I got this book from the library the other day. I loved it so much that I am ordering it for my children. The book is full of colorful illustrations. Each page introduces a new color. The story is delightful. After only reading it a couple of times, my son who has been slow with his colors, is now pointing out these colors all over the house. I recommend this to anyone wanting to introduce colors to a child.

This book does a wonderful job of teaching shapes. Each page introduces a new shape playing in the park, while all the other shapes are having fun in the background. All the shapes are different colors, have rhyming names, and are busy doing different activities. Therefore this book not only teaches the names of shapes, but colors and actions as well.

We bought this set for our 16 month old son. He has had these books now for two months and read them every single day. He brings me the book and wants to point out all of the objects that he has learned from them. He brings me the book at least three times a day!! The pictures are brightly colores and fun to look at. Some of the objects to find are small, but after a few times, my son found them! I am buying another set for my nephew.

This book is a review of European history from Ancient Greeceto the 1990s. It can also be used to review for AP European History....

This is simply a picture book of a bunch of baseball games with some organization and text fill. The games are organized by century (18th & 19th), and by type (player-endorsed, non-endorsed, card, action and coin-operated). There's a bit of baseball history, but what you'll want this for is the attention to historical detail in the games themselves. There are hundreds of games photographed in a reasonable (if not exceptional) amount of detail; most of the text is just a description of what's in the pictures. Many versions of popular games are compared, with information on how to tell the versions apart, which will be invaluable if you're a collector. For some reason there's four pages on Cadaco, but neither APBA nor Strat-O-Matic get a look in, nor do more contemporary games from 3M or Sports Illustrated or Avalon Hill. Don't expect a forty-dollar art book with prose that'll entertain you into the night. The printing quality, photo quality, and text-quality are only so so. I'm still waiting for the book that compares how the different games are designed strategically and how they play. This one's aimed more at collectors.

This book is unbelievable. It give stats from every single baseball player in 1997. Whenever your bored and need something to read, just sit down and read a few biographies, Itll increase your baseball knowledge, and most of them are very interesting.

This volume of a three-volume set has become standard pre-season reading for me. I find that the two-man mechanics taught in this book are excellent for new and veteran umpires. Coverage of the diamond on almost any play that you will see is addressed. Step-by step information, positioning diagrams and proper umpire communication contained in this volume make this a must read for all umpires. I highly recommend this volume to anyone who has an interest in umpiring the wonderful sport of baseball. I also recommend this and both of the other volumes to anyone wishing to run a clinic for umpires.

The Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) is to be commended for reprinting his marvelous baseball artifact.

Sixty-three years after this book originally came out to celebrate baseball's 100th anniversary, a strong case can still be made that Gordon S. Cochrane of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, dubbed "Mickey" by a Pacific Coast League owner who wanted a Boston Irishman for promotional purposes, was the greatest catcher of all time.

Never mind the inebriated Cochrane-sucker ingrate who spurned Ty Cobb's generosity during the 1960 Hall of Fame ceremonies in the Tommie Lee Jones movie. In 1939, he appears to have been very much in love with the game and with life, if this book is any indication (though, in fact, he had already suffered a nervous breakdown and from a wild pitch that had fractured his skull). He couldn't have known it at the time, but when Mutt Mantle's son was born eight years earlier, his father already had a baseball future in mind for him, and young Mantle was indeed named after the Philadelphia A's star catcher.

This book will teach you almost all of what you need to know to be a successful major league catcher-manager. Almost? Well, as the author informs us, he could always hit, and he always knew that he could hit, no matter what league he was playing in. So there's not a tremendous amount of hitting instruction contained in this book, and the reader will gain more from it, if, like the author, he is ALREADY naturally able to hit .300 against big-league pitching (Cochrane's lifetime batting average was .320).

Such hitting instruction as there is in this book might be more entertaining than helpful. On the one hand, he urges, "Take a strike. Take two strikes to get the ball you want to hit.". But at another point, he remarks that when you are facing a pitcher with good control, first-ball swinging, rather than allowing oneself to fall behind on the count, sometimes produces rallies.

He's mildly contradicting himself with his hitting advice, certainly, and that's to be expected when someone tries to give instruction on something that he can do naturally and instinctively.

But we are reminded that all hitters, even the greatest, will have bouts of sustained failure.

"Batting slumps are about as pleasant as an income-tax threat or the threat of a truant officer over a small boy's head. At some time or other, all ball players meet 'Miss Slump' in person. Base hits become as alien as beef stew in the tropics."

Damn, if only we still lived in a world where people in general and ballplayers in particular talked like this!

But in an era that preceded the designated hitter, Cochrane had to play some position in the field that would get his bat in the lineup, even though he also suggests that if you can hit, they will always find a place for you. Still, long hours of hard work to turn himself from a hopeless catcher to a great one show in his detailed instruction.

Catcher was always my favorite position because the catcher guards the last outpost that must be reached by a hostile opposing base runner before he scores a run. My greatest moment on the sandlot involved leaping up high to snare a wild throw and then tagging a would-be tying run out at home plate. And Mickey naturally pays great homage to this aspect of a catcher's job. Get in front of every throw! Block the base runner off, if you can! And if you have to move away from the plate to receive the throw, dive at the plate with the ball, not at the base runner.

How unchanging is the game? Well, there are passages in this book that will raise some eyebrows with their familiarity. The defensive "shift" that opposing players put on for Babe Ruth seems to greatly resemble not only the later "Ted Williams" shift but the one imposed against a contemporary baseball giant, whose name is often mentioned in connection with Ruth's.

And thirty-three years before the American League established the designated hitter rule as a means of replacing weak-hitting pitchers in the lineup with regular hitters, Cochrane - explaining why he and his contemporary American League managers disdain the sacrifice bunt early in the game - declares that the American League is the league of the "big inning", where if one run is going to beat you, you might as well concede the game before you leave the clubhouse.

This is historical evidence that the American League's contemporary reputation as an offense-happy league doesn't stem from its relatively recent predilection for designated hitters and Astro Turf ballparks, but rather that these changes were adopted as a result of a pre-existing pro-offense philosophy

But there are noticeable differences between the baseball eras too, of course. Cochrane informs the aspiring manager that his four best pitchers must start but that he needs two good relievers, as well. He's not anticipating an age of specialization where a team will carry as many relievers as starters, where the relievers will have varying specializations, and where a "closer" who throws for one inning to finish a game can possess "star" luster, equal to that of the starter.

Mickey would have reached his 100th birthday next April 6 if cancer had not taken him in 1962, and this book is also proof that, regardless of experience and expertise, you never live long enough to see everything that can take place in a baseball game.

Referring back to the catcher's Horatio-like role as the final barrier between the runner and home plate, Cochrane declares, "No one has yet made a putout without the ball." Begorrah Mickey, if you could have only lived long enough to see the 1970 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Baltimore Orioles, you would have seen Oriole catcher, Elrod Hendricks, do just that to Bernie Carbo. Thanks for this and for all of your contributions, me bucko!

This book is a good learning tool to use in informing others.

Mark Bassett completes his book "Introducing Roseville Pottery" with a new paperback price guide destined to become a required reference for Roseville lovers. It is well organized and that makes it easy to use. The slim paperback lists each pattern shape and value as well as shape numbers and patterns for those of you who cannot name each patter from memory. There are no pictures; for those, check Bassett's other book.