University of Alabama head coach Nick Saban is the subject of an unauthorized biography released this week entitled Saban: The Making of a Coach, written by author Monte Burke.

Burke took a leave of absence from his job at Forbes to complete the project and interviewed more than 250 people for the book. **Editor's note: The author of this story was interviewed for and is in the book.

Burke will sign copies of his book on Wednesday at 7 at Barnes & Noble in Midtown Village.

The Tuscaloosa News recently interviewed Burke about the book and what he learned about one of the best college football coaches in history.

He's always fascinated me even going back to his LSU years. The thing that got the project really started was the Forbes story back in 2008. I got to hang out with him for the better part of two days, and you could tell then that he was captain of the ship and he was turning that thing around. He's always fascinated me. I wanted to see what his influences were, what his motivations were, where he came from, and I figured there were at least a couple of other people out there equally fascinated with him.

I went there not exactly scared of his reputation, but wary of it. I figured out that in smaller settings, where he's really comfortable, he truly is one of the most charismatic people that I've ever written about. I've been at Forbes for 15 years and written about all kinds of CEOs and former U.S. presidents, and I don't know that I've run across anyone who in a small setting was quite as charismatic as he was. You could feel Alabama changing back in 2008 and it was all emanating from this one guy.

I am. I think anyone honestly, if they're looking at his career, would say, 'Yes, it's a surprise.' When you look at what he's done at Alabama, how much he means to Alabama, not only in wins and losses but his role in transforming the entire university…in a way, if you just looked at his past history you'd be surprised, but if you look at it in the present tense it's not that surprising.

I didn't. They were pretty gracious the whole way through. I actually called him before I even started on the proposal. He was, I don't know if OK is the right way to describe it, but it kind of felt that way to me. As far as I know, he didn't tell anyone specifically not to talk to me. I talked to the best man in his wedding and his college roommates and a golfing buddy, who lives in Birmingham. And then I kind of kept him up to date as I was doing it and called him when I was done and went through some parts of it just so he knew what was coming. You don't want the subject to be blindsided by the material that you write.

I have not. I imagine he's pretty busy right now.

Even the people that didn't like him, and I figured I had to talk to those people too, they couldn't help but say something complimentary things about him. In other stories I've done for Forbes, for instance, you find people that don't like your subject and they can't utter a nice word about the person. That wasn't the case here.

I do. That was one of the most fascinating things in the book for me to report and write about. People had hinted that his father was sort of a hard-charging guy, Nick's mentioned it a little bit. That chapter is called "The Diamond" just because the pressure his father put on him didn't crush him, it formed him. It's also interesting to look back at his father's demand for sort of an impossible perfection. And then you look at how Little Nick responded to that, which was basically he adapted his behavior and learned to and even enjoy the steps taken in that pursuit as opposed to worrying about the end result. That's really one of the pillars for what's now known as the "process."