Sports

[close] An inventive novel, Make It, Take It sneaks the reader past the press conferences, locker rooms, and huddles of college basketball. Without judgment or sentimentality, Rus Bradburd lays bare the web of conflicts between players and coaches, blacks and whites, revealing the complex humanity of a team’s inner circle. Here, every choice has a very real cost.

Steve Pytel is an assistant coach and top recruiter for a university basketball program. His goals are simple. He wants to keep his job and be a head coach someday. Keeping his wife barely makes the list. The team staggers; everyone’s days are numbered. Pytel was responsible for landing prized recruits Leonard Redmond and Jamal Davis. Pytel’s duties now? Keep Leonard out of jail. Make sure Jamal ignores the advice of his preacher, sidesteps his girlfriend’s pregnancy, and puts the ball in the basket. Good thing Pytel doesn’t carry around a bagful of scruples. [close]

[close] Horseback riding is one of the world's most popular activities. Much has been written about the various styles, techniques, and competitive events in the sport. But all too often resources, authors, and even instructors neglect the most important and unique aspect of riding: the relationship between rider and horse.

In The Gentle Art of Horseback Riding, Gincy Self Bucklin shares her horse-friendly approach for developing comfortable, competent riders. Its step-by-step lesson format makes it an excellent resource for those who teach riding to others.

Whether you are just beginning or have ridden before, Bucklin's methods can improve your skills and make you a better, more confident rider.

Inside The Gentle Art of Horseback Riding, you'll learn that the key to success at every level is understanding your horse and how to relate to him physically, mentally, and emotionally. This will help you advance more quickly, feel more confident, and have more fun.

You'll also discover much, much more:
-- The seven steps for dealing with fear-related stress
-- Interpreting your horse's behavior and body language
-- Saddling up, riding in half-seat positions, and using the reins
-- Basic movements, including walk, trot, canter, turns, and transitions
-- More advanced trotting, cantering, galloping, hill work, and fence jumping skills

Whether you have a serious or casual interest in the sport as a whole or just one of its many disciplines, The Gentle Art of Horseback Riding is a must-read. Insightful and fascinating, it will enhance the riding experience for you and your horse. [close]

[close] The inherent discontinuity in golf—18 different holes, intervals between every shot, slow play, time waiting on the tee, breaks between rounds—poses one of the game’s greatest challenges: maintaining focus and rhythm on the course.

Golf Flow offers a cartful of time-tested principles and strategies and a bagful of innovative methods and techniques to keep the mind quiet and distraction-free. Gio Valiante, one of the PGA Tour’s most prolific performance consultants, will help you orient your mind and harness your thoughts so you can enter a flow state, or optimal performance zone, in which time, control, effort, and awareness seem both suspended and intensified.

Matt Kuchar, Justin Rose, Stuart Appleby, and many other pros, as well as golfers with much higher handicaps, have benefitted big-time from developing their Golf Flow tools. Actual accounts of conquering mental obstacles by adopting a confident and clear mind-set can be found throughout the book. [close]