Sports Books

This work is a masterpiece of sight and sound; reading Shul's writing you feel like you're right there with him, at the controls of the greatest, most beautiful airplane anyone ever built.

I was given an earlier edition of this book (back whent he price wasa only $57) and DEEPLY regret that I cannot afford the Special Edition to replace the other, which was stolen.

If you CAN afford it, BUY IT NOW AND REJOICE! It simply IS that good. Kudos to Kelly Johnson (the plane's designer) and Kudos to Brian Shul for such a great book!

The amazingly true story of Sled Driver was about a very daring pilot that flew one of the most secretive airplanes in history, the SR-71. Brain Shul, the author and the main personality throughout the book, started as a military fighter pilot, was one of the few people in the world to be to be trained to fly the SR-71 "Black Bird" or the "Sled" as it is sometimes called, let alone actually fly the beast, was chosen to fly the airplane. Two months of severe flight simulating and text manual reading, Brain is chosen to fly the "Sled" and is partnered with the only black man to ever fly the SR-7, Walt Watson. These two men are paired for their entire career of flying the SR-71. The rest of the book are tales of wondrous experiences and frightful mishaps that nearly take their lives, though they always came out strong.
In every book there are at least on thing that does not click with the reader, and in this book this rule holds true. The only problem I experienced while reading this book was the odd placement of pictures. Whenever the Author got into a serious thought or story, the next page would have a picture or series of pictures that would make you lose your trail of thought and provoke you to look at the photos. This severely annoyed me most of the way through the book. I don't quit think the author was thinking to deeply into the placement of the photos or he's a total genius and didn't want you to get completely trapped into his story, giving you time to think about what just happened or recollect on what exactly he was saying.
Of course there are good or great things about a book or the reader would stop reading it, unless he was forced to read it like I was in grade school and throughout High School. The pictures were phenomenal, even though their placement was off. The sheer quality and beauty of them was overwhelming. Also, the author used so much detail in his writing, it was almost as if you were in the cockpit with him and Walt. He used so manning adjectives, that it was almost as if he wanted your full attention on a specific object or experience, just so that you didn't miss a thing.

yes i know that the 'sled driver' by shul is a fantastic book!!
and yes indeed, i have yet to read it
at nearly 1/2 a grand to purchase, i believe i shall never read it
i find it wonderful that the author wants to release another limited printing of 3500 copies
once again, i am sure to be left out of the fold
what is the motivation here?
am i not to ever get a crack at reading this fine work??
am i expected to ever get a truthful answer to my questions??
being a realist and a pilot, i must say its a lousey day for v.f.r
warmest regards to all those profiting at my expense
tim

I first heard about this book when i was a freshman in high school seeing the add in the pacific flyer newspaper, Ever since then I have always wanted to get this book! I searched book stores to this day to find a copy! But after searching I have found it here only to have my dreams shot down like a japanese plane over pearl harbor that at a price of 245+ I will never be able to add this book to my extensive collection i have collected ever since i was 8! I hope one day to win the lottery or something so i can buy it!

I got my copy from Brian when he was selling them at an open house at March AFB. He was planted right under the left wing. You could sit in the cockpit of the SR-71 for a photo for $5. That was well worth it! When you look behind you and see all that mass of black titanium, and imagine that you would leave a 30-06 bullet in the dust, it is truly awe inspiring. By the way Brian was signing, to you personally, his Sled Driver books for a paltry $35. My friend who is also a plane nut , got one too. My treat. I also got his second book by mail from him for the same price. He is a great guy who answers his own phone and takes your order himself. He is also very funny. Look him up at the next big airshow you attend. He'll tell you all about "the sled" Lee

Excellent, excellent book! I have been in aviation for 20 years as a flight attendant at three airlines. The variety of quotations is excellent. The book makes me appreciate aviation even more. These are exciting times and this book helps me navigate the past and apply great quotes for my continuing aviation career.

I am very thankful for this book. I will keep it by my bedside and take it on trips.

