BOOK BEAT STAFF GIFT IDEAS 2007

GIFT BOOKS, MUSIC, DVDs, CURIOS & GIZMOS FOR ALL AGES:

SNOW CRAZY & TREE CRAZY by Tracy Gallup, are two new books by one of our favorite area artists. Both are new additions in her ongoing crazy little series of books. Gallup’s handmade painted dolls create a miniature wonderland filled with existential meaning and fantasy. Perfect books for little hands and nature lovers of all ages. Also available; Stone Crazy and Shell Crazy. Signed copies available!! $9.95

HUG TIME by Patrick McDonnell is the latest warm and touching offering by the creator of Mutts (one of our favorite cartoonists!) McDonnell draws like a cross between Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Schulz’s Peanuts. Simple but effective images tell the story. The words too are elegant and sparse: “The world is so big … / And yet so small, / It’s time that we embrace it all. / That’s something that we all can do. / Start with the one who’s closest to you.” recommended for ages 3-6, but adults too will be enchanted by this lovely book. $14.99 (special MUTTS tites are now on sale only: $3.99-$5.99+ Mutts figurines and bookends, instore only!)

THE FANTOD PACK
by Edward Gorey is a small boxed set of beautiful and mysterious fortune telling cards for the doomed. First published in 1995 in an expensive limited edition, the cards were one of the hardest sets to find in Gorey’s ouvre. The Fantod Pack offers a bleak and hilarious take on the classic tarot. 20 cards feature mysterious and weird archetypes such as The Yellow Bird, The Bottle, The Limb, etc.. cryptic readings are attached to each card in the small oddly shaped booklet. Dark, droll, mysterious and funereal. The Fantod Pack is Gorey at his best, revealing you at your worst -a perfect gift for the gloomy and insecure. $9.95

THE GILDED BAT by Edward Gorey. A new reprint and macabre treat for Gorey fans this season is a deluxe reissue of the 1966 classic biography of the fictitious ballet diva Maude Splaytoes. “What amazes me is the way Gorey used brevity as his razor-sharp tool. He not only tells us a lovingly bizarre tale, but evokes an entire bygone era in ballet history, all in thirty sentences! His pictorial depiction of dancers makes you want to sit and study his drawings for hours. These are creatures with overly elongated hands and feet, with plump thighs and much too much turn-out. Here is a satirical tribute to the birds of ballet repertory, such as the Firebird and Odette/Odile from Swan Lake and a tribute to the life of a dancer. A knowledge of dance and of the French language would make this an even richer journey.” A great find for Gorey fans, ballet dancers, amnesiacs and aficionados, this is required reading! Hardcover, $14.95 (also check out our Gorey section with many inprint and OP titles, stationary, calendars and ephemera).

Winter in White: A Mini Pop-up Treat » Silent hush of snowy white… This jewel of a book celebrates the wonders of winter, from snow dancing across branches to the scrape of an ice skate across a pond to the whoosh of a sled down a hill. With magnificent pop-ups by legendary writer, artist, and paper engineer Robert Sabuda, this book is a joy to share and a perfect book to give to celebrate the winter season in all its glory.

QUIDDLER, & SET have been longtime favorite games at Book Beat -and now we are stocking the game of FIVE CROWNS — all three are fun and stimulating card games for the whole family. Beautiful to look at and great to play in groups, on long car trips or to break out in life’s waiting rooms. Quiddler is a short word game like Scrabble in card form, the play is fast and is great for introducing vocabulary to young children. Set will improve your memory, perception and artistic creativity. Five Crowns is a game like Gin Rummy but more intense and twice the fun. All card sets are $11.99

THE KNOCKMAN FAMILY is a collection of unique Japanese artist-designed musical wind-up toys. The winding mechanism is the arm and when its pumbed the creature produces heavenly sounds and its small pink heart beats and sways to the music. Collect the whole family and start up the band! HELL’S PROPRIETOR is the guardian bug dude to the neatherworld designed by Detroit’s own Glenn Barr, contained in a sweet colorful box. Get on the bug’s good side early just in case.

