Ball Books

My mother got this book new in '75 or '76. She used it all through my teen years. When I left home, I permanently "borrowed" it, with her permission. I have cooked from it for years and many of my favorite recipes are in it. I find it highly useful for teaching my homeschooled four-year-old topics ranging from healthy eating to history to other cultures. Even though old recipes aren't exactly diet food, they are usually far healthier than the average chicken nugget or big mac. She has learned a wide range of favorite foods from this book. It is also very easy to tie these recipes into reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, or other historic kids novels. Read Farmer Boy and make Boston Baked Beans and Rye 'n Injun Bread. Read about George Washington and cook colonial English foods. Read Yonnie Wondernose and cook Chicken Stolzfus. Watch An American Tail and make borscht. Read Breaker Boy and make Cornish Pasties. There is a wealth of good stuff in here.

If there were 50 stars it couldn't express enough how valuable this book is! We were given a copy when it first came out and it has been used to the point of falling apart. It is a great book with lots of educational stories in it as well as hundreds of recipes. It covers history quite well and gives detail of how many recipes came about. Many great and wonderful recipes and helpful hints for cooking lie between the pages of this huge book! I am grateful it is available! I was told it was no longer in print and could not be purchased!

I purchased this book in the '70's when it was the text book for a college course I took. I have used it over the years not just for the recipes but for the fascinating stories throughout the book as well. If you'd like to know more about traditions and methods of cooking in America over the years, this is a terrific book to own!

I purchased this book for a young boy age 13 and I also have one myself. This book and DVD is an excellent, fun history lesson for a child or pre-teen to reference at his or her leasure. It's an easy read and a great reference for people of all ages who want to know more about the Negro Baseball Leagues! A must have!

If you have any interest in baseball, you'll definitely want to have this book! Created by very talented men, this is a book to keep.

This book preserves an important aspect in the history of baseball and in African American history, and it does so in a riveting way. A sincere and fascinating tribute -- and a handsome one, to boot.

So opens James Wolfe's golfing tale of Matt True, an 11-handicapper, who's about to sink a hole in one, then play like he's never played before. Like a pro. It's a gift from the golf gods, he thinks--a "gift" that tempts him to pursue his big dream of professional golf. But the gods must be smiling wickedly because the gift turns out to be a test of Matt True--who he is and his life choices. After all the trials and tribulations of his golf odyssey, he returns home a true winner. Turns out that Matt True didn't have little balls.

Little Balls, Big Dreams explains the joy of golf so clearly and with so much enthusiasm, that even someone who has never played can understand it. Next Saturday afternoon, after his game, I'm going to ask his help in buying me some golf clubs.

is to be able know what its like to play like the best. That's the premise of this entertaining and enjoyable book. A great read.

The Story of the Buchan Bakers is much more than about a Seattle industrial basketball team that rose to the top of its game during a time when amateur basketball was king. The authors skillfully tell the story of the Bakers within the context of the time; the integration of African-American players, the Cold War goodwill trip to Eastern Europe, and the emergence of the professional game. This is a good read for any student of the history of basketball. The book captures a glimpse of a piece of sports history that would have otherwise been forgotten, a time that seems markedly innocent compared to the what the business of basketball has become today.

Longshot, a book about Seattle's amateur basketball team in the 1950's that brought home the city's first national championship, comes on like a full court press.

Well written and researched, Longshot, is about a group of athletes who worked for and were sponsored by a local bakery, and who played against teams underwritten by national corporations in a time before professional basketball caught on. In 1956, the Buchan Bakers walloped the local competition went to Denver to play other regional winners and on to beat the highly favored Phillips Petroleum team in a two point squeaker of a back and forth game that wasn't decided until the final buzzer, bringing home the national crown to Seattle.

Every local history buff and all sport's enthusiasts will find Longshot a welcome and enjoyable read.

Incredibly well written and highly entertaining anecdotal history of mid-twentieth century basketball. Proof that David and Goliath stories really happen as a small baking company defeats both the Soviet national team and Phillips Petroleum Oilers to win the national AAU title.

"Lucy A to Z" is well researched and fact filled. It is one of the few books about Lucille Ball that I can recommend without reservation and I have read most of them. It is an easy read and well worth the time invested in reading about Lucy's career. Wanda Clark

Everything you could ever want to know about Lucy...in one place! I bought a copy of the second edition a few years ago and liked it very much, but I was disappointed that there were no pictures inside. Well, the author has taken care of that in this new fourth edition, and then some! There are lots of pictures, many of which I haven't seen before. The cover photo alone is a real knockout! Not only that, but the book size is bigger and there are many more new entries. It looks like it has been totally redesigned. And if you ever needed to find out anything about Lucy, it's an encyclopedia format, so just look alphabetically (there's also a huge index). I love Lucy, and I love this book! Highly recommended.

I was a fairly big Lucy fan but hadn't bought many books about her, mostly those about her show, I Love Lucy. But when I found this book, the idea of an encyclopedia intrigued me, and I figured there'd be lots of stuff about I Love Lucy, in any case. There sure is, and there's a lot more, on every aspect of Lucy's career, arranged alphabetically. The pictures are great and everything is super easy to find. The writing is both breezy and insightful; the author's obviously a big fan, but he knows his stuff. A lot of research must have gone into this. As someone else on the page says, if you need any `splainin' about anything in Lucy's life or career, it's here.

Shipping time was very quick. Book was in excellent condition, just as described and had all of the required materials with it (CD, etc.). Just as good as the school book store, but at a cheaper price!!

This book is very well written and extensive. Required for one of my classes and a permanant addition to my book collection. I am impressed.

