Bøger af Scott Raab

In 2010, when LeBron James announced to the world that he was leaving for Miami, he broke the collective heart of his native city and destroyed the hopes of an entire tortured generation. As LeBron headed south, unofficial spokesman Scott Raab sent him off with a middle-finger salute of his own?a deliciously obscene aria of sports fandom, Jewishness, and weight gain that becameinfamous as The Whore of Akron. Four years?and two NBA championships?later, LeBron came home to the Rust Belt faithful who had vilified him mercilessly, none more so than Raab. You're Welcome, Cleveland is the story of both LeBron's and Scott's redemption as they pursue the one thing they crave more than anything in life?an NBA title for the city that made them men.LeBron is back. So is Scott Raab. It's a great story.

A native son of Akron, Ohio, LeBron James seemed like a miracle heaven-sent by God to transform Cleveland's losing ways when he was drafted by the Cavaliers in 2003. But after seven years?and still no parade down Euclid Avenue?he left, announcing his move to South Beach on a nationally televised ESPN production with a sly title that echoed fifty years of misery. The Catch, The Drive, The Shot . . . The Decision. Out of James's treachery grew a monster. Scott Raab, a fifty-nine-year-old, 350-pound Jewish Santa Claus with a Chief Wahoo tattoo, would bear witness to LeBron's every move, and in so doing would act as the eyes and ears of Cleveland itself. Crude but warmhearted, poetic but raving, hilarious, profane (and profound), The Whore of Akron is both a rabid fan's indictment of a traitorous athlete and the story of Raab's obsessive quest to reveal the "wee jewel-box" of LeBron James's soul.

The powerful story of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, featuring dozens of never-before-seen color photos by the official site photographer.In late 2014, One World Trade Centeror the Freedom Toweropened for business. It took nearly ten years, cost roughly four billion dollars, and required the sweat, strength, and stamina of hundreds of construction workers, digging deep below the earth's surface and dangling high in the air. It suffered setbacks that would've most likely scuttled any other project, including the ousting of a famed architect, the relocation of the building's footprints due to security reasons, and the internecine feuding of various politicians and governing bodies. And yet however over budget and over deadline, it ultimately got built, and today it serves as a 1,776-foot reminder of what America is capable of when we put aside our differences and pull together for a common cause. No writer followed the building of the Freedom Tower more closely than Esquire's Scott Raab. Between 2005 and 2015, Raab published a landmark ten-part series about the construction. He shadowed both the suits in their boardrooms and the hardhats in their earthmoving equipment, and chronicled it all in exquisite prose. While familiar names aboundAndrew Cuomo, Chris Christie, Mike Bloomberg and Larry Silverstein, the real estate developer who only a few weeks before 9/11 signed a ninety-nine-year, $3.2 billion lease on the World Trade Centerjust as memorable are the not-so-famous. People such as Bryan Lyons, a Yonkers-born engineer who lost his firefighter brother on 9/11 and served as a superintendent on the rebuilding effort. And Charlie Wolf, whose wife was killed in the North Tower and who, in one of the series' most powerful scenes, weeps on a policeman's shoulder after delivering her hairbrush and toothbrush for DNA samples. Once More to the Sky collects all ten original pieces along with a new epilogue from Raab about what's happened in the years since the Freedom Tower was completed, and why it remains such an important symbol. The four-color book also features dozens of photosmany never-before-seenand a prologue from photographer Joe Woolhead, the official site photographer for the World Trade Center's rebuilding. Publishing to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, it is a moving tribute to American resolve and ingenuity.