Tracks Books

This book is something I used to launch and deliver on a long held dream to publish a book. It is full of clear advice and solid tools to help you stay on track as you pursue whatever is important to you. I didn't know how to start my dream. I wanted to write and publish and book. When I began and followed Bill's advice amazing things happened. As a first time author, my book was accepted by TWO different publishers and I have now gotten endorsements from the likes of Deepak Chopra. The story in the book is not just inspirational, what it provides is useful, and it works!

Bill Manzullo gives you personal insight on "How TO" drop your guard and follow your dreams. How did your life turn out like this and what it takes to become the person you always wanted to be. All those excuses you have well guess what, it is just a story you made up. I honestly can't wait to read his next book.

I have three children and I find myself continually picking this book up at the public library. Over the years, my children never seem to get tired of this book (and Mom doesn't get tired of reading it either). They love guessing and knowing the correct answer of the animal on the next page. We love it!

As a Children's Specialist in a public library, I use this book constantly in storyhour. It has become such a favorite that I have had at least 10 moms ask me where they could buy it. The library copy stays checked out and it is most unfortunate that it is no longer available. It is simple, colorful and has great potential for "join-in" fun.

I'm new to golf and this book has really helped me to feel more at ease with the game. I wish all how-to sports books were this informative and usful.

Thomas Fahey has done a remarkable job in his delivery of basic golf information. This book is extremely easy to read. Enough so, that I found it a delightfully enjoyable read from cover to cover. The photos, diagrams, and drawings aided greatly in helping to convey each topic clearly. At only 130 pages, this book is very concise and to the point. "Basic Golf" is at the top of my favorite list and should be considered a must read for any beginning golfer

Excellent read about behind the glitter and money of professional basketball from the perspective of black ball players.

I personally thought this book was great. It was great because it told about how the NBA was so plain and simple back then but now its something else. So as you know this book was all about the NBA. So if you really like the NBA then you should buy this book. One of the best books I have ever read.

Holt starts you off gently and at your pace. Numerous programs, plus detailed science on the types of running to do to improve running form and enjoyment during your training.
Unlike the small marathon books, Holt includes extensive nutrition and injury advice, making this a complete marathon training book.

David Holt takes you gently form 5Ks through practice 10Ks and half marathons before building you up for the marathon.
He uses graduated system of strength and endurance from hills and anaerobic threshold or tempo runs, before easing you into Intervals at 10K to slightly faster than 5K pace to make you economic while also strong enough to handle 26.2 miles.
Holt includes extensive nutrition and hydration skills advice, plus injury prevention and treatments, and motivation tips.
Programs for your first marathon or intensive training at 40 to 80 miles per week, and from one to three sensibly paced speed sessions per week.

Fortunately, I have a copy of "Lost Pony Tracks" in my personal library. Well, two; the second one, a replacement of the original, is in excellent condition; the "first", a small pocketbook version, is battered, well-worn; bears all the earmarks of an energetic cowgirl child having read it many times over, including a well-placed ketchup stain or two. The cover of that over-loved book still fascinates me - a silhouette of a cowboy on his horse, leg thrown over the pommel, a Saguaro cactus off to the left, and a flaming Southwest sunset backdrop behind them both. It's something not forgotten easily, and that photo-cover is etched in my mind and belongs to the story.

The book without the cover at all, stands at the top of it's kind. Ross Santee was a writer of extraordinary talent. As a self-described "tenderfoot" coming from the East, "Lost Pony Tracks" sprang from his personal encounters with the cowboys of the Arizona of long ago. It is a wonderful book; he captures the essence of everything; the horses, cattle, the "wrecks" with the pack horses; the unique individuals he meets during his stay with them, a self sufficient, tough "breed apart" of men - although us women are in short supply within the pages of his book. (lost woman tracks?) They made their own entertainment, their own religion. He gives us a glimpse into almost everything real of the life of the buckaroo.

One of the passages best remembered was toward the end of this remarkable story that you didn't want to end: "Why is it", he wrote, "when an old cowboy gets ready to take that long, one-way ride, he always starts talking about some old pet horse that's been dead for forty years?"