I bought this book as gifts for my rc- aviation friends and it was an instant hit! This book makes an awesome bathroom quote book- or a lovely coffee table book. It is small but thick. A great read. I gave it 5 stars, but I will say that I expected pictures to go along with the great quotes.-this is just a minor flaw. Most probably wouldn't expect pictures anyway. The words inspire scenery in the mind by themselves. Definitly worth the buy!

My husband likes to fly (we have a small plane) so I thought he'd enjoy this book even. He loved it! And I loved it too I n=must say. Its a terrific collection of quotes the reference or talk about flight and flying. The quotes are organized into chapters: high flight, magic & wonder of flight, predictions, first flights, air power, combat, bums on seats, cliches, misc., piloting, safety, space, women fly, last words. There must be hundreds of quotes in here. There are some photographg (B/W). Its a terrific collection! Highly recommended!

My father was an air traffic controller (firstly in the air force and then in civil aviation) so I grew up around airports and aeroplanes.

I can just sit with this book for half an hour any time. It is a wonderful combination of humour - "Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo." (Al Gore) - might be my favourite. But there is also the deeply profound and quite moving.

It'll be a well thumbed and much quoted book for years to come.

Flying is a PASSION and "Slipping the Surly Bonds" is a great book for anyone who shares that passion....

This is a must read for pilots or ANYONE interested in flying or connected with the aviation industry. It is NOT a " sparse, flowery book of aviation poetry," - it is a very thorough book of aviation history in the form of various quotes. I would estimate that there are approximately 1000 quotes contained in this easy to read format.

This book makes a WONDERFUL gift for pilots and those who have always been fascinated with flying. However, unlike most books that contain a few poetic lines on each page - this book centers more around historic and literary quotes. Although it is more than a "coffee table" book, it is certainly a book that would easily interest most guests.

"Slipping the Surly Bonds" is divided into 14 areas and has an index for easy referencing. Areas of interests include: First Flights, Magic and Wonder of Flight, Air Power, Combat, Predictions, Piloting, Safety, Space, and Women Fly and more.

As a female Vice President of two small Aviation Companies, I have often searched for gifts for pilots, etc. who have been difficult to buy for. I have never gone wrong when purchasing this book as a gift.

Tae Kwon Do Basics, Techniques and Forms: The Indomitable Martial Art of Korea

This book was a long time coming and I'm proud that our father's technique is being shared in this book. The hope is that many would be able to learn from this book and instill confidence, self-discipline and self-respect in those that choose to practice it.

Congratulations and Happy New Year!

I really enjoyed learning from this book. There are so many Martial Arts books out these days, it's hard to find one that is really good. After looking at many books, I found that the author is the most qualified teacher in the TaeKwonDo world. Grandmaster Park is the best by far! Great Book!!!

I bought this book for my Grandson and he just loves it! He said it was the best Christmas Gift ever! He loved all the color photos and the description was so easy to understand I could follow it too! Can't wait until GrandMaster Park's next book comes out!!!

This book co-authored by Taekwondo Hall of Famer GM Dong Keun Park
offers much for both the beginning and advanced student. The photos and
explanation of techniques are clear and crisp. Highly recommended!

Gerard Robbins,
3 Times National Taekwondo Champion
Competitor / 2nd World Taekwondo Championships

This book is great if you want a basic reference for kicking and punching techniques, forms, sparring, etc. I was hoping for more of the theory and reasoning behind the art. In my opinion, it is best to clarify any questions of physical technique with a good teacher, rather than a book, so I try not to rely too heavily on the technical suggestions.

Pastore's book on turn of the century world class yachting is a window into another time. For armchair mariners he provides just enough nautical jargon to allow one to come away feeling more knowledgeable, without overloading the reader. His biographical portraits of the designer Nathaniel Herreshoff and the tea and grocer magnate Thomas Lipton are fascinating. And if nothing else the author deftly transmits the awesome scale of the America's Cup defenders and challengers to the written page. I'd highly recommend this book. It's an excellent read.

