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Our five favorite John Wooden books

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Famed basketball coach John Wooden died Friday evening at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, the hospital announced. The 99 year-old had been hospitalized with dehydration.

Wooden’s legendary run as UCLA basketball’s head coach began in 1948. Under his leadership, the men’s team became a national powerhouse, with an 88-game winning streak and four 30-0 seasons; they won seven consecutive NCAA titles, from 1967-1973. His teams went 149-2 at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. With each landmark, Wooden and his players set new records. In his last 12 years as coach, the team took 10 NCAA titles. He retired from coaching in 1975.

It wasn’t just Wooden’s record that made him such a lasting influence. His coaching philosophy -- particularly his “Pyramid of Success” -- has influenced sportsmen and women of all kinds. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush in 2003.

Perhaps the most quotable coach since Yogi Berra (“Ability is a poor man’s wealth,” “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are,” “Don’t give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you.”), Wooden was bound to wind up in print, both as a subject and writing for himself. Late in life, he even penned a children’s book.

Here are our five favorite John Wooden books:

“The Wizard of Westwood: Coach John Wooden and His UCLA Bruins” (1973) by Dwight Chapin and Jeff Prugh. A detailed biography that exposed more of Wooden’s inside game than he would have liked, written when he was at the peak of his career. “Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization” (2005) by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Wooden’s strategies for competitive greatness made general. A Wall Street Journal and L.A. Times bestseller. “Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success: Building Blocks for a Better Life” (2005) by John Wooden and Jay Carty. A translation of Wooden’s philosophy into a self-help handbook. “Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and off the Court” (1997) by John Wooden. A compilation of ideas and anecdotes, published when Wooden was nearly 90. “Inch and Miles: The Journey to Success” for children ages 4-8 (2003) by John Wooden, Steve Jamison, Peanut Louie Harper and illustrations by Susan F. Cornelison. An inchworm and a mouse collaborate on -- what else? -- building a pyramid to success.

-- Carolyn Kellogg twitter.com/paperhaus

/ Los Angeles Times

Clicking on Green Links will take you to a third-party e-commerce site. These sites are not operated by the Los Angeles Times. The Times Editorial staff is not involved in any way with Green Links or with these third-party sites.

Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Prior to coming to The Times, Kellogg was editor of LAist.com and the web editor of the public radio show Marketplace. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Southern California.

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Wizard of Westwood

By Jason Zengerle

• March 19, 2014
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To be a college basketball fan today is to be an initiate in the cult of the coach. With the game’s best players staying in school only one or two years before taking their talents to the N.B.A., it’s the men wearing the sharp suits and pacing the sidelines who are the sport’s constants. They are the faces of their teams, the true stars of March Madness.

But the influence of these coaches, especially those with a national championship or two on their résumés, now extends far beyond the hardwood. They write books and give speeches and are revered as much for their leadership talents and life lessons as for their box-and-one schemes. Indeed, some of these men believe that the honorific attached to their names somehow sells them short. “They call me ‘Coach.’ That’s on the door of my office,” John Calipari said in an address to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2012, the same year his University of Kentucky team won the national championship. “But I don’t view myself that way. I see myself as a servant leader.”

The man who blazed this trail to coaching transcendence was John Wooden. As U.C.L.A.’s coach from 1948 to 1975, he built a program that came to dominate men’s college basketball as none ever had before — or since. During his time on the Westwood campus, U.C.L.A. won 10 national championships, including seven in a row, and at one point boasted an 88-game winning streak. Five years ago, an expert panel for the Sporting News pronounced Wooden the greatest coach in the history of American sports. (Vince Lombardi came in second.)

But it was Wooden’s off-the-court behavior that elevated him to the status of American icon. A grandfatherly figure who clutched a small silver cross in his hand during games, he carried himself like the former high school English teacher he was and often said that he viewed basketball less as a sport than as a vehicle to instruct young people about ethics. His “Pyramid of Success” — a schematic of 25 virtues necessary for accomplishment that he handed out to his players — ultimately became a staple of self-improvement and business courses. When he died in 2010, four months shy of his 100th birthday, it wasn’t just the sports world that mourned: Barack Obama hailed Wooden as “an incredible coach, and an even better man.”

