Others: Negative After 250 appearances for Dundee United, Walter Smith was appointed coach of the Scotland Under 18 team in 1978, helping the team to win the European Youth Championship in 1982. This was the start to what has been a long and successful career in both coaching and management, first with the SFA where he acted as assistant manager to Alex Ferguson during the 1986 Mexico World Cup. He enjoyed an illustrious career in management at Rangers, joining the Souness revolution in 1987, winning seven successive league titles, a domestic treble in 1992/93 and winning both the Scottish Cup and the League Cup three times each. Following this stirring success in Scotland, Smith accepted a position across the border in the English Premier League with Everton in 1998, where he was manager for three years, before reuniting with Sir Alex Ferguson as an assistant manager at Manchester Untied in 2004.In December of that year, Smith was appointed manager of the Scottish national team.During his tenure at the helm, Scotland enjoyed their most successful period of international football for several years, rising almost forty places in the World Rankings and earning Smith the "Scot of the Year" award at the prestigious Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland awards in 2006. Midway through the qualifying rounds for Euro 2008, however, and with Scotland leading the group, Smith controversially accepted an offer to quit the SFA for a return to Ibrox in January 2007. Walter Smith is one of the most talked about and respected managers in British football. This insightful biography casts a reflective and analytical eye over his life and career, examining this shrewd professional through the many highs and lows that he has experienced as a player and a manager.
Genres: biography
Lists: …
Jacob Abbott
1853 · 321 pages · 1 review
Others: NeutralWhat made the match, strongest first
Patti Smith
2015 · 263 pages · 2 reviews
Others: MixedM Train is a journey through eighteen "stations." It begins in the tiny Greenwich Village cafâe where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. We then travel across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations: from Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico, to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin; from the ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith buys just before Hurricane Sandy hits, to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation, alongside signature memories including her life in Michigan with her husband, guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, whose untimely death was an irremediable loss. For it is loss, as well as the consolation we might salvage from it, that lies at the heart of this memoir, augmented by black-and-white Polaroids taken by Smith herself.
What made the match, strongest first
Maynard Solomon
1977 · 400 pages · 1 review
Others: PositivePresents a comprehensive study of Beethoven, his career, and his music.
What made the match, strongest first
Jonathan Eig
2023 · 679 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveA biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
What made the match, strongest first
Lisa F. Smith
2016 · 277 pages · 1 review
Others: NegativeGirl Walks Out of a Bar explores Smith's formative years, her decade of alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, and her road to recovery. In this darkly comic and wrenchingly honest story, Smith describes how her circumstances conspired with her predisposition to depression and self-medication in an environment ripe for addiction to flourish. When her close-knit group of high-achieving friends celebrate the end of their grueling workdays with alcohol-fueled nights at the city's clubs and summer weekends partying at the beach the feel-good times can spiral wildly out of control. Girl Walks Out of a Bar is a candid portrait of alcoholism through the lens of gritty New York realism. Beneath the façade of success lies the reality of addiction.--Amazon.com
What made the match, strongest first
Prudence J. Jones
2006 · 159 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveCleopatra VII (69-30 BC) Egyptian queen (of Macedonian descent), last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. Daughter of Ptolemy XII, she ruled with her two brother-husbands, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, both of whom she had killed,and with her son Ptolemy XV or Caesarion (44-30). This biography concentrates on the fascinating aspect of Cleopatra's ever-shifting identity. A master of self-presentation, she was the first to craft for herself an image or, to be precise, a number of images. Depending on the audience, she might present herself as a goddess, a political leader, or an alluring and exotic woman. Roman statesmen likewise manipulated Cleopatra's image for their own political ends. The tension embodied in our sources for Cleopatra's life make her story especially captivating. The author's approach to the biography focuses on the ancient sources, but dies not ignore the fascinating afterlife Cleopatra's story has experienced. The accounts of her life, which were written by contemporaries and even acquaintances, will offer the reader a sense not only of Cleopatra, but also of the literature and historiography of the time. Ancient sources include both the historical - Plutarch, Suetonius, Cassius Dio, Julius Caesar, Appian, and Velleius Paterculus - and the literary - Horace, Vergil, Lucan, and Ovid. Documentary evidence from inscriptions also are important. In addition, texts like Cicero's Letters provide some real-time snapshots of Cleopatra. The biography is illustrated in full color and produced to the usual high standards of the Life&Times series.
What made the match, strongest first
Not a fanAnd then I read more of Silver Smith which I'm really not liking. I'm 90% of the way through though. So I'm going to finish. But I when I don't like a book and I can't figure out if I'm like being reasonable or not, I go to good reads and all the three star reviews or less say the same exact complaints I do of what I feel for this book. So probably looking like a three star read for me, which is really sad.
