Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their stories in their own words.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

A Savage Art: The Life and Cartoons of Pat Oliphant (7/10)

by Tony Medley

88 minutes.

In theaters

This provides an interesting background to political cartoonists. For example, it claims that Benjamin Franklin created the first political cartoon, featuring a snake cut into pieces, with the caption "unite or die" underneath. For that, he's considered America's first political cartoonist.

It also states that, in this day and age, as well as for hundreds of years, visuals communicate immediately. And at the right time and the right place. It tells about Thomas Nast. In the 1870s, he was the highest-paid entertainer-journalist in the world. Because of an illiterate population, he could connect with them through his drawings. He was massively popular, drawing for Harper's Weekly. He invented Santa Claus. He invented the donkey and the elephant as political symbols. He is widely credited with putting the corrupt Boss Tweed in jail. He put the caricatures of Boss Tweed and his gang on the heads of vultures. People saw that, and he was turned out of office. Tweed said, “I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles; My constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damn pictures!” Boss Tweed died in prison, and in his collection of works, in prison, was every Thomas Nast cartoon ever done on him.

However, this is primarily a documentary about left-wing cartoonist Pat Oliphant. Oliphant’s second wife is quoted as saying that there are three things in a cartoon. First, the idea, second, the image (an idea that has to register), then the caption that’s funny. She is quoted as saying that he said he almost never got all three.

Along with telling the story of how Oliphant got to be the cartoonist he became, Oliphant bragged that he “wasn’t afraid of taking on the Reagan Administration for their role in bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war and nuclear Armageddon.” Unfortunately, this paints him as a leftwing puppet who didn’t realize that Reagan was winning the Cold War without firing a shot.

He must have been a constantly unhappy man, saying, “You gotta wake up every morning angry” and “The thing a cartoonist does for other people is, he articulates their hate.”

Directed by Bill Banowsky (from a script by him, Paul O’Bryan, and Dean Alioto), a liberal known for his film “Starving the Beast,” a documentary critical of conservative political efforts that tries to emphasize the negative effects of Republican ideological conflict targeting traditional liberal arts, this doc is ringingly left-wing. Most of the people interviewed are liberals, like Ann Telnaes of the Washington Post, former Democratic Senator Tom Udall, and cartoonist Adam Zyglis.

A New York Times headline is shown, reading, “Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Cartoonist fired as Paper Shifts Right.” Yet there is no mention of the Los Angeles Times’ firing of Conservative cartoonist Michael Ramirez in 2005 because of his political slant. And Ramirez is available to interview as he publishes in the Las Vegas Review-Journal and is syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Apparently, only leftwing cartoonists need apply for this film because the only cartoonist interviewed who doesn’t have their feet planted securely on the left is Tom Gibson, who was on the staff of the Reagan White House, and if you blink, you miss him.

Cartoonist Adam Zyglis passionately defends cartoonists' right to “express their voice,” but only, apparently, if their “voice” is left-wing.

Although the film is politically biased, it remains interesting and features numerous great cartoons.

Tony Medley is an attorney, columnist, and MPAA-accredited film critic whose reviews and articles may be read in several newspapers and at rottentomatoes.com, CWEB.com, robinhoodnews.com, Movie Review Query Engine (mrqe.com), and at www.tonymedley.com. A former sports editor of the UCLA Daily Bruin, he is the author of four books, UCLA Basketball:The Real Story, Sweaty Palms: The Neglected Art of Being Interviewed, the first book ever written on the interview for the interviewee, having sold over a half million copies, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Bridge, which has sold over 100,000 copies, and Learn to Play Bridge Like a Boss. He is an American Contract Bridge League RubyLife Master and an ACBL accredited director. He is a Mensa Life Member and a member of the International Society of Philosophical Enquiry, ISPE (“The Thousand”).