New Releases by George Plimpton

For more than a century, The Explorers Club has been the meeting place for some of the most daring adventurers on the planet. It''s a legendary oasis, where a man just back from the Gobi Desert might kick back and, over some port, have a chat with a fellow off to Bandung.This updated edition includes a new foreword by Richard Wiese, the 44th president of The Explorers Club, and an all-new photo insert that takes readers inside the exclusive club and its world-famous adventure archives. Here then, are some of the best tales ever swapped at that capital of adventure, including: Anthony Fiola on being in close quarters with a polar bear Charles Lindbergh on his famous flight Felix Reisenberg on the Arctic Anne Keenleyside, Ph. D. on cannibalism Roald Amundsen on the explorer Stefansson Mervyn Cowie on hunting killer lions Jean-Marc Boivin on hang-gliding Curtis and Kathleen Saville on oceanic rowing E. W. Deming on Sitting Bull''s mysterious death It''s some of the finest writing on some of the most hair-raising journeys ever made, all selected by the late George Plimpton, himself a member of The Explorers Club.

Que se passe-t-il quand un écrivain efflanqué au nez fragile affronte un boxeur professionnel ? En 1977, George Plimpton, légende de la presse américaine, âgé de cinquante ans, est sur le point de trouver la réponse. Son insatiable curiosité et son goût pour l''immersion de haut vol le poussent à grimper sur le ring face au champion du monde poids mi-lourd, Archie Moore pour un combat en trois rounds. Journaliste amateur armé d''autant de courage que d''autodérision, il raconte ses trois mois d''entraînement avec humour et force détails, de ses premiers cours de boxe aux éblouissements du combat, "un homme face à un autre dans la configuration la plus élémentaire". Passé le baptême du feu, il poursuit son incursion dans le monde de la boxe suivant Mohamed Ali jusqu''au Zaïre pour assister au fameux Rumble in the Jungle, Ali contre Foreman.

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The book that made a legend -- and captures America''s sport in detail that''s never been matched, featuring a foreword by Nicholas Dawidoff and never-before-seen content from the Plimpton Archives. George Plimpton was perhaps best known for Paper Lion, the book that set the bar for participatory sports journalism. With his characteristic wit, Plimpton recounts his experiences in talking his way into training camp with the Detroit Lions, practicing with the team, and taking snaps behind center. His breezy style captures the pressures and tensions rookies confront, the hijinks that pervade when sixty high-strung guys live together in close quarters, and a host of football rites and rituals. One of the funniest and most insightful books ever written on football, Paper Lion is a classic look at the gridiron game and a book The Wall Street Journal calls "a continuous feast...The best book ever about football -- or anything!"

This baseball classic that Ernest Hemingway called "beautifully observed and incredibly conceived" includes a foreword from Jane Leavy and never-before-seen content from the Plimpton archives. The first of Plimpton''s remarkable forays into participatory journalism, Out of My League chronicles with wit, charm, and grace what happens when a self-professed amateur has the chance to answer every fan''s question: could he strike out a major league star? Plimpton''s inspired idea -- to get on the mound and pitch a few innings to the All-Stars of the American and National Leagues -- begins as a fun-filled stunt and comes to a deeply hellish, nearly humiliating end. This honest and hilarious tale features Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Whitey Ford, Ralph Houk, and other baseball greats and is "a baseball book such as no one else ever wrote, and one of the best ever."-New York Herald Tribune

George Plimpton needed no encouragement. If there was a sport to play, a party to throw, a celebrity to amaze, a fireworks display to ignite, Plimpton was front and center hurling the pitch, popping the corks, lighting the fuse. And then, of course, writing about it with incomparable zest and style. His books made him a legend. The Paris Review, the magazine he founded and edited, won him a throne in literary heaven. Somehow, in the midst of his self-generated cyclones, Plimpton managed to toss off dazzling essays, profiles, and New Yorker “Talk of the Town” pieces. This delightful volume collects the very best of Plimpton’s inspired brief “excursions.” Whether he was escorting Hunter Thompson to the Fear and Loathing movie premiere in New York or tracking down the California man who launched himself into the upper atmosphere with nothing but a lawn chair and a bunch of weather balloons, Plimpton had a rare knack for finding stories where no one else thought to look. Who but Plimpton would turn up in Las Vegas, notebook in hand, for the annual porn movie awards gala? Among the many gems collected here are accounts of helping Jackie Kennedy plan an unforgettable children’s birthday party, the time he improvised his way through amateur night at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater, and how he managed to get himself kicked out of Exeter just weeks before graduation. The grand master of what he called “participatory journalism,” George Plimpton followed his bent and his genius down the most unbelievable rabbit holes–but he always came up smiling. This exemplary, utterly captivating volume is a fitting tribute to one of the great literary lives of our time.