KNOCKMAN (DRUM) PORORON (GUITAR) KORON (CHIMES) HELL’S PROPRIETOR

MONSTER ISLAND: The Children of MU (Two 12″ LPs). The Children of Mu is a group of songs, lyrics & extended performance revolving around the psychic and mythic origins of Mu, a Pacific island or ‘lost continent’ (and counterpart to Atlantis) some believe to be fiction and others the ‘cradle of civilization,’ and relevant to our present condition. It has been mythologized by the founder of Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky who contends that Mu was a land bridging India and Africa, inhabited by our spiritual ancestors, non-physical ‘psychic beings.’ The LP charts the migration of Shadow Theater, the earliest visual/musical form of storytelling from Mu to China, India and the invention of cinema in avant-garde Paris at the end of the 19th century.This is the fourth album by Monster Island, a four year project, whose previous recordings included; From the Michigan Floor, Dream Tiger and Peyotemind. An edition of 500 copies with fabulous four color + metallic gold cover by ratty art genius Gary Panter. Performances by; Lee Ambrozy, Aliccia Berg (Slumber Party), Bill Brovald (Larval), Noelle Christine (Book Beat chanteuse), Matthew Smith (guitar, bass, pipa, Outrageous Cherry, THTX), Robert Waller (synth, Pere Ubu), H.H. Ma Meenakshi Devi (Indian Saint and classical Hindi singer), Anneke Auer (psychic voice), Johnny Evans (sax, Howling Diablos), David Altwerger (percussion), Len Bukowski (bass clarinet, Northwoods Improvisers), Tim Barnes (percussionist, Quakebasket), Mattin (avant-noise, Sakadda), words & music: Cary Loren (Destroy All Monsters), mastered by Warn Defever. The End is Here, LP set $25.00

Blood Tea And Red String (DVD, animation) » Blood Tea and Red String is a handmade stop-motion fairy tale for adults. Thirteen years in the making, Christiane Cegavske’s dialogue free film tells the tale of the struggle between the aristocratic White Mice and the rustic Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak over the doll of their heart’s desire. The Mice commission the Oak Dwellers to create a beautiful doll for them. When she is complete, the Creatures fall in love with her and refuse to give her up. DVD $24.95

A First-Time Buyers Guide to American Negro Sprituals These sacred folk songs were created by anonymous African Americans at the end of the 18th century. Spirituals functioned on many levels for enslaved Africans, expressing both profound religious convictions and strivings for freedom, the latter often encoded in the lyrics of the songs. The riches of this compelling overview of the genre include “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” by Paul Robeson, “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho” by the Dixie University Jubilee Singers, “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers and many others, over two hours of music 2x CD set. $11.99

SPIRIT GIRLS: Forever Free CD “Ah, the Spirit Girls! Wearing white masks reminiscent of Noh drama but dressed in feminine frocks, white socks and Mary Janes, they have served Los Angeles multimedia artist Marnie Weber for a couple of years now. As her band, they perform mournful ballads with bass laden riffs reminiscent of Sonic Youth. (Weber designed the cover for that group’s 2000 album.) Weber writes or co-writes the Spirit Girls songs, plays synthesizer and performs as lead vocalist, activities that have come increasingly to be integral to her visual art.- Artnet review CD $14.99

BODACIOUS ART & PHOTOGRAPHY TOMES

Murakami (Hardcover) » Takashi Murakami is one of contemporary art’s most innovative and important figures. Drawing from street culture, high art, and traditional Japanese painting, Murakami takes the contemporary art trend of mixing high and low to an unprecedented level (critics call him the new Warhol), producing original paintings and sculptures as well as mass-produced consumer objects such as toys, books, and most famously, a line of handbags for Louis Vuitton. A committed supporter and spokesperson for Japanese artists and a powerful commentator on postwar culture and society, Murakami has organized influential exhibitions of Japanese art as well as a biannual art fair in Tokyo.

Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman (hardcover) » is an irresistible invitation to experience life through the psyche of Maira Kalman, one of this country’s most beloved artists. The result is a book that is part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman. Her brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images-which initially appear random-ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue. Kalman contends with some existential questions-What is identity? What is happiness? Why do we fight wars? And then, of course, death, love, and candy (not necessarily in that order).

