Tracks Books

THE THROWING SEASON
MICHAEL FRENCH

This story takes place in Arkansas around the 80's. The main character is Indian; he's a Cherokee Indian that goes to Consolidated High School. He's a tall muscular guy that has big sorrowful eyes and a look of determination always on his face. He's a great shot-putter. In the book Indian meets a new friend, Golly. At first Indian doesn't like him, but after they push each other to their limits during the track meets Indian decides to help him train for next year. They become great friends. Indian and Golly both advance to sate competition. But only Indian moved on to Nationals. Then a car dealer; Noah Standish takes Indian for a ride in his car. He tells Indian to not finish any better than 4th in the national competition. Because he bet that Indian would loose state and he ended up losing bunches of money. He offers Indian 5,000 dollars to blow nationals. In the book his parents Jimmy and Lucy are concerned that Noah will do something to Indian if he doesn't do what he's told. Jimmy doesn't want him to go to college. So he doesn't want Indian to go to the national competition so he won't get a college scholarship to go to UCLA. You'll have to read this book to find out what happens. I enjoyed this book because it was surprising and full of action. The author could have done a better job describing the events better. But he did a great job on describing the characters. The best thing about this book is that it's not easy to determine what's going to happen next. It keeps you guessing. I have never read another book by this author but if I'm looking for a book I will consider his name.

THE THROWING SEASON
MICHAEL FRENCH

This story takes place in Arkansas around the 80ýs. The main character is Indian; heýs a Cherokee Indian that goes to Consolidated High School. Heýs a tall muscular guy that has big sorrowful eyes and a look of determination always on his face. Heýs a great shot-putter. In the book Indian meets a new friend, Golly. At first Indian doesnýt like him, but after they push each other to their limits during the track meets Indian decides to help him train for next year. They become great friends. Indian and Golly both advance to sate competition. But only Indian moved on to Nationals. Then a car dealer; Noah Standish takes Indian for a ride in his car. He tells Indian to not finish any better than 4th in the national competition. Because he bet that Indian would loose state and he ended up losing bunches of money. He offers Indian 5,000 dollars to blow nationals. In the book his parents Jimmy and Lucy are concerned that Noah will do something to Indian if he doesnýt do what heýs told. Jimmy doesnýt want him to go to college. So he doesnýt want Indian to go to the national competition so he wonýt get a college scholarship to go to UCLA. Youýll have to read this book to find out what happens. I enjoyed this book because it was surprising and full of action. The author could have done a better job describing the events better. But he did a great job on describing the characters. The best thing about this book is that itýs not easy to determine whatýs going to happen next. It keeps you guessing. I have never read another book by this author but if Iým looking for a book I will consider his name.

Kyle
Martin

In the begging of the book Indian is training for the state shot-putting finals. Then a gut named Golly showed up and thought that he could beat Indian in the state finals. The Coach decided to let Golly compete in the state finals after he saw him throw. Then at the state finals Indian met a man named Noah Standish who wants him to lose the meet on purpose and he will give him 9,000 dollars. Indian refuses and wins the meet. Later a scout asks Indian to come to UCLA and be on the track team. I really like this book because it gave me more facts on shot putting. Another reason is that it shows people that you don't have to take bribes to lose something you love on purpose.

This book only got better when you came closer to the end. It started off extremely slow. I blame that, mainly, on the number of charcters that needed to be introduced at the beginning of the book. It's mainly about an athlete nicknamed "Indian" who loves the shot put. He is one of the best and hopes to eventually break the world record. This young adult already has many opportunities ahead of him. Several well respected colleges have sent scouts to talk to him but Indian only wants to be able to go to UCLA. He's only a junior in high school and has already reached the position of the best shot putter on his team...

This book is about Indian, a Cherokee Indian from Arkansas in the 1980's. Indian is very tall and strong. He is very serious because he needs to get to college because his family can't afford it. He is always training for the shot put and can't seem to find time to have with his friends. When the season begins many college scout are watching him and he is under the sports radar. On the practice before the state championship a new kid named Golly comes to practice with them. At first Indian doesn't like Golly and finds him annoying. After a little while they become friends and Indian decides to help him train. They both make it to the state championship and do well, but after state Golly is not allowed to advance to the state championship and is mad. Meanwhile, Indian makes it on to nationals, but a car salesman takes him on a car ride and threatens him that if he doesn't get worse than fourth at nationals something could happen to him. This car salesman is very mad because he lost a lot of money betting on Indian and losing after the state track meet. Will anything happen to Indian, and if so will it affect him at nationals and beyond? You wont be able to find out if you don't read this great book.