In “Wooden: A Coach’s Life,” Seth Davis, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and a college basketball analyst for CBS, offers a thorough if at times plodding account of Wooden’s 99 years. The man who would eventually be known as the Wizard of Westwood had the good fortune, at least in a basketball sense, to be born and raised in Depression-era and hoops-crazy Indiana, where he learned the game by shooting an old sock stuffed with rags through a tomato basket hung on a hayloft inside his family’s barn. He went on to star at Purdue University, where he was an All-American guard.

When Wooden graduated from Purdue in 1932, he was offered a $5,000 contract by a professional basketball team in New York City, but he turned it down, Davis writes, because “he was bred to believe that there was something inherently unclean about using Naismith’s game as a tool of avarice.” Instead, Wooden became a coach, first at the high school level in Kentucky and Indiana and then for two years at Indiana State Teachers College before heading to U.C.L.A. in 1948.

Wooden went west apparently because he hoped that coaching in a place where basketball had yet to take root would mean less pressure. In fact, U.C.L.A. initially paid him so little he had to take a second job as a dispatcher for a dairy company. But soon, largely thanks to his phenomenal U.C.L.A. teams, basketball became as popular in Los Angeles, and the rest of the United States, as it was back in Indiana. By 1968, when No. 1 U.C.L.A. faced off against No. 2 Houston, the game was played in front of 52,693 people in the Astrodome and broadcast on 150 television stations around the country.

Houston won what was billed as the “Game of the Century,” ending U.C.L.A.’s 47-game winning streak, but Wooden was relieved. “The only thing I think is worse than losing too much is winning too much,” he said. Indeed, “his program had become a monster,” Davis writes, “and it was all he could do to keep from being devoured by it.”

And yet his kindly, avuncular demeanor belied a ferocious competitiveness. Although Wooden, unlike some of his fellow coaches, stayed in his seat during games and rarely yelled at his team in public (at practice was another matter), he mercilessly rode referees and taunted opposing players. He searched for every conceivable advantage — even ordering the nets at Pauley Pavilion to be woven extra tight so that “after every basket, the ball would hang an extra second or two before hitting the floor, which would give the Bruins a couple of extra ticks to set up their full-court press.”

Wooden’s all-consuming desire to win could lead him to stray from his professed ideals. The most notorious instance was his handling of Sam Gilbert, a mobbed-up U.C.L.A. booster who provided the university’s basketball players with everything from free meals to discounted clothing to money for a girlfriend’s abortion. Wooden went to his grave insisting he’d been unaware of Gilbert’s rule-breaking, but Davis makes a persuasive case that Wooden knew enough that he ultimately decided it was better for him, and his program, not to know more. “At a certain point, he had to make a choice,” Davis writes; “he could either keep digging, or he could lay down his shovel. He chose the latter.”

Davis’s treatment of the Gilbert episode — which is rarely acknowledged by Wooden’s legions of admirers and harped upon endlessly by the coach’s few detractors — is indicative of his larger approach to his subject. He has written neither a hatchet job nor a hagiography but a meticulously researched and evenhanded assessment. And that, alas, is the book’s fatal flaw. Wooden just isn’t a dynamic enough figure to sustain such a project.

Although Wooden was obviously an excellent basketball coach, the details that Davis relates can be mundane: He ran his players relentlessly in practice so they were in peak physical condition; he instituted a zone full-court press, at the suggestion of an assistant, to speed up the game’s pace; he believed “blisters were about the worst enemy that could visit a basketball team.” Meanwhile, the celebrated Pyramid of Success, one former U.C.L.A. player told Davis, “might have been taped in our lockers, but it just hung there like a jock strap.”