The way of life as they knew it is dead too; and while it stubbornly exists in some places still, it is in a form that would be unfamiliar to the one Santee saw and lived with on his journeys into the old West.

I highly recommend this book if you can obtain a copy. It's authentic Western Americana, written in a style you won't forget.

First published in 1953, this book is currently out of print, and it shouldn't be. It's a fine, wonderfully written, sensitively drawn memoir of cowboying in Arizona in the years before and after WWI. Santee was 26 years old when he left his small-town Iowa roots and a struggling career as an artist in New York to spend some time with family in Arizona, where he took a job as a "lowly" horse wrangler for an outfit near Globe. Over the years, as a western writer, who illustrated his own books in his distinctive style (now much appreciated), he based his stories and novels on this experience of the everyday lives of men and their horses.

Santee was a perceptive, thoughtful, and observant writer who captured in accounts of incidents and conversations a depth of social history that is hard to find in other books of its kind. It's also rare to find a portrayal of cowboy life so heart-felt. While he had his complaints about men whose faults and deficiencies made them ill-suited to being cowboys, he is chiefly interested in the many men he regarded as admirable for their one-of-a-kind personalities and their strength of character. Among them is the foreman, Shorty Caraway, whose early years on the range are recounted in Santee's "Cowboy," and there are many others, each captured with a precise and loving eye for detail. There is a generous spirit and a gentle humor throughout this book that is sometimes sentimental without ever being corny. In his depiction of daily life in an all-male work environment, Santee gets it just right. His books belong on any shelf of western literature.

This gorgeous and unusual book should be required reading for both lovers of memoir and anyone who lives in "Indian Country" (which, really, is most of us.) Hayes layers narratives of self, land, history and tribe in an unusual way that feels utterly organic. She also offers real insight into both the brokenheartedness and the joy that characterize modern Native people's experience. Though it is not without minor flaws, I give this book 5 stars because it is amazing and unique.

Ernestine Hayes has captured what it means to grow up with one foot in white culture, the other in a native way of life she must struggle to keep alive and burning in her heart. I loved the way native stories wove in and out of her experiences. I hope she has another book in the works because I want to read more of what she has to say.

This biography is a work of art: it's tough to blend this much biographical data, anecdotes, photos, and clippings into a coherent and interesting story. Yet, teacher-librarian-author Dublin has done just that; the book is engaging enough to pull in even reluctant young researchers. Kids who are sports fans will find it particularly interesting and inspirational, as Rosenfeld was an amazing athlete who had a wonderful sense of humor, team work, and fair play. The text is rich in ethnic (Rosenfeld was a Russian Jew) and feminist themes, as well. Book has T of C, timeline, suggestions for further reading, bibliography, and index.

An excellent biography of Jewish Canadian athlete Bobbie Rosenfeld. The writing is clear, simple, and interesting. Dublin deftly creates context so that readers understand the historical significance of Bobbie's achievements, including her impact on the women's movement. The book is chock-a-block with interesting quotes and amusing anecdotes that keep the reader engaged. Sidebars contain intriguing tidbits that are relevant to nearby text, usually providing background information or expanding on a topic mentioned in the body of the text.

The book comes from a strongly Canadian point of view, and will be particularly popular there, where the places and people named will be commonly familiar. However, the text is quite accessible to non-Canadian readers as well.

The list of resources at the back of the book is very thorough, and includes a timeline, lists for further information in print, video, and online formats, a bibliography of the author's sources, photo credits, and an index.

The large black and white photos are clearly reproduced and intelligently captioned.

This title was named a 2004 Sydney Taylor Honor Book. You can listen to an interview with the author on the podcast The Book of Life at www.jewishbooks.blogspot.com. Listen to the February 2006 episode to hear the interview with Anne Dublin.

Grades 3-7

Boot Tracks by Matthew F. Jones is the riveting story of Charlie Rankin, a recent prison release, and of his debt to "The Buddha" who got him a job on the outside, killing a man he's never met. Carrying readers through Rankin' s skillfully crafted, articulate and original novel that reveals the psychopathology underlying a criminal life, Boot Tracks follows Rankin through his meeting of Florence and their rapid attraction to one another. A true "page turner" of a read, Boot Tracks is especially recommended as a original thriller and clearly documents Matthew F. Jones as an author to look forward to! Readers new to Matthew Jones will want to seek out his early novels: A Single Shot, Deepwater, and Blind Pursuit.

