Book excerpt: "Roll the Calls" by Ari Emanuel

We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.In his memoir "Roll the Calls" (to be published Tuesday by Knopf), Hollywood superagent and mogul Ari Emanuel writes of coming to blows in the competitive entertainment universe – and, in one instance, being sidelined by the business end of a truck.

Read an excerpt below, and don't miss Ben Mankiewicz's interview with Ari Emanuel on "CBS Sunday Morning" September 20! $30 at Amazon Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.Try Audible for free Early summer 1994.

I rise early, do a hard workout, go to the office.Roll calls for several hours, speak to fifty or sixty people about fifty or sixty problems, then look up and realize I'm spent.

And famished.I walk down the street to Kate Mantilini's.

I like their omelets.The restaurant is on the corner of Doheny and Wilshire.

One block east of there, I stop, wait for the light.Cars whipping by.

I take note of how fast they're going.Faster than usual.

Someone could really get hurt right here.At the restaurant I sit by myself at a corner table, wolfing my omelet while reading a script.

No dessert.Half an hour later, head back to the office, thinking about a thousand things.

At the same corner where I noted earlier how fast the cars were whipping by, I stop, wait for the light.When the WALK sign flashes, I step off the curb and turn my head just in time to see the front grille of a black pickup.

My body has been hit many times.As a wrestler I was slammed to the mat headfirst, back first, ass first.

As a boy trapped in a small apartment with two violent psychopaths, a.k.a.my older brothers, I was thrown into bookcases, tables, doors.

As a young man, I've been in bar fights, fistfights, street fights.I've been coldcocked, blindsided, bitch-slapped, smacked around.

I've never felt anything like this truck hitting my knees....