Away from the basketball court, Wooden comes off as even less compelling. He had few close relationships other than with his wife and two children. He viewed his players as just that: players. He was thoroughly uninterested in their lives outside of basketball — unless those lives threatened to impinge on their athletic performances. When some of them were drawn toward the political activism that was a staple of campus life in the 1960s, Wooden “repeatedly cautioned them against getting too swept up by the tumult, not because he disagreed with the movement’s views but because he feared it would penetrate his sacred cocoon.” In fact, Davis concludes that it was to escape from that stultifying cocoon, as much as the money, that drew players to Gilbert, who did talk to them about their interests outside of basketball. “Wooden obsessed over the players’ feet,” Davis writes. “Gilbert engaged their minds.”

Davis clearly admires Wooden — and there is much about him to admire. Besides being a devoted husband and good father, he did not drink or swear; he was not motivated by money. (In his last year at U.C.L.A., he made $32,500, less than half of what some other coaches who had no national championships, much less 10, were paid by their schools.) But these things hardly justify an exhaustive biography. What Davis reveals in “Wooden,” albeit unwittingly, is the utter banality of a coach’s life, even that of the greatest in the history of the game.

A Coach’s Life

By Seth Davis

Illustrated. 591 pp. Times Books/Henry Holt & Company. $35.

Jason Zengerle is a senior editor at The New Republic.

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Wooden on Leadership

How to Create a Winning Organization

John Wooden, Steve Jamison | 4.54 | 3,988 ratings and reviews

Ranked #64 in Sports Biography , Ranked #71 in Coaching — see more rankings .

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Wooden on Leadership from the world's leading experts.

Jim Sinegal CEO/Costco Wooden On Leadership offers valuable lessons no matter what your endeavor. 'Competitive Greatness' is our goal and that of any successful organization. Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success is where it all starts. (Source)

Lolly Daskal Recommends this book

Skip Prichard Recommends this book

Rankings by Category

Wooden on Leadership is ranked in the following categories:

• #86 in Basketball
• #93 in Leadership

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A COACH'S LIFE

by Seth Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14, 2014

Wooden has long stood as a giant in the world of college sports. In revealing the real man behind the legend, Davis has done...

A comprehensive and crisply written biography of a legendary coach.

John Wooden (1910–2010) may well be the closest the sports world has had to a secular saint in the last half-century. Widely venerated for both his accomplishments as an athlete and coach and for his stature as a human being, Wooden remained a universally admired figure for the remainder of his life.  Sports Illustrated  senior writer and CBS Sports studio analyst Davis ( When March Went Mad: The Game that Transformed Basketball , 2009, etc.) delivers a massive biography that manages to bolster its subject while reminding readers that for all of Wooden’s greatness, he was a human being with human failings. Utilizing myriad interviews and an impressive array of published sources, the author traces Wooden from his humble childhood in Indiana through his overlooked playing career, which garnered him entry into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1960, to the coaching career that brought him his greatest glory. Wooden began coaching (and teaching English, his first love) at the high school level and spent two years coaching at Indiana State before moving on to UCLA, where he became quite likely the greatest college coach in history. Davis admires his subject, which is apt, since Wooden was unquestionably admirable. However, a true biographer strips away legend as much as burnishes it, and Davis is unflinching in doing so where necessary. Early in his coaching career, Wooden, widely respected for his views on race during his UCLA tenure, still could have done more for his sole black player at Indiana State, who faced Jim Crow on a number of occasions with Wooden’s tacit acquiescence. Long lauded for his personal integrity, he nonetheless clearly turned a blind eye to boosters who flouted NCAA rules in providing benefits to UCLA’s star players.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-8050-9280-6

Page Count: 608

Publisher: Times/Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SPORTS & RECREATION | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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BOOK REVIEW

by Rex Chapman with Seth Davis

by Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt with Seth Davis

by Tareq Azim with Seth Davis

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

From mean streets to wall street.

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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Sam Thomas Davies

Wooden by John Wooden

Print | Kindle  | Audiobook

The Book in Three Sentences

You must know who you are and be true to who you are if you are going to be who you can and should become.

Success is peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

Big things are accomplished only through the perfection of minor details.

The Five Big Ideas

You cannot have a perfect day without helping others with no thought of getting something in return.

You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better.

If you sincerely try to do your best to make each day a masterpiece, angels can do no better.