For serious sailors and lovers of history, this book is a wonderful stroll through one of the most dramatic periods in the history of America's Cup competition. Christopher Pastore's conversational style and meticulous research give us three dimensional portraits of both "Captain Nat" Herreschoft and his arch rival, perennial British America's Cup challenger, Sir Thomas Lipton. It's easy for experienced sailors who write works such as this to forget that the sailing lexicon can seem like a foreign language to those who don't "...mess about in boats..." However, Mr. Pastore takes time to define the complex terminology of the yachting world. This is the book that will help northern sailors get through the long winter months and help non-sailors to appreciate the complexity of mounting a challenge and defense to the longest continually run sporting event in history.

Mr. Pastore writes with a style that both informs and draws you in. The race sequences play out with drama and tension. I loved this book, and recommend it to anyone interested in maritime history, racing, shipbuilding, or early 20th century history.

I found the depth of the character studies especially entertaining, and I finished it feeling like I personally knew Messr's Herreshoff, Barr, and Lipton.

Growing up in RI made this book a very special read. Passing the museum on a daily basis, but never knowing the story behind the ships and their designers always made me feel like I was slacking in my duties. The book answered every question I could have had from a personal and engineering standpoint. If you are an engineer or enjoy Non-fiction, defintiely pick up Temple to the Wind.

Pastore takes you on a journey through history and makes Herreshoff come alive. This book is an amazing account of Herreshoff's travails while designing Reliance. I am basically a sailor wanna-be and was delighted to feel much closer to the excitement of the yachting world years ago- when the stakes were very high. Pastore's devotion to the subject is evident and his enthusiasm for the race is contagious! Truly a great read.

This is a decent book which encourages experimentation with dehydrating your food and creating recipes- something often left out of both dehydrating and backpacking food books. However, for what everything it does have or encourage, it lacks detail and I felt like there could have been so much more. As it is, it is worth the purchase in conjuction with at least one more, far substantial book.

Fmergency preparadness is my focus. I found recipes and food preparation to be excellent. Summer gardening with the bounty of our efforts dehydrated, prepared in delicious and easy meals for both home and traveling is a gratifying experience. Great book.

Trail Food by Alan S. Kesselheim is a spectacular little read for anyone interested in adventuring in the outdoors, self reliance, preperation, or even just making healthy snacks at home for a fraction of the price of storebought. Encouraging, practical, and written by an obviously experienced author, Trail Food helped enhance my outdoor experience. If you're still buying those freeze dried meals or even worse living off of ramen noodles when you're out in the wilds, I really suggest you consider dehydrating your own food, and this book is a great place to start. In addition to dehydration the author seasons the book with a bunch of other tidbits. There's little blurbs about the pros and cons of cooking over fires and various stoves, advice on setting up the camp kitchen, and at the beginning of every chapter there's a little blurb of a story about canoeing, backpacking, dogsledding, or just cabin living, that helped get me in that outdoorsy frame of mind. My two dehydrators are going to be working overtime!

good and informative book for the price. I tried a few of the recipes and was able to improvise from there.

As a boyscout leader, we like to outdo the scouts on our creative cooking to inspire their creativity. It is a great book, to show how to make creative meals without the weight of heavy food items. This has been great!! Thanks C>

What if you can find a book that gives you the basics and the better moves for training your athletes in speed, agility, quickness, and more (balance and reaction time)...? Well here you are! Even better, it's ordered by every ability, numbered, b/w pictures or diagrams (and a DVD that gives very detailed info on the exercises), very well explained and the most important: scientific! Meaning: proved results! Two very distinguish authors and also very known for their knowledge in the area.

This book has lots of drills to improve athletic performance. Although I haven't had a chance to try them out yet (I'm currently injured and unable to train), they seem like they would definitely improve your athletic performance.

This is a great book, it covers a wide range of training. I coach little league and have been able to take parts of this book and incorporate them into our conditioning and training at all levels. Have not used the DVD all that much but the book alone is worth it

If you're looking for drills to improve you or your athletes speed, agility, or quickness- look no further.

The book starts out with a short chapter on preparing for the drills followed by another short chapter on "needs analysis" (which shows you how to evaluate the need for a speed, agility, and quickness program).

