Beyond Tallulah, the illustrated biography of Sam Wyly, the most versatile big-company entrepreneur in American history, tells one of the most compelling untold business stories of our time. Wyly has built 10 companies in nine different industries with 500 million- or billion-dollar valuations. He's the reason that Bonanza Steakhouse, Michaels Arts & Crafts and Green Mountain Energy are household names today. And his achievements serve as a valuable point of reference for today's generation of recession-fighting Start-up Whiz Kids.

After a mercurial rise through the early computer industry in Texas, Wyly founded a data transmission company (DATRAN) with the dream of building a network of microwave towers that would enable computers to talk to each other wirelessly--20 years before the World Wide Web existed. What happened next is a case study of high-wire business dealings that speaks to the core values of American enterprise. Wyly's dealings with entrenched interests foreshadow the tough questions faced by today's readership about the proper roles of government and business in rebuilding the country. As Wyly struggled to recover from disastrous setbacks, he never stopped asking, "What's next?"

With exclusive access to Wyly and original interviews of more than one hundred of his colleagues and family members, biographer Dennis Hamilton draws an energetic and fast-paced portrait of a business career that soared high, courted disaster and carved a memorable path through five decades. In the end, this story of an American titan of industry is made distinctive--and memorable--through the details readers learn about Wyly's deft, sure-handed approach to deal making and a seeming sixth sense for the ebbs and flows of the financial market.

In Beyond Tallulah, we watch Wyly journey from small-town high school football in the South to IBM in its Information Age heyday, from the takeover wars of the 1980s to adventures in big-scale national retailing, from the Alaska pipeline to a new generation of clean energy. Wyly's life promises to fascinate and inspire readers, while also serving as a blueprint for aspiring entrepreneurs. Illustrated with more than two hundred color and black-and-white photos, Beyond Tallulah preserves Wyly's wholly original American journey--from his dirt poor Great Depression childhood in rural Louisiana to his triumph as a self-made billionaire . . . six times.

Born in 1934, Sam Wyly was raised in rural Louisiana. In 1957, he received his MBA from the University of Michigan's Business School and began his career as a salesman for IBM and then for Honeywell. Six years later, at the age of 28, Wyly was out on his own, creating his first company, University Computing, which offered computer services to local businesses. Over the course of the next 50 years, he founded or grew successful companies in computing, computer software products, oil refining, insurance, steakhouse franchising, arts-and-crafts retailing, hedge fund investing, environmentally friendly electricity, and carbon offsets.

In addition to being an entrepreneur, Wyly invests his time in educational institutions and has served as a trustee of Southern Methodist University, as vice chairman of the Princeton Parents Association, and on the board of PBS. One of Wyly's proudest endeavors was providing the start-up capital for the Dallas PBS station to create a high-quality news program in 1968. The show was called Newsroom, which evolved into what's known today as NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, one of the most trusted news sources for millions nationwide.

Over his storied career, Wyly has received many accolades and awards. Forbes named him one of its 10 greenest billionaires in 2010. In 2003, Wyly received the Murphy Award for Lifetime Achievement in Entrepreneurship from the University of North Texas Murphy Enterprise Center; in 1997, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship and the David D. Alger Award from the University of Michigan Business School; and in 1970, the Horatio Alger Award and Entrepreneur of the Year honor from Southern Methodist University. In 1968, he was named "One of Ten Outstanding Young Men in America" by U.S. Jaycees and in 1967, "One of Five Outstanding Young Texans" by Texas Jaycees. In 2002, Wyly was interviewed by David Allison from The Smithsonian Museum as part of an oral history project about the origins of the computing industry.

Today, Wyly is an active philanthropist, an avid reader and a family man. He resides with his wife, Cheryl, in Dallas and in Aspen, Colorado. They own an independent bookstore, Explore Booksellers. Wyly has six children, eleven grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

He is the author of a memoir, 1,000 Dollars & an Idea.