LUCIAN FREUD by William Feaver. This volume, with more than 400 reproductions, will be the most comprehensive publication to date on Lucian Freud, covering a span of seventy years and including many works not previously reproduced. The result is a corpus of great works that reveal him to be the premier heir today of Rembrandt, Courbet, and Cézanne. The book includes not only Freud’s paintings but also his sketches, woodcuts, and powerful etchings. While the bulk of his paintings are female nudes, his cityscapes, plant studies, and interiors, executed in his distinctive muted palette and visible brushwork, are all included. Hardcover, slipcased, $135.00

MODERNE: Fashioning the French Interior (Hardcover) » Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, Pierre Chareau, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Charlotte Perriand, Eileen Gray: together these designers and their contemporaries pioneered the look of the modern French interior during the 1920s. Moderne presents the finest examples of this work in more than two hundred plates, selected by the curator of the Wolfsonian museum and faithfully reproduced to preserve their original color pallets. This sumptuous volume is comprehensive in scope, beginning with the early art moderne of Ruhlmann and concluding with the avant garde work of Gray and Perriand, discussed in an essay by historian Jeremy Aynsley.

MAGNUM MAGNUM. A landmark book celebrating the engaging mix of photographer as both reporter and artist that has defined Magnum for sixty years. Since its founding in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David “Chim” Seymour, Magnum Photos, the legendary co-operative, has powerfully chronicled the peoples, cultures, events, and issues of the time.

Magnum Magnum brings together the best work, celebrating the vision, imagination, and brilliance of Magnum photographers, both the acknowledged greats of photography in the twentieth century—among them Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Eve Arnold, Marc Riboud, and Werner Bischof—and the modern masters and rising stars of our time, such as Martin Parr, Susan Meiselas, Alec Soth, and Donovan Wylie. And it shows the work at a breathtaking scale: the vast page size of Magnum Magnum—12¾ by 15¾—gives the photos an impact never seen before in book form. 565 pages, oversized, hardcover $225.00

Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 (Hardcover) The dynamic relationship between rock music and visual art crosses continents, generations, and cultures. Beginning with Andy Warhol’s involvement with The Velvet Underground in 1967, artists have maintained a strong connection to rock. Artists such as Slater Bradley, Mike Kelley, and Raymond Pettibon have created album covers and music videos for rock bands, while rock musicians such as Bryan Ferry, John Lennon, and Peter Townsend have emerged from art schools, and punk and new wave bands such as Talking Heads and Sonic Youth have shared the same social and artistic milieu as artists including Robert Longo and Richard Prince.

HENRY WESSEL. This retrospective look at the career of Henry Wessel, one of the late twentieth century’s most original and dryly funny photographers, tracks his contribution to the New Topographics movement of the 1970s and continues through more than 30 years of incisive observations on the American social landscape. In 133 photographs, it offers up a range of work from the earliest in the 1960s to a recent series on Las Vegas, made between 2000 and 2004. Throughout, Wessell not only chronicles the idiosyncrasies and anomalies of Southern California and the American West, but demonstrates over and over that photography can surpass its documentary role to speculate and to suggest narratives within and beyond the frame. Ultimately, he challenges not only our expectations of his medium, but our ways of seeing and our preconceptions about the familiar. Sandra Phillips, Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, writes of his emergence from the era’s pack, “Wessel’s remarkable work, witty, evocative and inventive, is distinctive and at the same time a component part of the great development of photography which flourished in the 1970s. The pictures continue to grow and evolve and the work is now regarded as an individual and important contribution to twentieth-century American photography.” Hardcover $60.00

THE EDUCATION OF A PHOTOGRAPHER. What does it mean to become a photographer in the twenty-first century? This thoughtful collection of essays illuminates the spirit of the people who make the indelible images of our times. Aspiring and professional photographers—especially those in arts programs throughout the United States—will appreciate the comprehensive vision of The Education of a Photographer. Classic writings from the twentieth century as well as the thoughts of the most influential talents working today, plus essays from designers, editors, and gallery owners, make this a compelling look at what drives and inspires photographers to create great work. 256pps., paperback $19.95

HEROES OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES First published as trading cards in 1990, these out-of-print watercolor images by award-winning artist Mark Chiarello are now collected for the first time in book form, along with incisive text by Jack Morelli and 39 brand-new images created especially for this book, including portraits of Satchel Paige, Hank Aaron, and Jackie Robinson. The legendary Negro Leagues are regarded with reverence and awe, and play a vital role in black history. The publication of these cards marked the first time most of these players ever appeared on baseball cards.