A collection of George Plimpton''s finest pieces on the contemporary sports scene.

Every one of his Antarctic expeditions ended in failure. His life "off the ice" was a series of failed get-rich-quick schemes. And yet the name of Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) remains a byword for charismatic leadership, raw courage, and endurance in the face of overwhelming odds. Perhaps the greatest hero of the heroic age of polar exploration, Shackleton''s crowning achievement was to bring all 28 of his men home safely after their ship was crushed in pack ice in 1915 -- an epic journey capped by an 800-mile small-boat voyage through some of the planet''s roughest waters. In Ernest Shackleton, writer and media personality George Plimpton not only tells Shackleton''s story, but recounts his own recent adventures following Shackleton''s footsteps through the bleak, beautiful seas and islands at the bottom of the world.

An unforgettable anecdotal survey, by turns deeply moving and beguilingly entertaining, of the surprising roles that animals have played throughout the history of warfare. (SEE QUOTE.)

A series of letters written to Dr. Rawff, a pet-problem advice columnist and veterinarian, holds the clues to his mysterious disappearance, and it is up to readers to use the letters to figure out his location.

He was the most social of writers, and at the height of his career, he was the very nexus of the glamorous worlds of the arts, politics and society, a position best exemplified by his still legendary Black and White Ball. Truman truly knew everyone, and now the people who knew him best tell his remarkable story to bestselling author and literary lion, George Plimpton. Using the oral-biography style that made his Edie (edited with Jean Stein) a bestseller, George Plimpton has blended the voices of Capote''s friends, lovers, and colleagues into a captivating and narrative. Here we see the entire span of Capote''s life, from his Southern childhood, to his early days in New York; his first literary success with the publication of Other Voices, Other Rooms; his highly active love life; the groundbreaking excitement of In Cold Blood, the first "nonfiction novel"; his years as a jet-setter; and his final days of flagging inspiration, alcoholism, and isolation. All his famous friends and enemies are here: C.Z. Guest, Katharine Graham, Lauren Bacall, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, John Huston, William F. Buckley, Jr., and dozens of others. Full of wonderful stories, startlingly intimate and altogether fascinating, this is the most entertaining account of Truman Capote''s life yet, as only the incomparable George Plimpton could have done it.

Includes articles on Mickey Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Nolan Ryan, Henry Aaron and his record, Willie Mays, Roger Maris, among others.

Celebrated journalist and author George Plimpton sets out to find that elusive quality--which he calls the "X Factor"--that all winners, from famous athletes to successful CEOs, seem to possess. In a quest both hilarious and informative, Plimpton corners sports superstars, famous coaches, successful businesspeople, and others, putting to each the same question: What is it that allows an individual, or a team, to outperform competitors who are no less gifted, mentally and physically? Media pubilcity.

This issue celebrates the great American tradition of literary humor and investigates the future of the medium. Brendan Gill ponders his varied career in a Writers-at-Work Interview, and reflects on New Yorker humorists from Thurber to Frazier. Also featured: Jay McInerney, Fran Leibowitz, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Howard Stern, and Mona Simpson. Photos & illustrations.

Sixteen disabled artists talk about their lives and how art has made a difference to them.

Featuring such classic pieces as "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" and "The Plimpton Small-Ball Theory of Sports Writing" - the smaller the ball the better the writing - this is a rich mix of profiles, essays, and articles from a most talented and unique American literary personality. Photographs.

Plimpton joins the PGA circuit in the name of bringing professional sport to the average man.

A Buddhist monk in the New York Mets organization learns to throw a baseball with unerring accuracy at the blazing speed of 168 miles per hour.

Fireworks--from legendary aficionados like Louis XIV and Peter the Great to the Lutheran minister who punctuates his sermons with homemade fireworks, from Minnesota to Monte Carlo, from cherry bombs to Catherine wheels.

When Edie was first published a decade ago, it quickly became an international bestseller. In the sixties Edie Sedgwick exploded into the public eye like a comet--aristocratic, glamorous, and Andy Warhol''s superstar. Then at 28 her light fizzled and died from a drug overdose. Alternately thrilling, tragic and horrifying, this book shatters many myths about the American sixties. Photographs.