This is one of the best chronicles in the whole wide world. I love it so much.

This is one of the best chronicles in the whole wide world. I love it so much.

I am a long-time fan of the Cheysuli Chronicles. Of the series I find this book to be the least gripping - in that I could actually put it down - but it is also the most moving of the series, several scenes are intense and very well written. You feel the emotion of what is not said as much as what is. Whilst the book can be read without having read the first three books, it is much better to have read them as you have an understanding and affection for the continuing characters such as Rowan and Donal.

It's a great series, and the books interrelate on a very unique level. Roberson is extremely good at making the characters likable and understandable to her readers; you don't have to read much of this book to really care about Niall and the others. This series and this book aren't "classics" but they're enjoyable and for the most part well-written, and if you've gotten this far, you might as well keep reading.

In my review of "Legacy of the Sword", the previous book in the Chronicles of the Cheysuli series, I said I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue reading the series. I'm glad I did. This book was much more enjoyable to me than the previous one. Niall, the main character and the son of Donal and Aislinn and heir to the Lion Throne, is very likeable, and a major component of the book is his struggle with his own identity. It's not as dark as the previous books and doesn't have as much war and fighting. It is not without these things, however, and by the end of the book Niall has acquired some scars from his battles. In addition, we begin to see a different side to the Ihlini, the other magical race who have up to now been portrayed as the evil opponents of the Cheysuli. It ends with some interesting and complex developments in the offing.

Now I feel much better about continuing to read the rest of the series.

This book provides great insight to a variety of training methods and should be a must for any coach, at any level. There is a level of specificity and clarity to each of the different chapters, and I am particularly caught with the ease of reading even the most technical terms. One could argue that the sprinter training developed is much more specific than the distance running, but the effort, energy and research put into this book's development is solid.

Great book for beginning coaches. Supplement it with a book that includes more info on drills and training routines.

The book arrived in PERFECT new condition. One of the best coaching resourses available in print. Highly recomend to coaches experienced and novice.

Wonderful purchase. This is an informative text with information for beginners as well as veterans of track and field.

This is a great Track and Field Coaching Manual. It covers everything Track and Field. This is a manual that every coach should start with. It has very good relay techniques and philosophy as well. I wish that the book cover information on how to best help an athlete recover after races to get ready for additional races that day, or a race on the following day.

Percy Cerutty was certainly an energetic and entertaining character who took his own near death experiences into an extraordinary fitness life style transferring into a fitness coach, a highly competent masters runner and a successful yet erratic coach. He strikes me as being as Australian version of the late great Yankee coach Casey Stengel who although a competent coach, was also a great entertainer and showman made famous for his wise cracks. Cerutty was as famous for some of as his antics and his often conflicting abrasive style as well as his unique coaching that encompassed capturing an animalistic form of competitive spirit, efficiency of running form and off track running. Sims captures Cerutty with his unique lifestyle set up by his long-term illnesses that almost killed him until he underwent a dietary change and exercise. Once a promising miler, Sims describes Cerutty as an unusually successful over 40s runner who competently ran marathons into his early 50s and remained a physical specimen all his life. The exciting part of the book is Cerutty's coaching of the Australian greats Landy, Macmillan and Les Perry. Of course, the career high point is his protégée Herb Elliot going undefeated in the mile/1500 through the fantastic 1960 Olympic dominating 1500 victory. The fascinating part of the book is Cerutty's personality that could be overly forthright and abrasive such as explaining to Roger Bannister why his form was inefficient and then conducting a demonstration. His low point is bad mouthing Landy after Landy ran one of the fastest miles in the world with a break through run, assuming that Landy was soaking up the glory on his own to reporters, causing a severance that never completely healed. Another unusual moment was accepting a so called expert's theory on the importance of warming up in double sweats that was tried right before an Olympic final probably costing Macmillan a medal. The training is not quite as detailed as one would like but Sims captures the overall program that consisted of weight workouts, dune running to endure beyond the lactate threshold, off track training allowing more physical freedom and living the life of a "stotan". His training compound on the Portsea was Spartan like in its unique seaside location but appears to have been a great get away from standardized training or intervals three times a week that was a 1950's rage promoted by a coaching rival. Often rejected by the Australian Olympic committee, Cerutty was a unique and hard character that emerged with Elliott as his great success. Quite a unique story and person captured well by Sims along with some great detail on the Olympics of that period. As a distance runner, Cerutty makes you appreciate the opportunity to get to a park and enjoy an off road run.