For those who like their noir fiction dark, gritty and intense, the stunning crime novel, "Boot Tracks" by Matthew F. Jones is a gripping page-turner. Racking up a deceptively slim 206 pages, this novel delivers a simple story woven with layers of psychological complexity. The novel's protagonist, ex-con Charlie Rankin is released from jail and travels directly to a fleabag motel. He's there to commit a murder at the behest of a manipulative prison cellmate "The Buddha." With Buddha's orders to kill on his brain, the emotionally disconnected Rankin hits town with "no plan, no firm intent, and a sketchy idea" of how to commit the crime.

Rankin strikes up a bizarre relationship with an ex-porn star--a grubby nymphet with a "permanently stunned look" named Florence. While she claims some sort of mystical connection to religion, her beliefs are muddied by her narcotic addiction, and her former career in numerous tawdry films. The morally bankrupt Rankin doesn't have any tolerance for religion, and he views emotion and introspection as weaknesses. Somehow Florence--another one of life's washed up, washed-out rejects has retained an iota of trust and faith in her fellow human beings--whereas Rankin's creed borrowed from Buddha is: "Open up to no one, and leave no trace of yourself." Rankin and Florence have both learned to project their fractured personalities into different zones of existence--Florence through her role-playing in pornographic films, and Rankin by creating an alter ego in order to escape a horrific childhood of constant brutality.

Rankin doesn't question the morality of his plan to kill a total stranger. He's long past the point of morality--although he shows flashes of humanity at the oddest moments. The novel explores Rankin's Proustian psychological journey through 'involuntary memory'--and these childhood memories--usually triggered by acts of violence--offer insight into Rankin's damaged soul. But the memories are clouded with illusions and fantasies, and even Rankin isn't quite sure exactly what exists in his past. As Rankin undertakes his mission to kill, he experiences numerous semiotic events in the form of people and animals that appear along the way to his hellish task.

The novel never loses its tone of despair and frozen isolation. Snow falls on the urban landscape and magnifies the sense of desolation experienced by the characters. The subtle motif of 'boot tracks' appears throughout the novel, and these footprints in the snow represent the irreversible, seminal actions undertaken in life--our actions and the events we experience form the path that leads to our destiny.

A blurb on the back jacket of "Boot Tracks" states that a previous book by the same author, "Deepwater" was made into a film, and I'm not surprised. "Boot Tracks" screams to be on the big screen as a neo-noir thriller. The terse prose of this remarkably visual novel is permeated with sensory immediacy. One can almost smell the stale sweat and the cheap musty perfume rising from the unwashed bodies of the author's unpleasant, alienated and often-grotesque characters. This is a tight, tense read, and one you won't soon forget--displacedhuman

Lots of timely information for parents, no matter what their children's ages. You'll want to listen to it over and over.

As a father of 3 and 7 year olds with no other family around, my main source of mentoring as a parent is books like this one. Some are very useful, like Love And Logic, others are nothing but unusable fluff with no substance. Only one I have found so far covers the entire spectrum of parenting like Dr. Susan Baile's excellent presentation. I wish it were released on CD and that she would write a book. I agree with the other reviewer that you'll listen to it again and again.

Unlike most similar things, "Building Self-Esteem in Your Child" is extremely well thought out and examined. Dr. Baile quotes real clinical studies and other references. She doesn't just make claims and neglect to support and substantiate them. The information she presents is well structured. It not only resonates, it ties together into a coherent whole.

I found myself responding to it not only in the context of my role as a very imperfect parent with children but as a child with a very imperfect parent. I found causes for my own imperfect self-esteem.

Listening in my car, I frequently found myself saying, "Wow," and rewinding to hear the passage again, or pausing it to let the full impact of the insight settle in. The presentation is very rich in content.

All in all I cannot say enough good things about it. I tried to contact Dr. Baile to thank her for her contribution to the art and science of parenting but was unable to find any contact info on the web. I would have loved a forum to hear other parents' take on her observations and insights.