Teams Books

This book was a great source of information on oil painting. All the illustrations were a great help to me! My husband is a great oil painter, and I wanted to learn how to myself. Thanks! Anna

This book is essential for anyone who is considering entering the coaching arena. The book is not a primer on running plays and rebounding effectively. It is the keystone for building an effective program and increasing the effectiveness of the coaches who are entrusted with it! I have used this book and its philosophies to better understand my motivations on the sideline and improve my relationships with my players and other coaches. This book was placed in the working library of the Morris Center YMCA (Cedar Knolls, N.J.) where we used it to help push the enrollment in our Youth Basketball Association to over 450 children. I am now the Assistant Basketball Coach at the College of St. Elizabeth (Convent Station, N.J.) and I have assigned chapters for other coaches to read and several of the forms have been modified for my specific needs. If you are building a program, a career or both, this must be in your collection!

For the sake of full disclosure, I am close friends with Dave and also did the video editing on this project. But it is from this close proximity that I can offer my thoughts and opinions on Dave Lemanczyk and Basketball Strength Volume I.

As for the man, I haven't come across too many people that work as hard as Dave in every area of life, from the basketball court, to the weight room, to the business world, to human relationships, Dave puts 100% of his energy and concentration on making things right and doing the right thing. This is a man, who for 3 years I went to battle against and with on the hardwood. We would literally get as close to a fist fight, without fighting, every practice, because we both knew that this type of intensity would spill over to games and get our team wins. Dave's the type of guy you give an elbow to, get one right back, but the minute you step off the court he's cracking jokes and having a great time. Conditioning and off season work was no different we would push ourselves till we vomited, and even back then Dave was searching and exploring unique and effective ways to challenge our bodies.

As for the product? I think it marks the beginning of filling a huge void in the area of basketball specific conditioning. There's not many products out there to begin with and the ones that are out there are shoddy and incomplete at best. Dave put effort into this project like he played ball. The book is comprehensive with theory and explanation of the exercises and the benefits they produce. While the DVD is a stunning display consisting of more explanation, visual demonstration step by step, motivational material, and the most unique exercises the sport has seen. I put all my skills and experience into producing a high quality DVD with beautiful menus and features, professional editing, awesome effects, and inspirational background music that will make you want to watch again and again. I'm happy to say that we produced a product that I am extremely proud of, and one that you will be very happy with.

This is a wonderful book written by Bears of every football era. I've read it many times over and will continue to do so. If you like the Chicago Bears, you will enjoy this book. I can't recommend it high enough. You hear from lots of the guys you'd expect, McMahon, Sayers, Ditka, Butkus, etc., but I also really enjoyed the players who were there in the Bears golden days of the 1940's, guys my dad told me about. And, Doug Buffone's recollection of the day Lions wide receiver Chuck Hughes collapsed on the field and died shortly thereafter is haunting and chilling.

If I could, I'd give the book 6 stars!

Whenever psychical researchers discuss the best evidence on record for the survival of consciousness after physical death, i.e., life after death, the so-called "Cross-Correspondences" are often listed as number one. "...the Cross-Correspondences are considered by many knowledgeable judges to be among the very best - if not the very best - evidence we have for survival of death, and moreover for survival of death with memory and intellectual vigor apparently undimmed," says Professor David Fontana, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

However, the researchers always point out that the Cross-Correspondences cases are so complex that they are beyond the comprehension of anyone who is not a classical scholar and not prepared to spend dozens of hours in studying the messages. "Whatever else they are, they are eminently communications from a man of letters, to be interpreted by scholars, and they are full of obscure classical allusions," wrote Sir Oliver Lodge, the distinguished physicist and electricity pioneer of yesteryear.

If they can be summarized, the Cross-Correspondences were fragments of information that came through different mediums and which in themselves meant nothing. However, when pieced together they formed coherent messages. The objective was for the communicating spirits to demonstrate that the messages were not coming from the conscious or subconscious of a single medium, or by means of telepathy from another human, or from some cosmic memory bank. It was as if the spirit communicators devised a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle with the pieces scattered in various parts of the world.

The purported spirit communicators were for the most part the early pioneers of psychical research, including the three men generally credited with founding the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882 - Frederic W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Henry Sidgwick. All were Cambridge scholars well versed in classical literature, Myers especially. Harvard professor William James said that Myers "will always be remembered in psychology as the pioneer who staked out a vast tract of mental wilderness and planted the flag of genuine science upon [psychical research]."

As the story goes, these three men and several others continued their work after they crossed over to the Other Side, Myers taking the lead after his death in January 1901, finding gifted mediums in different parts of the world to communicate messages back to members of the society which they helped establish several decades earlier.

In this book, Archie E. Roy, professor emeritus of astronomy and honorary research fellow in the University of Glasgow, closely examines the Cross-Correspondences, including the spirit communicators, the researchers receiving the messages on this side of the veil, the various mediums through whom the messages came, and the messages themselves, putting together a fascinating story of love and intrigue during the Edwardian age.

As one reads this near-600 page book, the characters come alive. Chief among the characters still in this realm of existence at the time are Arthur James Balfour, prime-minister of England from 1902-06, Lord Gerald William Balfour, his brother, Winifred Coombe-Tennant, an affluent English woman (British delegate to the League of Nations) who used the pseudonym "Mrs. Willett" so that no one would know that she was a medium, and Henry Coombe-Tennant, her son, who was completely unaware for most of his life of his mother's mediumship or his own involvement in many of the cross-correspondence messages.

Three love stories unfold, two of them of frustrated love made manifest on the Other Side and the third a somewhat scandalous affair resulting in a love child. One of first two is known as the "The Palm Sunday Story." "Many who have studied this case have accepted that it is a remarkable demonstration of undying love and devotion by people on both sides of that inevitable and inescapable appointment we call death," Professor Roy writes.

There are some interesting sidebar stories, such as Henry Coombe-Tennant's escape from a German prison camp during World War II and his trek across Germany and France with two other prisoners. On his return to England, he was on his way to visit his mother with a brother officer when their car broke down. As they were walking up the road, they were offered a ride by a charming young woman, the current Queen of England.

Even if one is not interested in the subject of life after death, the book offers much as a period piece. "There are still many of the older members of the present population who have at least a vague knowledge of that era, though in this philistine age of dumbing-down, even more people, in their lack of an adequate and systematic education in history, might be excused in their ignorance, for confusing Victoria with the first Elizabeth and, if asked, hazard a guess that her first major war was fought against Hitler," Roy offers.

The entire story would make for a great movie, but a movie would no doubt fail to capture the intricacies of the people, their stories, and the messages so thoroughly researched by the author.

The book gives a good overview of the live behind the scenes of a Formula 1 racing team.

They appeared to come from nowhere and do the impossible, these young men who appeared to be anything but extraordinary until they stepped onto the basketball court--but then the magic happened. Hailing from a Willamette Valley mill town described as a "wide spot in the road" and from a school that was among the smalledt in the state, these eight remarkable athletes and their two special coaches spent the basketball season of 1937 defeating the best teams from the biggest schools in Oregon. And when the season had ended, the Bellfountain Giant Killers had created a new chapter in Northwest sports history.

This book is great! It provides a sentimental and personal insight into the Pens' 1992 Stanley Cup season, complete with many interviews with the players. It is obvious that Molinari cares about the Penguins because of the emotion that this book can bring out in any Penguins fan. A great book to read to relive the early 1990s dominance of the Penguins.

My ten year old son received this book for Christmas and he loves it. He has really enjoyed learning to draw is favorite Nickelodeon characters. It has great step by step directions that are very easy to follow and not frustrating.