The rest of the book from there is the "meat" of the book: three sections of drills, one for speed, one for agility, and one for quickness. Each of these sections is loaded with great pictures of the drills along with the purpose of the drill and an explanation of how to do it.

The book ends with a 6th Chapter on sport-specific programs. Here the reader is given routines for all the different sports such as volleyball, karate, baseball, etc.

All-in-all I found this to be a very nice resource for drills- drills for really just about any sport. To boot, the size of the book is such that you can toss it in a gym bag and take it with you. Other sports resources I liked include The 5-Minute Plantar Fasciitis Solution if you suffer from plantar fasciitis. Happy training!

This is a great book and DVD set for plyometrics. Both the book and the DVD start with an "Athlete Fitness Assessment" so you can understand the athlete's performance at the beginning of training. This is lacking in many of the other plyometrics books and DVDs, which begin with instruction right away, without emphasis on assessing the athlete's ability prior to training. The materials are nicely organized into sections for Speed, Agility, Balance, Quickness, and Reaction Time. A "Purpose" is clearly defined for each set of drills, so readers at any level can understand the results which the exercises are intended to achieve. I am using this book to see where I am in my performance, and where I need to go. My only complaint is that the DVD plays the drills one at a time. It would be nice to have a "Play All" option in each section, so that I'm not using my remote every 30 seconds or so. The DVD is easy on the eyes and ears, though. Buy this set first, and save your time and money returning the other books and DVDs! Enjoy!

I love Richard Brautigan's adventurous "Trout Fishing in America." Never before have I seen so many unique and interesting lines in short a short span of pages. Never before, have I been able to pick up a book and go to any old random page in the book and be entertained without a care of order or what the previous chapters talk about. It is prose that takes you into the randomness of the United States, and occasionally Mexico. It is truly a book of poetry disguised as a novel.

His angle on San Francisco, New York city in the Summer, and small and often obscure areas of the US is fun, intriguing, and playful to read.

What I hate is how I really cannot explain why it's such a remarkable work of art. I just love how Brautigan writes from his fun, adventurous spirit, wit and the very realms of his spontaneous genious.

This is an environmental treatise if I ever saw one. Does no one see this? That aside, it is one of my favorite books. That and Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn....and, well I find him refreshingly funny and on the point. I have read his books over and over. Mayonnaise.

I cannot tell you how much I liked this book when I read it, under identical circumstances you will be pleased you did.
It reminds me of my da and his inventiveness, best my research indicates he was the first person to invent the remote control for television. Part one of his invention, not because this was his first innovation but just because this is how I chose to place this innovation in the review...Part one was a long electrical cord with an on off switch spliced to it so he could lean over the side of the bed and he could click the switch and like magic the TV would come to life or if he felt like clicking it again it would go black crackling and popping while it cooled.
Part two of his innovation I was able to be a part of, whenever he needed to change the channels he would yell my name with great enthusiasm...Boy! Boy! come here quick, I would snap to life and run to his room with great anticipation look at him and say whaaat? He would reply "could you change over to channel 6 ? hold on, hold on, now try 13 hmmm. go back to 8"....Thanks... Well I would leave frustrated and determined not to fall for that one again, but within an hour Boy! Boy! come here hurry! I would run upstairs and say "whaaat"? "could you change the TV over to Channel 6".

Boy:"But Da I'm studying for my drivers license test, I don't want to flunk"

Da: " try 13 again"...

Why this books evokes these memories is a mystery but so are a lot of things.

an american classic, from the list of inverted american classics. this book manages to condescend and applaud american literature at the same time. brautigan had it all; he was a genius and a lunatic, and both are evident here. after all, the line is quite fine anyway. this book is as clever and cute as it is warped and disturbed. my favorite of all time.

the title describes the style. brautigan would cast his line in and pull out an interesting specimen;each time holding it in the sunlight for us to see it's glistening body. each short chapter in this cunningly crafted book is like that. brautigan's use of the english language was imaginative and pure. his observations are refreshing,sometimes madcap,sometimes surprisingly poignant but always originating in left field. there is nobody quite like brautigan;an original in every way. don't be fooled by those who would consign him to a specific era;for his work, especially this book,is timeless.

