Most Popular Books by Michael Holley

New York Times bestselling sportswriter Michael Holley takes readers behind the scenes of the relationship that transformed the Patriots from a middling franchise to the envy of the NFL. No head coach-quarterback pair has been more successful in NFL history than Bill Belichick and Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. They have won four Super Bowls, six AFC championships, and thirteen division titles. And now Holley takes us inside their relationship, dissecting how these men and their team came to dominate football. Belichick, a genius as a defensive coordinator, had been a five-year flop as head coach of the Cleveland Browns. Upon his controversial arrival in Foxboro, though, he quickly began to remake the team at every level--scouts, coaches, and players. His bold, calculated approach had fans up in arms, sportswriters questioning his intelligence, and players wondering how long they would last on the team. Meanwhile, buried down in the 2000 NFL draft, the 199th overall pick was a skinny kid from the University of Michigan named Tom Brady who many scouts thought would never succeed at a professional level. The lowest of the four quarterbacks on the team's depth chart, he appeard to be just one of the guys. Like Belichick, though, he lived for football, and he knew the playbook as well as Drew Bledsoe, the franchise quarterback. And when Bledsoe was injured in 2001, Brady took the job and vowed to never give it back. The handsome Brady became a star, wearing hand-tailored suits, appearing in movies and on magazine covers, and marrying a supermodel. Belichick, with his trademark cut-off hoodies, was the opposite of a fashion plate. Together, the odd couple somehow rose above controversies and tragedies. Draft picks were lost, suspensions given, lawsuits filed. As their legends have grown, so have their critics, with some of those critics operating from NFL headquarters. Despite that, with Belichick's deft and brilliant strategy in the draft year in year out and Brady's exacting decision-making on the field, the Patriots cultivated an atmosphere of success and won a stunning 75 percent of their games together. Respected and reviled, Belichick and Brady have set the bar high for excellence in a league designed for parity. They have rarely been understood. Until now. Based on dozens of interviews with former and current players, coaches, and executives, Belichick and Brady is an eye-opening look at the minds, motives, and wild ambitions of two men who have left an indelible mark on the game of football.

When Bill Belichick arrived in New England, the Patriots were a laughingstock, an organization with a losing record and a roster of overpaid, underperforming players. So how did a head coach with a questionable record transform this team, garner three Lombardi trophies in four years, and -- with the Pats' 2005 Super Bowl win over the Philadelphia Eagles -- cement the team's place as an NFL dynasty? With unprecedented access granted by Belichick and his staff, author Michael Holley spent two years with the coach, his team, and his brain trust. Holley provides insights into how Belichick and his coaching cabinet prepare for opponents, evaluate talent, run the draft, and design their offensive and defensive schemes. Patriot Reign captures Belichick at his most candid, and what emerges is a portrait of a complicated man who is cerebral, yes, but also tough, demanding, stubborn, funny, profane, and a master strategist. Frank, uncompromising, and stunning, Patriot Reign is required reading for football fans who want to understand what makes a champion tick .

**Selected by the Wall Street Journal among the Best Sports Books of 2021** A New York Times bestselling sportswriter tells the inside story of how three star players joined together to form the most dominant team in basketball and lead the Boston Celtics to their first championship in more than two decades. The first of "The Big Three" was Paul Pierce. As Boston Celtics fans watched the team retire Pierce's jersey in a ceremony on February 11, 2018, they remembered again the incredible performances Pierce put on in the city for fifteen years, helping the Celtics escape the bottom of their conference to become champions and perennial championship contenders. But Pierce's time in the city wasn't always so smooth. In 2000, he was stabbed in a downtown nightclub eleven times in a seemingly random attack. Six years later, remaining the sole star on a struggling team, he asked to be traded and briefly became a lightning rod among fans. Then, in 2007, the Boston Celtics General Manager made two monumental trades, bringing Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to Boston. A press conference on July 31, 2007 was a sight to behold: Pierce, KG, and Ray Allen holding up Celtics jerseys for the flood of media. Coach Doc Rivers made sure the team bonded over the thought of winning a title and living by a Bantu term called Ubuntu, which translates as "I am because we are." Rivers wanted to make it clear that togetherness and brotherhood would help them maximize their talent and win. What came next—the synthesis of the Celtics' "Big Three" and their dominant championship run—cemented their standing as one of great teams in NBA history, a rival to Kobe Bryant's Lakers and LeBron James's Cavaliers. This is the team that brought excitement back to the Garden, and therefore to one of the most storied franchises in all of sports. They met their historic rivals, the Lakers, in the 2008 NBA Finals, winning the series in Game 6, in a rout on their home court with a raucous, concert like atmosphere. Along the victory parade route, Paul Pierce smoked a cigar—as a tribute to legendary former Celtics Coach Red Auerbach. In a city now defined by a wealth of championships, "The Big Three" joined the club. Michael Holley, the premier chronicler of Boston sports, brings their story to life with countless untold stories and behind-the-scenes details in another bestselling tome for New England and sports fans across the country.

