first-round draft pick. The overall record at Kentucky, and for his career, puts Calipari in the pantheon of the greatest coaches in the history of the game. Bold, funny, and truthful, like Coach Calipari himself, Players First is truly the first deep reckoning with the meaning of his experiences and the gifts of insight they offer.
©2014 John Calipari and Michael Sokolove (P)2014 Penguin Audio
Success Is the Only Option
Summary
Kentucky's charismatic coach shares the secrets of creating one of the premiere programs in college basketball, revealing how he transforms a group of former high school superstars into selfless, cohesive teams - including a remarkable squad last year that fell just one game short of a perfect season. Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari is known for his unparalleled ability to recruit the nation's best young players, some of whom will spend just one year with him before going to the NBA, and convincing them to commit to the team without sacrificing their personal goals. It is a promise he makes to them: "Fully invest in the present - and each other - and I guarantee it will serve your future." Here, for the first time, he distills his team-building methods in ways that apply to CEOs, business owners, coaches, teachers, and leaders of all kinds - lessons for anyone seeking to inspire talented individuals to reach for their best selves and contribute to a greater good. A basketball team is an intimate workplace in which blend is everything and character matters. As such, it is a window into the nature of successful leadership. Calipari views each new team like a start-up business - one composed of new players, new relationships, and new challenges. Each season is a series of discoveries as he learns how to unleash the extreme talent in each of his players and mold them into championship material as college basketball comes to a crescendo every spring. While he can't control everything, he is responsible for everything - just like a CEO. An enlightening look at leadership, management, and team building, Success Is the Only Option offers the keys to winning on and off the court.
©2016 John Calipari (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Drama High
Summary
The inspiration for the NBC TV series "Rise," starring Josh Radnor, Auli'i Cravalho, and Rosie Perez — the incredible and true story of an extraordinary drama teacher who has changed the lives of thousands of students and inspired a town. By the author of The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino. Why would the multimillionaire producer of Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon take his limo from Manhattan to the struggling former steel town of Levittown, Pennsylvania, to see a high school production of Les Misérables? To see the show performed by the astoundingly successful theater company at Harry S Truman High School, run by its legendary director, Lou Volpe. Broadway turns to Truman High when trying out controversial shows such as Rent and Spring Awakening before they move on to high school theater programs across the nation. Volpe’s students from this blue-collar town go on to become Emmy-winning producers, entertainment executives, newscasters, and community-theater founders. Michael Sokolove, a Levittown native and former student of Volpe’s, chronicles the drama director’s last school years and follows a group of student actors as they work through riveting dramas both on and off the stage. This is a story of an economically depressed but proud town finding hope in a gifted teacher and the magic of theater.
©2017 Michael Sokolove (P)2017 Penguin Audio
The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino
Summary
From acclaimed New York Times Magazine author Michael Sokolove, the astonishing inside story of the epic corruption scandal that has rocked the NCAA and exposed the rot and hypocrisy at the heart of big-time college sports. At a lavish annual event in late August 2017, the University of Louisville athletic director, who made more than five million dollars in compensation in 2016, announced an extension of his school's sponsorship deal with Adidas: $160 million for another 10 years. The invitees were city's gentry - horse breeders, bourbon distillers, partners at big law firms, the state's governor, Matt Bevin, and its most powerful politician, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. One month later, the FBI revealed it had reached the endgame of a sprawling investigation of large-scale corruption involving Adidas, Louisville, and a host of other colleges in which large payments were laundered from Adidas through a network of coaches and fixers to athletes and their families to induce them to go to Adidas-branded college programs. In short order, Hall of Fame basketball coach Rick Pitino (salary: eight million dollars) and athletic director Tom Jurich were fired, and fear and trembling swept through the world of big-time college athletics. Because there is another shoe, as it were, and it will fall. In The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino, Michael Sokolove lifts the rug on the Louisville scandal and places it in the context of the much wider problem: the farce of amateurism in big-time college sports. In a world in which even assistant coaches can make high-six and seven-figure salaries as long as they keep the "elite" athletes coming in, shoe deals can reach into the nine figures, and everyone is getting rich but the players, can it be surprising that unscrupulous parties would pay athletes, creating in effect a black market in young men, a veritable underground railroad of talent? But a few bad apples are one thing. In The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino, Michael Sokolove shows an elaborate, systematic machine involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit payments and connecting at least one of the largest apparel companies in the world with schools across the country. The Louisville-Adidas scandal has revealed a web of conspiracy whose scope has shaken big-time college sports to its core, delivering a devastating blow to the fantasy of amateurism, of "scholar athletes". A Shakespearean drama of greed and desperation involving some of the biggest characters in the arena of sports, The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino will be the definitive chronicle of this scandal and its broader echoes.
©2018 Michael Sokolove (P)2018 Penguin Audio