This was an awesome price for this book...my school charges $120 for it and I only paid $77 that was a great price...The book has alot of good detail, and is helping me tremedously with my Peds and OB class :)

This is a classic collection of mathematical recreations. Originally written by W.W. Rouse Ball around 1900, this edition has been updated by the great geometer H.S.M. Coxeter. It is a comprehensive first source for information about magic squares, Platonic and Archimedian solids, "Knight's Tours" and other chessboard recreations, and just about any other variety of math-related puzzle you could name.

For a mathematician, Coxeter is an excellent writer, and the book is quite accessible, even to relative math novices. Fans of Martin Gardner's books, of his "Scientific American" Mathematical Games columns, will want to own this. And because it's published by Dover, the price is right, too.

Any fan of mathematical puzzles will go ape over this thoroughly researched, timeless classic. Even for jaded scientists in their forties (such as me) and beyond, there's always some new gem to be discovered at the turn of a page. The scope of the book is immense, ranging from all manner of "classical" recreations to the puzzles of antiquity (e.g., squaring the circle) to the history of pi to the structure and functionality of the kaleidoscope. It's all here!

This is a timeless classic and a primary reference
for recreational mathematicians. And the price
is unbeatable.

This is a funny, light hearted book about a family getting together for Passover. The mother trying to make light fluffy matzoh balls always reminds me of making matzoh balls with my mother - waiting and hoping they would float. The illustrations are great and the fun and funniness of family get togethers are events anyone can relate to and laugh at. By far it is my favorite Jewish children's book.

I found this book to be very colorful and very imaginative. My three year old loves it when all the relatives start to float. He helps me make matzah balls and after reading this book, he will actually eat them. I love how this poor woman brings her relatives back down to earth. It is a wonderful and warm book that children will love.

I actually have not seen or read this book beyond what is visible on Amazon's website, but it looks like such a charming book and I would desperately like to have a copy for my son if I could find it at a fair price. I've been searching high and low to no avail. I think it's outrageous that people are trying to sell it for almost $200, and good luck to them finding a buyer. If you are also interested in this book, please try contacting URJ Press at 888-489-8242 and urge them to re-print it!

Anyone who undertakes a study of Civil War medicine must begin with this introduction to the literature. Virtually every important publication about the subject is included. The annotations are brief but informative (and occasionally humorous---see the author's reviews of his own works).

I am familiar with many Civil War bibliographies and I find that this is the place to go if you want to find out something about Civil War medicine.

This is a very interesting list of works about medicine during the Civil War. The author has the knack of getting the essence of some very complicated publications. I found that this bibliography enabled me to enter the whole field.

This is a remarkable book. Whereas it took Jimmy Burns of the Financial Times a whole book to wax about Barcelona, Phil Ball does it beautifully in a few pages. Morbo is a superb exploration of Spanish politics, Spanish geography, and the one thing that unites all of Spain-football. Spain is, it seems, a poor advertisement for the sort of national unity that dominated 19th. century Europe-Germany, Scotland, and Italy and later, India and China. Phil Ball's book exhibits a child-like happiness when he visits soccer stadiums in the forgotten corners of Spain. He exposes the hypocrisy of Basque politics, the long shadow of Francisco Franco in Spain and, finally, the exuberance of that Catalan city: Barcelona. This is a must-read for people who are interested not only in the cuisine of a particular peoples-Basque and Catalan- but in their vibrant history beyond the kitchen, beyond the football pitch as well.

American audiences exposed to the EPL, La Liga or any other league for that matter, often times only get to see 2 dimensions of the game. First, the emphasis on the bigger team names, and second, the game itself. What they often fail to see is the intracacy of the game behind the game - that is, the cultural elements that make soccer overseas so unique, so passionate, and often times, so beyond the grasp of comprehension to the audience that is watching on Fox Soccer Channel.

In Morbo, Phil Ball does a wonderful job of illustrating the cultural background to spanish soccer. And true to form, he effectively illustrates that La Liga is not only about Barcelona and Real Madrid. There is much history between these two clubs but fortunately, Ball doesn't spend all his effort on them. Instead he dives into the history of spanish soccer, starting with English miners, to the history of clubs that no one has heard of outside of Spain, like Recreativo de Huelva.

This is far more a cultural study, than it is a history of spanish soccer. Balls successfully discusses how the two paths combine, and how club support was defined more by class/politics/ and culture, than by a jersey's color. It certainly goes a long way in helping outsiders understand the level of support and the long ties people have to clubs. It is especially interesting in light of how the modern world is shaping the game.

Finally, like many sports leagues, there is history and their is myth. Ball does a service to the spanish game by not buying into the myth of some of the rivalries (Betis-Sevilla, RM-Barcelona, Athletic-everyone else). In doing so, he provides a complete and true picture of how the game has evolved on the Iberian peninsula.

For people interested in understanding how events actually shaped the game in Spain, this is a must read. There are plenty of books out there about Real Madrid and Barcelona, but there are few books that look at Spanish soccer with this depth and refreshing candor.

Morbo is fantastic. Phil Ball, as he always seems to do in his regular columns on Spanish football, manages to capture the essence of Spanish society through the culture of the game. This is a story not only of the greats - di Stefano, Barcelona, Real Madrid, etc - but of the cab driving Betis supporter of Seville and the forgotten cities and clubs of Huelva and Irun. For the American reader possessing a passion for the game with sources unknown, this opens up a culture for further exploration. It is not a complete history, nor was that ever its intent. Rather, as the title suggests, it is an eploration of morbo - the passion and rivalry of the game set against a backdrop of franco, poverty, wealth, isolation, regional pride, and most other issues that form the very foundation of Spain during the past century-plus.

Morbo is a brilliant place to start for the un-initiated and a delightful treat for those who already know the culture of the game.