This 224 page library volume with laminated covers contains more than 850 large, full color, sharp photos of each item. It contains more than 2000 values, however the book was published in 1992. A lot of text is provided and most of the photos are accompanyed by a useful description. A joy to look at. You'll want to add this to your collectibles library and keep it forever !

If hockey and baseball can have Total Hockey and Total Baseball what is up with basketball? Not a bad book by any means but needs a bit more punch to it. How about more insightful essays like those "Total" books go for?

The Official NBA Encyclopedia is the best book any hoops fan will ever read. Not only does it hold all the info for the current players, but it holds the complete history of basketball. The NBA, all its seasons, the Draft, International players, coaches, referees, expanding, photos, development, Hall of Fame, and tons of other great stuff are found as well as complete reviews of the ABA,NBL,and ABL. The NBA Seasons in Review is one of my favorite sections. The only negative thing about this book is that the seasons for the NBA are listed backwards. This encyclopedia has every stat for every player that ever played. I love reading this awesome history, and the Official NBA Encyclopedia is the perfect gift for any hoops fan. If I could, I'd give it more than 5 stars.

I know that what other reviews said is true : this book does not have EVERYTHING, but believe me, it's pretty close. More than 900 pages of basketball history is enough to know who made this game as great as it is today. You will learn about the players that lead the path to Kobe, Kevin Garnett and all of today stars, the great coaches, the commisioners, even the referees! You have all the stats for every player that played in the NBA, ABA and NBL. At least for me, that's enough to give it 5 stars.

Fourtune's Light....a priceless jewled seal of a powerfull trading house, has been stolen and an old friend of Rikers is implicated with it's theft. He can't belive his friend would have done such a thing, and is sent on a mission to find his old friend, and the Fourtunes Light, which must be present for a merger between powerfull houses.

In the meantime, Riker askes Data to check out a holodeck program he's been working on while he's gone. I must say that Data's portraial is innacurate, and I find it hard to belive Data could be so inept(for his standards) at Baseball, and understanding the rules. Still, it's an interresting sub-plot which breaks up the intensity of Rikers mission.

Once underway, Riker and his partner on the planet discover a web of decit and criminal activity. To top it off, someone is now on to Riker and his partner and he's a target from people who want to keep the Fortune's Light hidden, as well as other plots which have far reaching consequences.

A decent, but not great book.

Star Trek - The Next Generation: Forture's Light written by Michael Jan Friedman is a well-written book involving a detective stroy plot mixed with sports fiction as the Enterprise crew trys to solve a mystery and recover a theft of the Madraga Criathis family seal the Fortune's Light... that is supposedly stolen by Teller Conlon one of Commander William Riker's best friends.

As this plot unfolds, William Riker is working on a baseball holodeck program and is called away to the surface of Dante Maxima Seven where the government is controlled by huge social/economic entites that control the general population, to find his friend Teller Conlon. Riker leaves the baseball program in the holodeck and Data tries it out. This plot gives Data a real workout with all of the baseball speak and the nuances of the game as Data tries to understand and play the game.

Both plots were well-written as they kept the readers interest, for two unlikely plots to blend together and form the backbone of the book's plots, they melded quite well. This book is well-toughtout as well as well-written and you can tell it by the way the book flows. The only thing that I can't see is Riker being a detective... he's more like a bull in a chna store type who's rough and tumble antics get him out of a lot of tight spots, but Friedman used this quality to an advantage as Riker is teamed up with a local woman who's sole purpose is to help Riker investigate and they run into a lot of impediments along the way. Riker is no "Columbo" but he gets the job done with action-adventure following along with the mystery.

I gave the book only four stars as the character development was a little shallow at times and the plot was rather predictable. Only for those reasons, otherwise the story flowed well and you were entertained as you read on it the book.

This book is a very good example of just how far good writing can take a mediocre concept. I was truly unimpressed with either of the plots in this book, yet found myself being drawn into it in spite of myself due to the excellence of the writing.

I suppose it is unfair to actually say that the plots are BAD. They do not, however, resonate with me at all. The primary plot is a detective and mystery fiction plot in which Riker has to unravel a mystery on a planet where a friend of his has disappeared, allegedly after stealing a priceless artifact. I'm not universally opposed to detective fiction, but I generally find that they don't work overwell as Star Trek plots, and I certainly don't see Riker as a viable Sam Spade type. Further, this plot just seemed rather blase, and it truly required exceptionally adroit writing to get me to care about it. In a way, I never did, but in spite of that, I found it difficult to put the book down toward the end, so Friedman must have been doing something right.

Furthermore, the secondary plot involved Data playing "major league" baseball on the holodeck, trying out a program that Riker had written for himself just before being called away on his mission. Again, I don't necessarily object to sports stories; one of my favorites is "If I Never Get Back", by Darryl Brock. But I don't much care for holdeck stories in general, even if they are merely subplots and not the major focus of the story, nor do I generally care for the "Data does something offbeat in an attempt to learn more about what it means to be human, and in the course of doing so, commits many amusingly silly faux-pas" type of story, of which this was certainly one. In fact, I generally don't believe that baseball and Star Trek mix well; it's one of the things that cause me to grit my teeth whenever it's brought into play in Deep Space Nine due to Ben Sisco's hobby. I certainly disliked the episode "Take Me Out To The Holodeck" about as much as I've disliked any Star Trek episode in any series.

So imagine my confusion to discover that I was actually enjoying the scenes in that subplot also, in spite of the fact that Friedman's apparent knowledge of baseball is somewhat limited, and his claim that both Data and Geordi would have difficulty understanding the concept of a curveball somewhat dubious.(I realize that for years engineering types swore that it was an optical illusion, because it was physically impossible. But those days are ALREADY behind us; certainly, engineers from three or four hundred years in the future should have no difficulty with the concept. Nor do I believe that it would be all that difficult for Data to track the trajectory of a curveball and hit it soundly.)

I find that I can't in good conscience give less that four stars to a book so well written as to be enjoyable and even captivating in spite of a basic concept that I simply can't see the point to, but neither can I give five stars to a book with such an unattractive concept. If you find the idea of mixing detective fiction AND spectator sports fiction with your Star Trek fascinating, you'll certainly love this book. If, as I did, you find either or both of these concepts seriously dubious, you might still like it. But if you're unwilling to deal with the cognitive dissonance produced by enjoying such an unattractive story concept, steer clear of this one.