Cerutty was definitely an extraordinary character, but "maker of champions" or any other such label is very generous. Specifically, his antics drove Landy away, which led to Landy actually developing his own training and Cerutty then taking the credit for making the world's fastest man. In other words, he was kinda sleazy.

To know Percy Cerutty was to be castigated, scorned and sometimes to question your very existence. Cerutty's goading of athletes would hardly have survived this litigious age. Yet as a runner at his Portsea International Athletics Centre in the sixties, I was drawn to the sheer force of his personality, his originality in research and running, his discourses and attitudes in philosophy, the extraordinary way he almost floated over the ground as he ran, and his lectures at "the circus", the small sandy circle where he held his audience in awe. Cerutty had a simple test of "manliness" and propensity to succeed - if you could survive Portsea and his outbursts, then you could survive most things. Many didn't, but others went on to become world champions in running, cycling, and other sports, and I was privileged to meet some of them. Cerutty coined the term "stotans" deriving it from the greek ancients of "Stoics" and "Spartans."

Graem Sims has researched Percy Cerutty's life very thoroughly and written a long overdue book; a task I had once contemplated myself. In keeping with current storytelling fashions, he starts at the end (of Percy's life), but then traces his entire history. Cerutty really lived two lives; one up to the age of 44 when his health had been devastated by smoking, physical inactivity and early pneumonia and poor diet, and he was given less than two years to live, and the second beginning with his recognition of his need to survive, and embracement of new rules for living, eating and working. To this he added his prolific background of reading in all subjects from theology to science, and his extra-ordinary capacity to experiment and research movement and fitness from first principles. Graem's book provided fascinating insights into aspects of Percy's life that I had not known. While he includes numerous stories of Cerutty's famed biting comments and cantankerous nature, he does not dwell on them in a sensationalist way; rather he explores the whole rich canvas of Cerutty's life and its directions. Many of Cerutty's antics, for example, were deliberate attempts at publicity to attract people and an income to his athletics centre; the sheer diversity of his ambitions and his complex character however often become self-destructive. There are character and biographical sketches of many people who were connected or disconnected with Cerutty, at a time when Australian middle distance runners held world stage, and reproductions of numerous photos including the earliest shacks at Portsea, many from a cache of suitcases unopened for a quarter-century. Cerutty was a model of independent and unbiased research - Graem's biography includes the development of Cerutty's ideas on movement from studying the motion of horses for hours; methodologies which had more in common with the great scientists of the renaissance than the deductive processes in modern laboratories.

This book is not just for Cerutty aficionados and athletes; as a personality, philosopher and scientist, he makes a fascinating subject for anyone interested in the subject of what makes us tick, physically, mentally and emotionally. Much of what he said and did half a century ago is highly relevant to the current era of cloning, bio-ethics and the passion for computerised simulations which take the place of real life. Graem has provided a well-balanced biography of a man who had us eating raw foods and oatmeal decades before the term muesli was heard in Australia, moving heavy weights twenty years before gyms and fitness regimes were embraced by more than dedicated athletes, and a holistic approach to life and ethics that preceded the rise of eastern philosophies into western thinking. A book that I couldn't put down, and highly recommended

This fascinating biography of the legendary Australian track coach Percy Cerutty, based on his cache of personal writings and interviews with his inner circle, portrays a visionary thinker whose fusion of philosophical, biomechanical, naturalistic, nutritional and motivational theories into a "Stotan" approach to athletics and living remains as compelling today as it was during the peak of his popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.