Drink deeply from those great books of your own choosing and you will enrich yourself.

Wooden Summary

It took me a long time to understand that even a stubborn mule responds to gentleness.

Four things a man must learn to do if he wants to make his life true:

• Think without confusion clearly
• Love his fellow-man sincerely
• Act from honest motives purely
• Trust in God and Heaven securely.

Be true to yourself.

Help others.

Make each day your masterpiece.

Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.

Make friendship a fine art.

Build a shelter against a rainy day.

Pray for guidance and count and give thanks for your blessings every day.

If a player appeared to be taking it easy in practice, Wooden would tell him, “Don’t think you can make up for it by working twice as hard tomorrow. If you have it within your power to work twice as hard, why aren’t you doing it now?”

Your faith, whatever it may be, is the greatest shelter of all.

So often we fail to acknowledge what we have because we’re so concerned about what we want.

It’s important to keep trying to do what you think is right no matter how hard it is or how often you fail. You never stop trying. I’m still trying.

Never believe you’re better than anybody else, but remember that you’re just as good as everybody else.

Very early we understood that there would be times when we disagreed but there would never be times when we had to be disagreeable.

Abraham Lincoln once said that the best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.

The person you are is the person your child will become.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Character is what you really are. Reputation is what people say you are.

Make the effort to do the best you are capable of doing—in marriage, at your job, in the community, for your country.

Perfection is what you are striving for, but perfection is an impossibility. However, striving for perfection is not an impossibility. Do the best you can under the conditions that exist. That is what counts.

“I tell people I definitely believe in God,” Wooden writes. “I just hope God believes in me.”

There’s nothing wrong with having faults so long as you work conscientiously to correct them.

People want to believe you are sincerely interested in them as persons, not just for what they can do for you.

True happiness comes from the things that cannot be taken away from you.

Wooden believe that things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.

You have little say over how big or how strong or how smart or rich someone else may be. You do have, at least you should have, control of yourself and the effort you give toward bringing out your best in whatever you’re doing. This effort must be total, and when it is, Wooden believes you have achieved personal success.

Try your hardest in all ways and you are a success. Period. Do less than that and you have failed to one degree or another.

Preparation is where success is truly found.

A successful journey becomes your destination and is where your real accomplishment lies.

Likewise, in Wooden’s coaching, he informed every player who came under his supervision that the outcome of a game was simply a by-product of the effort they made to prepare.

You never fail if you know in your heart that you did the best of which you are capable. I did my best. That is all I could do.

You always win when you make the full effort to do the best of which you’re capable.

You can make mistakes, but you aren’t a failure until you start blaming others for those mistakes.

Do not become too concerned about what others may think of you. Be very concerned about what you think of yourself.

Goals should be difficult to achieve because those achieved with little effort are seldom appreciated, give little personal satisfaction, and are often not very worthwhile.

Mix idealism with realism and add hard work. This will often bring much more than you could ever hope for.

Understand there is a price to be paid for achieving anything of significance. You must be willing to pay the price.

The worthy opponent brings out the very best in you. This is thrilling.

Wooden told his athletes in basketball, “I don’t care if you are tall, but I do care if you play tall.” It’s just another way of saying that he judged them by the level of effort they gave to the team’s journey.

Perhaps you fret and think you can’t make a difference in the way things are. Wrong. You can make the biggest difference of all. You can change yourself. And when you do that you become a very powerful and important force—namely, a good role model.

Promise to give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

Don’t measure yourself by what you’ve accomplished, but rather by what you should have accomplished with your abilities.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Leadership is the ability to get individuals to work together for the common good and the best possible results while at the same time letting them know they did it themselves.

Develop a love for details. They usually accompany success.

The four laws of learning are explanation, demonstration, imitation, and repetition.

People learn more effectively if given information in bite-size amounts rather than everything all at once.

There’s a difference between the journey and the inn.

