Reading Recommendations: American Son, My Story, Oscar De La Hoya with Steve Springer

The son of Mexican born parents, Oscar "The Golden Boy" De La Hoya has had an astonishing career. From boxing to business, from the recording industry to the charitable accomplishments to his foundation, his success is a testament to what one can achieve in the United States. But who is this man who has changed the lives of so many? Who has imprinted a positive mark upon the sport of boxing, for which many have all but given up hope? Who has become a symbol of success for an entire community, without many heroes to call their own?

American Son answers these questions:

Born into a boxing family, De La Hoya has defeated more than a dozen world champions and won six world titles as well as an Olympic gold medal, a moment forever marked in the memory of anyone who has followed his career. Yet within the maelstrom of this success lays a man whose earnest belief in the goodness of everyone around him sometimes led him to stray far from his intended path. This book is The Golden Boy, and he bares his most heartbreaking mistakes as well as his most stunning triumphs for all the world to see.

This thrilling tale of an immigrant's son, a real American story, is the chronicle of an amazing journey that will provide readers with new insight into the private life of a figure who has to many reached iconic status.

You Dallas Cowboy fans out there! We now have Boys Will Be Boys, The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty, Jeff Pearlman.

They were America's team, the high-priced, high glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990's, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Let by Emmitt Smith, the Charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL Dynasties.

Read it all here, the good and the bad!

And, Conquistador, Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and The Last Stand of the Aztecs, Buddy Levy.

"I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can be cured only with gold." – Hernan Cortes.

It was a moment unique in human history, the face to face meeting between two men from civilizations a world apart. Only one would survive the encounter. In 1519, Hernan Cortes arrived on the shores of Mexico with a roughshed crew of adventurers and the intent to expand the Spanish Empire. Along the way, this brash and roguish conquistador schemed to convert the native inhabitants to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold. That he saw nothing paradoxical in his intentions is one of the most remarkable, and tragic, aspects of this unforgettable story of conquest.

In Tenochtitlan, the famed City of Dreams, Cortes met his Aztec counterpart, Montezuma: King, divinity, ruler of fifteen million people, and commander of the most powerful military machine in the Americas. Yet in less than two years, Cortes defeated the entire Aztec nation in one of the most astonishing military campaigns ever waged. Sometimes outnumbered in battle thousands-to-one. Cortes repeatedly beat seemingly impossible odds. Buddy Levy meticulously researches the mix of cunning, courage, brutality, superstition, and finally disease that enabled Cortes and his men to survive.

The story of a lost Kingdom, a complex and sophisticated civilization where floating gardens, immense wealth, and reverence for art stood side by side with blood stained temples and gruesome rites of human sacrifice. It's the story of Montezuma, proud, spiritual, enigmatic, and doomed to misunderstand the stranger he thought was a God. History at it's most riveting–

See you at Rylander!