The story of the changing face of baseball and the inner workings of its finest organization After a hundred "cursed" years, the Boston Red Sox rose gloriously to baseball domination. Under the leadership of manager Terry Francona, an extraordinary team of wildly disparate personalities—from the inscrutable Manny Ramirez to the affable David "Big Papi" Ortiz—pulled off two improbable post-season comebacks to make it to the World Series twice in three years . . . and ultimately emerged victorious. In Red Sox Rule, Michael Holley, bestselling author of Patriot Reign, provides a fascinating, insightful, and surprising inside look at how it all happened. With the exclusive cooperation of Terry Francona and stories from the clubhouse and the conference room, Holley reveals the private sessions and the dugout and front-office strategies that have made the Red Sox a budding dynasty, overtaking their archrivals, the powerful New York Yankees, as the American League's elite team.

The Red Sox Hall of Famer and World Series MVP tells the story of his life and career in a sports memoir that “lives up to its ‘no-holds-barred’ billing” (Washington Post). David “Big Papi” Ortiz is a baseball icon and one of the most popular figures ever to play the game. A star player with the Boston Red Sox for fifteen years, Ortiz helped to win three World Series, bringing back a storied franchise from “never wins” to “always wins.” As he launched balls into the stands again and again, he helped silence the naysayers while capturing the imaginations of millions of fans. Ortiz made Boston and the Red Sox his home, his place of work, and his legacy. In Papi, Ortiz tells his story in his own words, opening up as never before. The result is a revelatory tale of a storied career—all told by a legendary player with a lot to say at the end of his time in the game. This edition of Papi includes a new afterword. “Baseball fans of all loyalties will enjoy learning about [Ortiz’s] unique experiences in and out of the game.” —Library Journal “The rise of Ortiz from scrap-heap bench player to Hall of Famer is an unlikely and entertaining story, and engagingly told.” —Washington Post

Long before the Patriots took the 21st century by storm and became the most dominant team in NFL history, pro football was something entirely different in New England, something comically atrocious and riddled with heartbreak. Before those juggernaut years of Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and sold-out crowds at Gillette Stadium came a hapless franchise that managed only a single playoff victory in a quarter century and spent its entire first decade of existence just trying to establish a permanent home field (and even when they did, none of the toilets worked). In From Darkness to Dynasty, bestselling author Jerry Thornton irreverently chronicles those easily glossed-over, downtrodden decades--years when the team claimed more headlines for lawsuits, arrests, power struggles, drug problems, and inept, bizarre, behavior from players, coaches, and owners than for anything they accomplished on the field. Relive the behind-the-scenes dysfunction, the turmoil of prolonged irrelevance, and the improbable way the Patriots finally ascended to greatness. By turns hilarious and eye-opening, this is an essential history for fans and disparagers alike, and a pointed reminder that the best stories of triumph start with humble beginnings.

The New York Times bestselling author delivers “a lively, fast-paced insider’s account” of what it takes to succeed in the NFL (Boston Globe). Football games aren’t won on Sundays in the fall. They’re won on draft day in the spring—in the war room. Now sports commentator and author Michael Holley takes readers behind the scenes of three NFL teams and into the brilliant minds of legendary coach Bill Belichick and his two former protégés, Thomas Dimitroff and Scott Pioli. Belichick first worked alongside Pioli and Dimitroff as a young coach in Cleveland. Years later, they were reunited in New England, where they refined Belichick’s method for constructing a winning team, overseeing one of the greatest franchises in modern NFL history. These three master strategists are now competitors, with Belichick at the helm of the New England Patriots, while Pioli leads the Kansas City Chiefs and Dimitroff runs the Atlanta Falcons. Yet they still share a common goal: building the perfect team, one draft pick and one trade at a time. War Room tells their astonishing story, packed with never-been-told anecdotes and new observations from team officials, players, coaches, and scouts, all leading to surprising and groundbreaking insights into the art of building a champion.

Resumes are dead. Now comes the age of the Bioblog. Until now, resumes have been nothing more than boring lists of past accomplishments. Here, noted author Michael Holley Smith presents the groundbreaking and revolutionary alternative: Bioblogs. What is a Bioblog? It is a stunning, attention-grabbing, graphics-based art form that workers of the future will use to get hired by the best employers. A Bioblog will make you, as a knowledge worker, stand out from the pack of job seekers. It will present a unique version of you and tell employers what you can do for them in the future, as opposed to what you have done for different employers in the past. The old standard is no more. Bioblogs are the resumes of the future.

Subtitle on cover: A comprehensive, step-by-step writing guide and reference manual for every job seeker.

Written by one of the original design team that produced ABEL, this a reference for users of this widely used HDL. An accompanying disk includes the ABEL compiler, optimizer and logic simulator software - allowing designers to use the HDL-based logic design techniques described. The text emphasizes solutions to common design problems, includes actual complete applications in the form of ABEL source files and corresponding design descriptions.

