Baxter Black has a wonderful mastery of the English language, to hilarious effect. This book has classics such as "Ugly for Hire", "The Cowboy and His Date" and of course, "Croutons on a Cow Pie". Bax puts the cowboy life into lyrical, perfectly crafted snapshots for people to see the heart of the West and the people who live and work there. Get it, read it, love it.

Great book -- the kind that you like to sit in front of a fire and enjoy slowly... Baxter Black is tremendous -- first heard him on National Public Radio and didn't have a clue that he wrote Cowboy Poetry.. Note, if your'e a real cowboy -- someone who's done Rodeo in the chutes (not spectating), ranched, roped then you'll REALLY enjoy the book cause the humor is sharp and dead on target... Good poems about Roping, hiring onto an outfit, you-name-it... Black calls himself a "cattle feeder" and a 'sorry team roper' -- if you know what either of these mean, then do yourself a favor an order the book now... My favorite is the $35 rope poem about team roping -- how you get started with a $35 rope and end up spending $15,000 on your 'team roping' hobby...

I'm glad I didn't buy this from Amazon, because I saved myself the cost of sending it back by mail. The first page I looked at contained two glaring errors. While the sheer volume of statistics is impressive, what good are they if you can't trust them? I found this book to be inaccurate and full of sloppy fact-finding. It even contradicts itself! The author is obviously quite proud of his accomplishment, which is touching, but there is no excuse for errors in statistics and other matters of record.

There isn't much prior to page 1021 that I use this book for but I'm still keeping it for statistics it has other books don't. This book could be trimmed down and still have as much information. The Scoring section for instance is generally many columns of zeroes, but that's the way scoring stats are. Kickers don't score touchdowns and guys like Jerry Rice and Walter Payton don't kick field goals. Subtitled "The Complete and Definitive Record of Professional Football" is an overstatement modestly speaking. Individual kickoff and punt returns aren't here and SOME of the deceased players in the Player Register died years ago but it doesn't tell you that. And don't take by faith some of the statistics. You can't expect them to all be accurate but this book has more errors than others. It's still worth having though because it has stats other books don't (that you have to hope are correct). Stats like longest gains and longest interception returns are here and blocked punts. Also, the seasonal game scores by team are much easier reading than in books like "Total Football II". But if you have another book to refer to you should search both because unfortunately, the accuracy here doesn't rate super high so don't make any large bets based on something you saw here because a certain percentage of "facts" here (although probably a low percentage) are incorrect. For example; don't bet somebody that Ricky Bell, who played for Tampa Bay from 1977 thru 1981 is still alive. He died on November 28, 1984. I have the 1997 edition though, maybe there has been an updated version that has made corrections.

I like the layout, and the information is easy to find. They seem to have done a solid job of researching every player. However, I don't see how the authors can call this "the complete and definitive record of professional football" when they leave out statistical categories like sacks, punt returns, and kickoff returns. And one more thing, the coverage of the draft is a little bare. It's nothing more than what can be found at almost any football site around draft time. Total Football, while, costing more, contains more information.

This book is for early readers, and is a good book to give your child the confidence to try more books. There are 26 words in this book, many repeated throughout. After one or two times reading this, a child will easily memorize it and lose some of the value as a reading tool. Though this is a good book for a new reader, it will quickly lose it's value after one or two reads. This is an excellent library book, for this reason. Quick and simple is the only way to define this book. No storyline, but a clear message of every face is special, especially that of the reader.

I am trying to help my autistic son learn the names of the parts of the face, and I was hoping this book would help. However, that's not what this book is about. It is more a pro-diversity, "feel good" book about how each face is special. Of course, I hasten to add, there's nothing WRONG with that . . . just not what I expected. Very short and very simple vocabulary - probably good for beginning readers.

My five year old picked this book up on Library Day at Kindergarten, and although I found it quite cute... she didn't think much of it. She found it a little too ridiculous - which I thought would be fun. Although the storyline may not be catchy enough for her, the reading ability was right on track. When having her read the story to me, she did very well... there was just enough words to make it not too easy, and not too many words to make it too difficult or overwhelming. It's a good story for new readers, or readers in early learning stages of reading!