While Cerutty's coaching relationships with milers John Landy and Herb Elliot have been examined in a number of other works, this book sheds new light on the turbulent childhood, adolescent and early adult years that forged his volatile temperament and laid the groundwork for his theories. What emerges is a picture of complex man with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and curiosity for his environment, which led to a number of groundbreaking theories that won admiration from many. To its credit, the book's even-handed dissection of Cerutty's character gives equal shrift to his manic-depressive tendencies, self-destructive behavior, and the inflammatory outbursts that soured many friendships and spawned a large contingent of detractors. Graem Sims also captures the tension between Cerutty's strong drive to profit from his theories and his refusal to affiliate himself with individuals or projects that offended his Stotan principles.

The book probably won't silence those who view Cerutty as a charlatan who just happened to become associated with talented young men bound for athletic glory with or without his assistance. But it reinforces my conviction that this enigmatic fellow, who ran sand dunes, moved heavy weights and ran six-minute miles well into his sixties, was one of the most important thinkers in the history of athletics. His emphasis on doing things the natural way and disdain for modern trappings and conveniences are particularly meaningful in light of the doping scandals currently rocking the sports world.

-Kevin Joseph, author of "The Champion Maker"

Those who have met him would realize that something has been ignited within them. Regardless of whether those people agree or disagree with him. Their latent wildness is awakened and their fighting instinct is switched on. They become independent as a human being who decides their own path and who does not rely on others.

He would have achieved many successes if only he had played things better. But in the face of success, success almost always ran away. He was indeed the doomed type. It could be said it was inevitable. A person should not be controlled by another. Cerutty expressed this ideal both intentionally and unintentionally.

Irrespective of the class or the position of the people he was with, he continued to be himself. He lived his life on his own initiative and responsibility without belonging to any group.
He followed his inner voice right through to the end, no matter what others said. He was just Cerutty to the very end.

Cerutty - a man who pursued the truth, who chose solitude and finely honed his sensibility. He kept on expressing through his body what the joy of living and freedom are. His powerful message still appeals to us even now, 30 years after his death.

I know I have a great product. I don't doubt that for a second. But after reading Mary Christensen's book and hearing her speak at our company convention, I know that I have to reach out to others in order to get them to join my team. This book will help you reach success in network marketing with clear steps to take to build the team you dream of having.

Everyone we meet has a unique personality and Christensen uses bird analogies to help us understand where everyone is coming from and how we can approach them. I already find myself trying to figure what kind of person I am dealing with and how can I get them to join my team.

Being in the party plan business, it can be easy to just sit back, do your parties and not worry about a downline. But after reading this book I now have the skills I need to find the right recruits and the knowledge to get more people to join my team. This book is a must have for network marketers who want to build a team!

Christensen's latest work has strengthened my belief that she is truly an expert and pioneer in this field. As a network marketer you may have the greatest product, however, action must be taken to be as successful as Christensen. Many network marketers fail or quit after they exhaust their warm wall of friends and family. Christensen encourages the reader to extend beyond this comfort zone and to not prejudge anyone. She provides a clear cut path which if followed will meet with a success many simply dream about. All potential prospects have very different mindsets and personalities and must be treated as such. Christensen's bird analogy makes learning these differences fun and puts the reader on the path to financial freedom. Successful network marketers are not unique, they have simply believed in the product they are promoting, created a gameplan and taken action. Christensen's books have outlined this gameplan, all that is needed from the reader is belief in their product and the willingness to take action.
Christensen's books are an important asset to your upline and downline to achieve success.

I am a new consulant of a ground-floor direct sales party plan company (gameladyverlina dot simplyfun dot com)and want to take advantage of this opprotunity. I have purchaesd quite a few books recently on network marketing, party plan ideas, direct sales, mlm... and this one Be a Recruiting Super Star is one that I am SO glad that I did purchase.

It gives many ideas, plans, words, and help to encourage you to build a downline- which is so important if you are wanting to work smarter and not harder! I have recruited two people in two months and have two other prospects that I am working with. It might be a slow start, but at least it's a start!

This book gives many ideas with step by step help - including some wording senerios to learn from.