Every trainer and rider and judge of dressage horses needs to read this book. After doing so, you will never again wonder if hyperflexion of the neck (rollkur) and absolute elevation are legitimately sound methods of riding and training. You will also be able to spot horses in the arena which have had these methods used on them. You may even become ashamed of how our sport of dressage has progressed in the past few decades.

Dr. Heuschmann definitely has it out for those who choose to ignore the traditional methods. And with reason. With vivid color illustrations of the horse's anatomy and straightforward commentary, he takes time in this book to carefully point out the crucial points of a riding horse's anatomy and how they are affected by both correct and incorrect training techniques. The photographs clearly demonstrate the differences in movement, tension and balance between horses ridden in a traditional manner and those who are not.

As a dressage trainer who has been educated in Germany, it is my sincere hope that with the publishing of this book and support by its readers, it is an indication that we are ready to abolish training techniques that are harmful to our horses.

This book provides detailed information about the development of the musculature of the horse and the effects of different training methodologies. Like many riders, I have often seen training methods that made me feel ill at ease, but I didn't really understand why. This book helped me understand why these methods are technically incorrect and often inhumane. This book is a great tool for those dressage enthusiasts who are concerned about the integrity and humaneness of our sport, and wish to safeguard the well-being of our equine partners!

Tug of War is a must read for all horse owners, especially show, dressage & western riders. This book has opened my eyes about bio-mechanics of horses and why they respond and behave the way they do. The picture on the front of the book looks extreme but just have a look at what is happening in Adult Riding Clubs, Pony Clubs etc, examples of over flexing and extreme bends are there. This book is for people with a driving force within that want change for themselves their horses and within the industry, well written and in basic terms so that you don't need a degree to understand.

This book is a must for all riders/trainers who love and care for horses. Reading it was a rude awakening for me since it showed me how harmful my "modern" training and riding were for my horses. I want healthy and happy horses so no more shortcuts for me.
Pascale

I would that every rider, regardless of discipline, would read this book. It relates excellent information that goes against the grain of much commonly held training. Our horses would move with more freedom and pleasure and have long careers instead of early retirements. Well illustrated and explained. It's actually a quick read. The principles are simple and consistent. Very accessible.

Just like I said about UFT vol.2,this is a sport bjj book for begginners.About one in every four moves shown in this book can be translated to mma competition.
The moves inside are divided up as follows;
1)Takedowns-22 moves
2)Guard Passes and The Turtle Position-21 moves
3)Side Control-17 moves
4)Mount-17 moves.
5)Rear Mount-8 moves.
Once again,Royce links the moves together and this is an excellent book.

This is a great reference book on BJJ techniques. However, I do agree with other readers that this book really does not cover UFC technicalities (i.e. strikes). Would definitely recommend for someone studying ground techniques but not for NHB/UFC training.

Any fan of Jiu-Jitsu will love this book! My husband read it constantly. Great illustrations and step-by-step directions on how to do each move. A++

Royce Gracie is at his simplistic best,Teaching moves that are simple and will be remembered in the ring. Royce Gracie is the only man in octagon history to defeat 3 oppenents in one night 3times to win the first 3 out of 4 UFC Championships.

This book will teach you a lot of very basic drills and ways to move from an offensive position to a stronger offensive position and in many cases teaches you how to defend those same advances. The book has very little about armbars, leg locks and figure 4 triangle leg chokes (although it does have a really cool one to use if you're already mounted past your opponents guard). You'll become efficient at understanding terms like guard, half guard, mount, back, side control and how to move from one position to a stronger using proven techniques. I give the book 5 stars because the techniques presented are well taught using pictures and easy to understand language. This book focuses mainly on techniques used to attack your opponent, today I'm ordering the second book of the series on ground game defense, after all, there's nobody better at defending a ground position than Royce.