This WW II novel revolves around the experience of a callow youth destined to join the Fourth Infantry Division in HÃ1/4rtgen Forest. The narrative traces the bonded ties of six comrades in arms, three of whom are killed and three wounded. Vividly detailed, the stressful existence of Combat Infantrymen causes some men to break. What helps those who see it through is their loyalty to one another, called a "culture of caring" by their Chaplain. In Part I our innocent recruits are sobered by incidental casualties on the way up, which initiate them into the inconsequence of death. Part II takes them into HÃ1/4rtgen, a battle fought under continuous icy rain in steep-hilled terrain favoring the well entrenched Germans. Casualties often run over l00% of a Company's authorized strength. Attacks are met by unrelenting artillery and mortar fire-machine guns at close range. In a typical situation, our narrator covers a Sergeant, who, after taking out a machine gun pinning the Company down, is himself killed by a sniper. A hard-headed West Pointer insists on night action, impossible in the Forest, and, after stepping on a mine that takes his legs off, he rolls on another that hits those nearby. General Patton called HÃ1/4rtgen "an epic of stark infantry combat." Part III deals with how, badly depleted in numbers and morale, the men successfully withstand the Breakthrough, thereby saving Luxembourg, a defense for which Patton gave the Fourth a Unit Citation. In the concluding Part, the narrator is wounded and put on limited assignment. He dislikes the rear echelon life-style, guys being obsessed with whores, drinking, stealing, and feasting, but he holds his peace and decides he'll return to the world where reality matters.

A lively, perceptive discussion of the activist years and literary works of a leading fiction writer on the Left during the turbulent '30s. Zugsmith drew upon social and economic struggles of that time for her novels and stories, with consummate skill and artistry. Notes, Bibliography.

Using the experiences and perspective of a skilled Life Coach, Marriage Counselor, and Psychotherapist and calling on an array of academic research, philosophy, literature, pop-culture, real-life stories and do-it-yourself exercises, MONEY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is the only book of it's kind to explore the relationship between money and happiness in this particular way. Its thesis (set out in the first two sections called Money and You and Money and Happiness) is that, while money can't buy happiness, it can support the foundations of a happy life if understood and used wisely. Misunderstood and used poorly, money can seriously undermine happiness. The third section of the book, Two Pillars of Life Satisfaction, makes the case that life satisfaction comes from living a life based on non-monetary /non-materialistic values, and that the two most important of these are love and meaningful work. This book empowers us to reclaim our lives and feel rich in ways that truly last and matter

A rabbi shares his wisdom on the most important journey of all. Drawing from the Talmud, the ancient Greeks, Native American tribes, and the customs and teachings of many other religions, The Path of the Soul provides useful contemplations on the reality and inevitability of death. This inspirational book is not about grieving, consoling, healing, or even about dying - it is a proactive examination of how mortality affects our lives and how to approach death in a way that makes life meaningful and redemptive.

"Kamin offers a compassionate and well-reasoned tour through modern Jewish interpretations of death. There is not so much explanation as the promise of life itself and 'the universe and its elusive yet comforting concept of God, ' as well as the duty to live our lives on earth in a way that uplifts spiritual values and does honor to the memory of the departed. Intelligent and consoling, Kamin's work should be well received by most readers."
-Library Journal

"Rabbi Kamin's book provides you with thoughtful glimpses into the personal realities of dying and death."
-Melvyn Effron, The Jewish Voice of Delaware

"This beautifully written book is filled with real-life stories of Kamin's friends, family, and congregants as well as the timeless wisdom of the scriptures. The Path of the Soul is a poignant and moving work that helps readers to face mortality and provides a new perspective on life." -Rabbi Allen S. Kaplan, Union of American Hebrew Congregations

Driven out of the religious community to which he belongs on a false charge of theft, Silas Marner takes refuge in the village of Raveloe. He is a lonely man, whose only comfort is his gold. One night his gold is stolen and he is left with nothing, until a small child wanders into his cottage.

Thomas Hardy's fascination with the dualities inherent in human nature is at the root of The Mayor of Casterbridge, now in a brand-new edition. In a drunken fit Michael Henchard sells his wife and infant daughter to a sailor at a country fair; when sobriety returns the following day, he is unable to find and reclaim his family. Vowing to transform his life, he settles in the town of Casterbridge, where he eventually rises to the position of mayor. Henchard is a man whose impulses are at war with one another, and when his wife and daughter, now a young woman, appear in Casterbridge, these internal contradictions drive him to commit acts that spell his final destruction. Employing the elements of classic tragedy Hardy took the English novel in a new direction, emerging as both the last Victorian novelist and the first modern one, and defines themes that would occupy such twentieth-century writers as Conrad and Lawrence.