It gives great ideas on where to find recruits from outside of family, friends, parties adn customers... AND ideas on how to reach them. Other books give you a list of people to contact, like your hairdresser or doctor or banker, but not how to attract them- this book is great with the help on what to do.

I recommend this book and it is one I plan on having available for my recruits to read so that they can catch the vision too and build themselves a great downline!

Party On!
-GameLady Verlina
SimplyFun Senior Consultant

I've read about 15 or so books on network marketing and have listened to $200 worth of network marketing CD's and the main thing I have pulled from all this info is that the best way to prospect/recruit is to ask natural questions to your prospect in regard to their lives and then listen intently. This way you will build better relationships, you will gain trust from them and you will find out if they are a legitimate prospect. What this book does is to try and tell you what your prospect is or might be thinking or what their needs might be. This might seem like great knowledge to have but for anyone that is serious about network marketing, this only provides a very simplistic and general preview, much like knowing what is going to be for dinner ahead of time. The problem with this direction of knowledge is that it doesn't provide much obvious applicability and takes the whole discovery process out of the picture. I found the book "too heavy" with do this and do that and say this and say that, which often confuses and overwhelms new network marketing recruits because they don't need to know someone else's niche way of doing it but rather more of a natural fundamental way of network selling based more on a process where everyone can comfortably ease into it. The information in this book I believe is too overwhelming for a new recruit and is more preaching than teaching. If you are struggling in network marketing you need to get back to the fundamentals not fluff ways of doing things. You don't need to dissect every single angle of recruiting or your prospect ahead of time. Three books I have found that really simplify the process of network marketing and empower the individual a bit more (in my opinion) are:

The Greatest Networker In The World by John Milton Fogg
Make Your Contacts Count by Anne Babor and Lynne Waymon
How To Sell Network Marketing by Michael Oliver

Make Your Contacts Count is guided to networking in general but I found a great tool for people who don't have a clue how to run a network marketing business but want to avoid a lot of the early pitfalls, rejection and wasted time of approaching network marketing the wrong way. I believe in teaching your prospects how to fish and not giving them a fish. This book (Be A Recruiting Superstar) is more about giving them a fish, actually more like a crab cake.

As an aspiring Unit Leader for PartyLite Australia, I sought out this book after hearing about it from my upline. I give it a four out of five because I do find the bird analogy too complicated. After five birds I thought we had enough.

That said, I found the book inspired me to think differently about the opportunity I have to offer people. I am inspired to make some changes in the way I approach my business and that is ulitmately what I look for when I read a business book.

I recommend this book for leaders in MLM companies or new recruits looking for leadership.

Now... I think I'll go re-read it and highlight some passages before I loan it out to the team. :) WLC.

As an A's fan (albeit an Oakland one--I'm not old enough to remember the Philly version), I am fascinated by the strange journey my team has taken in baseball. This book fills in the blanks and is not only about the 1929 A's. It covers pretty much the entire time they were in Philadelphia and really does bring both the team and period alive. It focuses, of course, on Connie Mack but the postscript on what happened to these players from this 1929-31 dynasty is great followup. I also like his short, but sweet, statistical comaprison of these A's to the so-called "greatest team of all-time" the 1927 (or specifically 1926-28) Yankees. At times the author when describing scenes around and in Shibe Park, you can almost hear the fans and the crack of the bat.

I also love the little trivia just thrown in a line or two in places like the fact Thomas Edison was a huge A's fan!

Fascinating account, even for one raised on horseback and skis. I have never understood the intricacies of The Great American Past Time, however, Mr. Kashatus' story telling is illuminating.

I was expecting more really. Not much has been written on the 1929 Athletics dynasty but lots of good information is out there on this team. I figured the author would collect all this info and give us the best of it in his book. We get a few good tales about Connie Mack's boys but nothing new or spectacular and this book is not cheap. I love Foxx, Grove, Simmons, Cochrane, and so I bought it, but it was very average. In fact, kind of dull sometimes. Buy it because it's the only book out there on this team (29-31 A's) but don't expect too much. Buy the biographies on Foxx, Cochrane and Grove and you will learn just about as much, if not more. The Sports Illustrated article on this team with Simmons on the cover got me interested in this team-it was awesome-but don't expect the same from this book. Give me a good Biography on Al Simmons to go with the others mentioned above and we got the complete story on this greatest team of all-time-even better than the 27 Yankees.