The book starts with the basics of logic design and quickly progresses to advanced PLD-specific design techniques, with a section addressing problems of testability and production. It ends with an informative design example including descriptions and supplementary documentation complete enough to allow even the most novice PLD users to duplicate this design themselves.

From New York Times bestselling author and arguably the preeminent chronicler of the Boston sports world comes Into the Green, an all-access book, in the tradition of Holley's bestselling Patriot Reign, following the Boston Celtics over the course of the 2012-2013 season, taking readers deep into the heart of one of the most storied franchises in the league, but also using the team as a lens to shed fascinating light on the modern NBA Michael Holley's New York Times bestselling Patriot Reign came about because of the extraordinary, exclusive access he was given to the inner sanctums of the NFL team. Now, after many years, he has finally been given the keys to the kingdom of the Celtics and is writing, essentially, the Patriot Reign of the NBA. He goes deep behind the scenes, into the board rooms, draft rooms, living rooms, and more, to shed light on one of the most intriguing coaches and core of players in the league. What emerges is not just a fascinating glimpse into the most winning NBA team in history, but an inside look at the modern NBA in general, in all its thrills and complexities, how it really works, the increasing importance of money people, and how the key individuals who own, manage, and play for the team got there. In much the same way the late David Halberstam approached his brilliant Breaks of the Game-which followed the small-market 1978 Portland Trail Blazers but transcended its subject to become a bestselling classic-Holley uses one sports team to explore bigger, universal themes in Into the Green.

The New York Times bestselling author and preeminent chronicler of the Boston sports world offers a piercing, in-depth look at veteran Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, the 2013 World Series MVP who is the heart and soul of the organization—and the city of Boston itself. To Red Sox Nation, no one is more revered than Big Papi: David Ortiz. A man who handles stardom and crushing responsibility with ease, Ortiz has become a symbol of the historic city he plays for—and its moral center. After the 2013 marathon bombing, Ortiz drove Boston into a frenzy when he said, “This is our f**king city . . . we’re not going to let anyone dictate our freedoms.” Even when his remarks are controversial, Ortiz remains wildly popular. Based on interviews with teammates and rivals, Red Sox executives, and experts in the game, Michael Holley paints a remarkable portrait of this family man, icon, inspirational competitor, and future Hall of Famer who helped lead his team to three World Series titles in a decade. Holley contrasts Ortiz’s relationships with former managers Terry Francona and Bobby Valentine, baseball bigwigs, teammates and rivals, and the fans. Admiring yet hard-hitting, Holley examines both Ortiz’s controversies and his successes, including his 2009 positive test for performance enhancing drugs and his role in healing a traumatized city. As Holley reveals, clutch players do exist: Few in major league baseball have the power that executives covet, the makeup to handle the intense spotlight, and the ability to excel in pressure situations like Ortiz. Thoughtful and insightful, Ortiz now brings him into focus as never before.

It is my desire with the book N.A.K.E.D. to be honest and authentic about trials I have been through and that God will use the poetry found in this book to break someone's chains of bondage and to let them know that no matter WHAT's been done in the past, we have been REDEEMED and have the RIGHT to live free, unashamed and N. A. K. E. D. lives IN CHRIST JESUS!

Geosynthetics, or manmade materials used in soils engineering, have successfully been used as base reinforcement of pavements for over 40 years. Use of geosynthetics can result in cost savings by allowing the aggregate base layer to be reduced in thickness and/or the service life of the pavement to be extended. Design methods for this type of reinforcement have typically been developed by individual manufacturers for specific products. These methods are not widely used by state transportation agencies because 1) they are proprietary, 2) they are empirically based, and 3) they lack compatibility with the current national trend towards mechanistic-empirical pavement design procedures. This project was initiated to develop testing methods to determine one of the critical material properties needed for mechanistic-empirical base-reinforced pavement design, namely, the resilient interface shear stiffness. This property describes the interaction, in particular the shear stiffness, between the geosynthetic and the surrounding aggregate. This new test protocol closely mimics vehicular load patterns, resulting in design parameters pertinent to the use of the geosynthetics to reinforce the base course. A study was conducted to evaluate the repeatability of these tests and to develop a standardized test method. Specific parameters under investigation include load pulse and rest period duration, embedment length of the geosynthetic, and differences in results using different soils and types of geosynthetics. Some parameters seemed to have little effect on values of resilient interface shear stiffness, while others vastly impacted the results. Load pulse and rest period durations did not affect output results significantly. Maintaining a constant confinement or shear stress during the test duration produced higher repeatability and correlated well to the adapted resilient modulus equation. Three-aperture length tests on polyester geogrid also correlated well with this equation, however repeatability was moderately low. Polypropylene geogrid and a woven geotextile confined in Ottawa sand displayed low correlation to this equation. During testing, very small displacements occur, and therefore, every effort should be made to ensure that these measurements are accurate and not skewed by electrical noise and interference.

Abstract - if sent.