Biography & Autobiography

The Boot Room story starts in 1959 when Bill Shankly arrived and converted a 12 x 12storage room into a meeting place for him and his coaches, a move that had momentous consequences, both for the Club and British football.

Fans in the Kop will remember the heart-stopping extra time of the 1965 FA Cup Final, and the jubilation of winning the treble in 1984. But what was the common thread during Liverpool’s glory years? It was the Boot Room.

Lifelong Liverpool supporter and editor of legendary fanzine The End, Peter Hooton takes us back into that old storage room, where first Shankly, then Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish in succession, drank tea, analysed, strategized, selected and deselected, and built the most successful British club in Europe in the 20th Century.

Illustrated throughout with powerful never-before-seen images from the Mirror, the Echo and the Liverpool Post, Peter Hooton sheds new light on the story behind Liverpool FC ‘s most exulted era, and celebrates a city flourishing around it.

There’s a story about Rich Paul that everyone knows: A twenty-one-year-old kid from Cleveland who sells sports jerseys out of his car meets a high school basketball phenom named LeBron James at an airport—the two become friends and forge a decades-long partnership that reinvents the business of sports. That random meeting might seem like the lucky break that changed Paul’s life. But a moment of good fortune means nothing without the struggle that gets you there. And the truth is, Paul had always been lucky.

Rich Paul became a gambler at an early age—his fast mind and gift for finding an edge made him a devastating dice roller who could hold his own with grown men, win big, and walk away alive. Shooting dice wasn’t just a pastime; it was a way to earn money for his family as his mother struggled under the weight of drug addiction. He learned the secret science of dice in the same place he found all the lessons of his young life: the corner store his father operated, the center of the neighborhood’s frantic action. Paul’s father had another family but kept his son close working at the store. Paul dreamed of becoming a star athlete, but the streets were where he thrived, building a lucrative enterprise on shaky ground. When he found himself at a dangerous crossroads, he summoned the teachings of his past to create a different future.

Readers will follow the riveting journey of a young Rich Paul narrated by the Paul of today, who looks back with wit and insight, drawing out the lessons he learned at every stage—about business, people, and the values that lead to success. It’s the inspiring story of the luck that’s all around us, if we know where to look.

On February 11, 2012, Whitney Houston was found submerged in the bathtub of her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Since then, the world has mourned her death amid new revelations about her relationship to her Blackness, her sexuality, and her addictions. Didn’t We Almost Have It All is award-winning journalist Gerrick Kennedy’s exploration of the duality of Whitney’s life as both a woman in the spotlight and someone who often had to hide who she was. This is the story of Whitney’s life—her whole life—told with both grace and honesty.

Long before that fateful day in 2012, Whitney split the world wide open with her voice. Hers was a once-in-a-generation talent forged in Newark, New Jersey, and blessed with the grace of the church and the wisdom of a long lineage of famous gospel singers. She redefined “The Star-Spangled Banner.” She became a box-office powerhouse, a queen of the pop charts, and an international superstar. But all the while, she was forced to rein in who she was amid constant accusations that her music wasn’t Black enough, original enough, honest enough.

Kennedy deftly peels back the layers of Whitney’s complex story to get to the truth at the core of what drove her, what inspired her, and what haunted her. He pulls the narrative apart into the key elements that informed her life—growing up in the famed Drinkard family; the two romantic relationships that shaped the entirety of her adult life: Robyn Crawford and Bobby Brown; her fraught relationship to her own Blackness and the ways in which she was judged by the Black community; her drug and alcohol addiction; and, finally, the shame that she carried in her heart, which informed every facet of her life. Drawing on hundreds of sources, Kennedy takes readers back to a world in which someone like Whitney simply could not be, and explains in excruciating detail the ways in which her fame did not and could not protect her.

In the time since her passing, the world and the way we view celebrity have changed dramatically. A sweeping look at Whitney’s life, Didn’t We Almost Have It All contextualizes her struggles against the backdrop of tabloid culture, audience consumption, mental health stigmas, and racial divisions in America. It explores exactly how and why we lost a beloved icon far too soon.