THIS IS A BOOK I DID NOT WANT TO END. AN EXCELLENT JOB OF WRITING ABOUT ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING OWNERS AND ONE OF THE LAST DINOSAURS OF BASEBALL. (CONNIE MACK) THIS BOOK'S TELLING OF THE A'S DYNASTY OF THE LATE 20'S AND EARLY 30'S IS EXTENSIVE AND MASTERFULLY WRITTEN. THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ FOR ALL BASEBALL FANS. ONE OF THE BEST I HAVE EVER READ.

Fascinating account, even for one raised on horseback and skis. I have never understood the intricacies of The Great American Past Time, however, Mr. Kashatus' story telling is illuminating.

I bought this book even though I expected to be disappointed. However, the book is very good, and I was not disappointed at all. On the contrary, the book is very useful.

The best aspect of the book is that it is very concrete in its description of the details, and that it tries hard to avoid judging the different styles of living. Therefore, it enables the reader to understand the background of ones partner/friends/etc.

This book is not only for people trying to understand their spouse. This helps understand and interact with other social classes. Its very informative and has dashes of humor. Its a quick read, and very informative.

This book is a good place to start in terms of social class expectations, something that doesn't get talked about very much in American society. On a personal level, it gave me a lot of insight into a failed relationship with a working class man that I loved, and helped me understand why he chose to marry someone with more similar values.

Still, what I hoped to see was a chapter or two on "What to Do When You and Your Partner Both Shift from One World to a Different One". This was the case with my parents, who came from working class backgrounds and retained working-class attitudes toward child-rearing despite adopting middle-class attitudes in other areas of life. Some people really do retain both sets of values rather than making the transition that the author implies occurs automatically. It would have been nice to see those viewpoints included.

Also, middle-class and upper middle-class are two very different experiences in America, in my opinion. Some of the behaviors this author describes as middle class (extreme attention paid to quality of food, childrens' extracurricular activities, and the status of a college or university which a child attends) are more properly described as upper-middle class values. I wish the author had separated middle-class from upper middle-class, and used four basic categories instead of three.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book and learned quite a bit from it. The author does a good job of explaining that a particular set of behaviors does not constitute stereotyping, since many who self-assess as being members of a specific class would not identify with all of the attributed associations (I found myself a hybrid of working-class and middle-class values). She also fits observations into general categories in a way that makes sense. The current edition is a good starting point for discussion, but an expanded version of this book would be even more insightful.

After hearing Dr. Payne on a radio show, I decided to buy the book. Not only has Dr. Payne helped me realize problems in my own personal relationships, but it has helped me realize my own issues with being a successful women who has come up from a poverty situation. I had my partner take Dr. Payne's Quiz that defines what type of class thinking you have. It was a fun way to discuss our very different views of marriage, finances, child rearing, and so much more. I highly recommend it

This is truly an astonishing book that tells quite candidly how to work with and have relationships with people of different classes. I LOVED the class mindset quiz in the first part of the book. It made me think how the hidden rules of class do hinder relationships in both the business world and our personal relationships.

I love all about Tuscany would love to live ther and be able to write about it

Beth Elton's title isn't just a cookbook - it takes a culinary tour of Tuscany into regions largely uncovered in other titles - and surveys the special kitchens and products of over fifty restaurants whose cooks produce original recipes revealed just for this title. All dishes have been adapted for home cooks but retain the authenticity of generations of development, so cooks seeking a blend of travelogue and new dishes to try will find delightful the blend of travel insights and easy dishes. No photos, but the simple instructions don't need them.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Beth Elon's descriptions and recommendations are spot-on. I got this book just in time for a trip to Tuscany and found it extraordinarily useful. We loved visiting the places she mentioned and found her recipes and description of local specialties a great help in making fantastic menu selections. Back home, the recipes are like having Tuscany in our kitchen. It's now my favorite book to give to food- and travel-loving friends.

A fabulous travel guide, which my wife and I used extensively on our recent visit to Tuscany. The author provides details of wonderful restaurants, spectacular settings and hidden gems in small towns and villages throughout the region!