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My Personal Best: Life Lessons from an All-American Journey Kindle Edition

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

For John Wooden's millions of fans--a heartfelt and revealing self-portrait about the people and events that shaped his life

Sports Illustrated declared: "There has never been a finer coach in American sports than John Wooden. Nor a finer man." ESPN selected him as the "Greatest Coach of the 20 th Century." From his birth on an Indiana tenant farm, to All-American honors at Purdue, to his historic record-setting UCLA dynasty, John Wooden is a towering figure in 20 th -century sports, and his experience and wisdom an American treasure. In My Personal Best , Coach Wooden tells how he did it and the lessons he learned on his remarkable journey.

Pairing never-before-seen photos from Coach Wooden's private collection with his personal stories and affirmations, this book encompasses the dramatic arc of Wooden's larger-than-life achievements and experiences. As he did in his perpetual bestseller Wooden , Coach offers a wealth of biographical details, personal reflections, and a lifetime of lessons. His millions of fans will cherish this definitive pictorial history of a living sports legend.

"John Wooden is a living legend because he practiced what he preached--the code of ethics which created America's strength." --Phil Jackson, head coach, Los Angeles Lakers

"Most of what I know, what's made me a smart man, has come from John Wooden." --Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer

"A man of John Wooden's accomplishments and integrity would stand out in any era, but now, almost three decades after he coached his last game, he is in some ways an even more striking figure." --Bob Costas

• Print length 192 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes Not Enabled
• Publisher McGraw Hill
• Publication date May 14, 2004
• File size 7354 KB
• Page Flip Not Enabled
• Word Wise Not Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Not Enabled
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

From booklist, from the publisher.

Steve Jamison is America's foremost author and authority on the life and philosophy of John Wooden. Mr. Jamison is a consultant to the UCLA Anderson Scool of Business’ John Wooden Global Leadership Program. He has collaborated with Coach Wooden on an award-winning PBS presentation as well as several books, including his final book, The Wisdom of Wooden: My Century On and Off the Court .

From the Back Cover

Unforgettable life lessons from the man ESPN named its “Coach of the Century”

“A good teacher or coach must not only understand others, but himself or herself as well.” --John Wooden

In this captivating book, beloved basketball coach John Wooden reveals the educational journey he took throughout his legendary life, from his earliest days on a small Indiana farm to the glory of his historic record-setting UCLA dynasty. Throughout My Personal Best , Coach Wooden introduces us to the men and women who shaped him and the many important life lessons they taught along the way.

You’ll meet his father, Joshua, the honest, straight-shooting farmer who urged his son, “Don't try to be better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be.” His mother, Roxie, a hardscrabble survivor who taught her children the value of faith and sacrifice. And his wife, Nellie, the high-school sweetheart (and ukulele virtuoso) who inspired him courtside through many games and who continued to be his inspiration throughout his life.

You’ll also meet Coach’s own coaches, such as Principal Earl Warriner, the feisty disciplinarian who guided Wooden through his first games and left him with the lesson that “no player is bigger or better than the team.” High school coach Glenn Curtis, otherwise known as the Ol' Fox, who taught Wooden the poetry of basketball. And Purdue’s Piggy Lambert, whose unbending principles and love for his team became Wooden’s model of what a great coach and teacher could be.

Last but not least you’ll meet many of the students and players who became, in the end, Coach’s greatest teachers of all.

This treasure trove of all things Wooden also includes rare, never-before-seen photos from Coach’s private collection. Pairing these priceless photos with evocative personal stories, this modern sports classic encompasses the arc of Wooden’s achievements and the spirit of his All-American experience, one that will serve as inspiration to anyone who aspires to be a coach--not only on the court but in every arena of life.

"John Wooden is a 'philosopher-coach' in the truest sense: a man whose beliefs, teachings, and wisdom go far beyond sports and ultimately address how to bring out the very best in yourself and others in all areas of life." --Bill Walsh, three-time Super Bowl champion coach

"John Wooden's teaching is timeless."- -Bill Walton, Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer, NBC analyst

“Whether it be on or off the court, John Wooden has been the personification of class and intellect as player, coach, and person for over seventy years. This book is a treasure.” --Howard Garfinkel, codirector, Five-Star Basketball Camp

“There has never been a finer coach in American sports than John Wooden. Nor a finer man.” --Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated

About the Author

Product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000SBTWAU
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ McGraw Hill; 1st edition (May 14, 2004)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 14, 2004
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 7354 KB
• Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
• #781 in Business Leadership Training
• #1,180 in Business Mentoring & Coaching (Kindle Store)
• #1,401 in Basketball Biographies (Books)

About the authors

John wooden.

