Visual Guide to Minor Leaguers: Using Graphics to Find Prospects, Nick Richards
A baseball industry minor league expert explains how to analyze minor leaguers.
Using graphics, charts, screen shots, and videos, Richards explains what metrics work best for minor leaguers, how to find those numbers on the Web, how to put those numbers into graphical form for easier understanding, and how to interpret what you are seeing. Not every stat darling is worth picking up for your dynasty team. Conversely not every poor stat line is meaningful if you look more closely at the numbers, and ideally if you chart trend lines. While scouting comes first, if all you have are numbers, here's how to make the numbers work for you. This is an easy book to read, to skim, to use as a reference any time you wonder if a minor leaguer you heard about is good or not. The book itself is very visual, and Richards shows you exactly how to make best use of the copious amounts of data available on the baseball Web. It is easy once you know how! |
(100 Pages)
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Babyloving: The Emotional Life of a Baby, Hiag Akmakjian
Babyloving is a comfortable and reassuring read to new parents. Hiag Akmakjian, a Book of the Month Club author and an authority on babies and childhood development, explains in this book how emotions grow in the first 36 months of life. Writing in a cheerful and conversational tone, he discusses, among many topics, how a baby learns to tolerate frustration. The importance of love and hugging in the baby’s development. Where healthy self-esteem comes from. How compassion develops to help a baby become a more “human” and loving being. Akmakjian, a graduate of Columbia University and several psychological institutes, draws on his 40 years of work in the field of child development. He was a guest lecturer at New York University Medical Center, and the prestigious Princeton Center for Infancy and Early Childhood cited him along with Benjamin Spock and T. Berry Brazelton in the dedication of its series of books on child development. Of Akmakjian’s earlier work on babies and parenting, American Baby wrote: “The advice is sensible, the scope broad, and the approach understandable.” And the Library Journal: “A very interesting, well-written, and sound modern analysis of child development . . . a cheerful, practical book which it’s hard not to like.” In a market crowded with parenting guides of every kind, no book provides the information and help to be found in Babyloving. The substance of the book draws on the work of the greatest leaders in the field of baby and child study, a long list that includes Donald Winnicott, René Spitz, Edith Jacobson, Heinz Hartmann, and especially Margaret Mahler, in her discussions of the mother-infant symbiosis and the three-year long process of separation and individuation. Yet at the same time, its sympathetic approach is designed as a help to parents, not a textbook. The emphasis is not on underlying theories but on how parents can easily learn and apply the knowledge we have in our possession. |
(124 pages) |
Snow Falling on a Bamboo Leaf: The Art of Haiku, Hiag Akmakjian
Many lovers of poetry consider haiku to be literature's most subtle art form. The whole of life seems effortlessly expressed in only a few words and images.
The book presents readers with sixty of the more famous classical haiku in the original romanized Japanese along with their interlinear trans-literations. This unique comb-ination becomes a great help in understanding how they were made. An introductory essay tells how haiku can just as easily be written in English and as a help to readers creating their own haiku, it explains to them the elegant but rigorous structure of what appears to be an easy art form. This charming and informative book is tastefully illustrated with the author's own lovely ink drawings. |
(120 pages) |
Writing To Get Published, Bill Manville & Hiag Akmakjian
Author Bill Manville taught the course "Writing To Get Published" for both Temple University and writers.com. In this book Bill collected essays and examples that show the working writer how to write in a way that gets your work noticed.
Unlike most books this one is not meant to be read from front cover to back. The reader can pick it up at random and find out tips on writing good dialog, discussions of self-publishing (and whether it works), finding an agent and working through writer's block. Using a variety of fonts to create a conversational style, the reader will feel they are sitting in a classroom with Bill as he shows (not tells) the best ways to write. Every writer, or would-be writer, will find something useful in this book. |
(195 pages) |
Hardy Boys Book Reviews, Nicolas Akmakjian
An adult looks back fondly on his childhood treasures: the original 58 Hardy Boys volumes. These were not great literature, but they were never meant to be. They are actually surprisingly well-written for children’s books. The great writer Leslie McFarlane got things off to a terrific start and the series benefited from that great foundation.
Each of the 58 volumes is reviewed in this book. This content comes from the popular HardyBoysBookReviews.com site, noting who wrote each book, when it was written (and revised), the cover is critiqued, the chums who appear are noted, and what Aunt Gertrude baked for her beloved nephews is gravely noted. This book expands upon that material, however, to also include notes about the year in which the book was written. What film won the Oscar that year? What was the #1 song? What events happened that year? All of this goes into the mind of the author and you can see that influence in the books. When James Bond shows up in public consciousness, you can absolutely tell in the Hardy Boys. The space race, multiculturalism, post-World War II expansion, the Depression, and, of course, Scooby Doo are all reflected in these books. These are light-hearted, brief reviews that do not spoil the plot. They are written with humor and affection. If you read the book, the review will remind of the basic plot, but will not reveal the identity of the villain. For that you have to read the book again — and this book will make you want to do just that. |
(139 pages) |