If you are planning a visit to Tuscany, don't leave home without this book. If you are over 50 and look forward to a good meal at the end of a well-travelled day, this book is a must-read.

Mike and Michal
New York City

This book is what so many books claim to be but aren't -- an off-the-beaten-track gem. For any visitor to Tuscany with the time or inclination to go beyond the usual Florence-Lucca-Pisa-San Gimignano-Siena type of itinerary (to name just one), the book offers a wonderfully imaginative alternative: plan your days -- or the entire trip -- around the best restaurants to be found in the little towns that most tourists never visit. The author gives tantalizing descriptions of both the towns and restaurants (with maps and itineraries), and supplies plenty of recipes to boot. So the book will function in the kitchen just as well as on the road -- it is essentially half cookbook and half guidebook. But for me (not being much of a cook, and planning a trip to Italy) it was the places the author describes that were the most delectable of all. The book is a great idea, beautifully executed and beautifully written.

if you want to be a pro,check this book out first it details one mans year on the tour,(by the way joe thomas is no slouch
a fine fisherman) and is you like to fish this still a great read

As a former touring Bass pro myself, I have to say that Thomas & Tucker capture what it is really like out on the professional fishing circuit. Perhaps the only thing missing or in error related to the book vs. the tour today is simply one of a forgiving level of competition. The book was written in the early 90's when a competator could have a bad tournament and still make the classic. Such is not the case these days in most situations. A single stumble can ruin a year's chance at the classic.

Otherwise, a great look inside a much mis-understood and little seen side of the sport.

I have read, and re-read this book about 4 times. Each new season coming off a bad previous tournament season, I re-read it and find it to be a grounding factor in my goal setting for the coming year. I feel like I know Joe personally at this point. His insight into what really happens in Competitive Fishing is exceptional, and details the real world responsibilities of what it takes to be a National Touring Bass Pro. The financial part of it may be a little outdated, because the sport and payouts of Full Time Tournament Fishing have increased greatly since 1996, but the content and mental aspects of this book make it one that needs to be in any serious bass tournament anglers library.

This book is awesome! It explains in biographic form the ups and downs of being on the tournament trail...even a section telling how hard it is to maintain sponsars and the business side of bass fishing. I was real startled to here that he found a suicide victims body in the water.

This diary of one angler (Joe Thomas) for a year in high profile professional tournament fishing offers something to everyone from the weekend fisherman to the local tournament trail angler. I not only enjoyed reading about the competition of the tournaments themselves, but also the attention to detail and preparation that is involved in being a pro angler. The book made it clear that these guys work hard for their money both on and off the water. Most days' entries would include "I'm exhausted and going to bed early" but would be followed by "Worked on my tackle before hitting the rack". These guys really have their priorities in line. Joe must have taken the oath of "Be Prepared" seriously in the scouts (even to the point of carrying an extra trolling motor with him in the boat). I was able to draw a few parallels with Joe's experiences as I have fished local tournaments over the past years. Even they have bad days, but not nearly as many as I do. The book also offers up strategies he employs both on practice days and competition days. It was informative to know why he made the moves and choices he made. There are also short by lines with tips and tactics that all of us can use to avoid those bad days.

All and all the book is an informative and an easy read. It is one I will pull out again and again to get me thru the winter months waiting on spring fishing to arrive.

An excellent hand book for dog owners who wish to go tracking with their dogs.

This is quite nice starting points, for more experienced there is some thoughts. But this is in general for people who hasn't tracked before.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to track with any kind of dog. The method is designed for the dog to always have success, and it's fun for both owner & dog. I am fortunate to have this book in my library & also to have attended a seminar by the author & to have been given tracklaying pointers by him the first time I laid a track for a tracking test. I can attest that he is an excellent teacher!

M.A.

No fanfare or complications. Just a simple book with simple terms and diagrams that anyone can understand. I have met Sil a few times at Earth Dog trials. VERY good dog trainer.

I bought this book hoping for starter help with my first tracking dog. This has been a great asset to me and my friends. It was not written at a time when there was a VST title but if you can get to the TDX level then I think that is a great start.