Coach John Wooden was named The Greatest Coach Ever by Sporting News and Coach of the Century by ESPN. He won 10 NCAA championships as Head Coach of men’s basketball at UCLA. Since then, his wisdom, summarized most famously in his Pyramid of Success, has reinforced his status as a modern-day legend. His memorable mottos, unforgettable turns of phrase and timeless, sage advice have enriched countless lives.

Steve Jamison

Congratulations Coach Wooden and Steve Jamison. WOODEN ON LEADERSHIP (McGraw-Hill) voted among Top 25 Leadership Books of All Time!

Steve Jamison is a best-selling author and America's foremost authority on the life and leadership of UCLA Coach John Wooden, often cited as the greatest coach of the 20th century (ten March Madness national championships). Together they wrote WOODEN ON LEADERSHIP (McGraw-Hill), a Wall Street Journal best-seller.

They also collaborated on eight additional publications including WOODEN: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections; My Personal Best: Life Lessons From an All-American Journey; The Essential Wooden, and more.

Their children's book, INCH and MILES: The Journey To Success (Perfection Learning), brings Coach Wooden's message of how to be the best you can be to kids of all ages.

Mr. Jamison is also executive producer of the award-winning PBS presentation JOHN WOODEN: Values, Victory, and Peace of Mind, and a consultant to the UCLA/Anderson John Wooden Global Leadership Program.

He has also collaborated with other coaching icons including Bill Walsh, former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers whose dynasty won 5 Super Bowl championships (THE SCORE TAKES CARE OF ITSELF: My Lessons in Leadership ); and tennis coaching legend and ESPN commentator Brad Gilbert with whom he wrote WINNING UGLY: Mental Warfare in Tennis, the most popular tennis instruction book of the 21st century and includes a special chapter by Andre Agassi.

In addition to his publishing and producing career, Mr. Jamison is a popular speaker as well as Executive Producer of The John Wooden Leadership Course. He is currently writing a book about his years working with Coach Wooden and the lessons he learned from the legend.

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Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell – Book Summary

How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling Book Summary (PDF) by Frank Bettger

Antifragile Book Summary (PDF) by Nicholas Nassim Taleb

Wooden on leadership by john wooden – book summary.

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Why This Book Matters:

Legendary basketball coach John Wooden is one of the most often-quoted icons in the sports world.

Wooden’s lessons on leadership and character development transcend the athletic arena and can teach anyone how to “be at your best when your best is needed.”

Key Takeaways:

• Victory comes from a laser-sharp focus on the “process,” which Wooden thought of as all the building blocks of excelling at your endeavor.
• Example: Coach Wooden was famous for showing players the proper way of putting their shoes and socks on the first day of practice to avoid blisters and to bring their focus to the process rather than victory.
• Getting upset or emotional will only be a setback on your path to success. Instead, focus intensely on performing each aspect of the process to the best of your ability.
• Example: Coach Wooden’s players maintained absolute positivity by encouraging each other instead of critiquing or criticizing one another.
• Plan and execute each step of the process to the best of your ability to put yourself in the best position for success.
• Example: Coach Wooden required his players to shave every day and planned each detail of every game half-time.
• Everything worth achieving must be accomplished as a team based on mutual respect.
• Example: Players were expected to treat each other with respect and offer each other only encouragement.
• You can never find victory in any pursuit if you neglect any one of these qualities.
• Example: Coach Wooden focused on helping each player become the best person they could be so they could become the best player they could be.
• Forcing someone to do something doesn’t stimulate the internal motivation every successful team requires of its players. Giving suggestions allows your team the room to decide for themselves to follow your lead.
• Example: Coach Wooden suggested to other coaches the proper course of action, but also highlighted the possible consequences that could ensue if his suggestion was not followed.

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