BERLIN ART NOW. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, unified Germany’s new capital city has experienced an extraordinary renaissance and a triumphant return to the ranks of Europe’s tastemaking cities. “New Berlin” has not only attracted contemporary artists formerly based in the regions of Cologne, Hamburg, and Dusseldorf, but many internationally renowned artists as well.

Berlin Art Now explores the mindsets, mentalities, and working practices of twenty-three painters and sculptors whose work is now shaping Berlin’s burgeoning art scene. The city itself plays an integral role in each artist’s style, distinguishing Berlin’s resident artist culture from those of other Western European cities. With text by Mark Gisbourne of the Courtauld Institute in London and photographs of both the artists and the city by noted portraitist Jim Rakete, Berlin Art Now poses (and answers) the question, Why Berlin, and why now? Hardcover, $60.
BOOKS OF NUDES. Alessandro Bertolotti’s unrivalled collection of books on nudes, amassed over thirty years, allows us to explore the history of photographic creations, from the first academic snapshots all the way up to the most audacious avant-gardists. Organized chronothematically, and accompanied by sociocultural analyses, this work presents over 160 books, from the celebrated to the obscure, and includes all the photographers who made nudes famous: Germaine Krull, Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Bill Brandt, Araki, Robert Mapplethorpe, Pierre Molinier, Jean Saudek, and Jean-Loup Sieff.

Each book is presented with its original cover and a selection of photographs laid out on double-page spreads. With over four hundred reproductions, Books of Nudes is an important reference work in photography. Paying tribute to the innovative and often ostentatious layout of these publications, this title is also a must-have for anyone passionate about graphic design. Hardcover, $50.

FICTION & GRAPHIC NOVELS FOR ADULTS

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS by Khaled Hosseini. After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. Hardcover, $25.99

AGAINST THE DAY by Thomas Pynchon. Spanning the period between the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, and elsewhere. One of Pynchon’s most accessable and glorious books, a rip-it-up adventure and metaphysical meditation on light, anarchy, modernism and physics. Now in trade paperback, $18.00

THE MEANING OF NIGHT: A CONFESSION by Michael Cox, The atmosphere of Bleak House, the sensuous thrill of Perfume, and the mystery of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell all combine in a story of murder, deceit, love, and revenge in Victorian England.

“After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.” So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver — booklover, scholar, and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. A chance discovery convinces him that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. Overwhelmed by his discovery, he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he knows is rightfully his.

Glyver’s path to reclaim his prize leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels, and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England’s most beautiful and enchanting country houses, and finally to a consuming love for the beautiful but enigmatic Emily Carteret. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onward, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. An enthralling Victorian-noir mystery. paperback $14.95

STOREYVILLE by Frank Santoro, forward by Chris Ware. “The best kept secret in the last twenty years of comics is probably Storeyville. There is no other comics piece that so successfully captures the propulsive, American energy that we associate in literature with the works of Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac.” -Copacetic online.A perfect match of form and content, Storeyville was originally published in 1995 as a 40-page tabloid newspaper. Now rare, it was printed in black and white, along with a set of three muted tones ranging from sandy yellow to deep sepia, and it described the arc of a youthful adventure that took its protagonist, Will, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Montreal, Quebec at the opening of the twentieth century. Rendered with humor, pathos and a gentle graphic flair, this story brings Will to terms with himself and his fate. It is a sprawling story that gives Santoro ample opportunity to showcase his love of drawing through dramatic cityscapes, landscapes and seascapes rendered in a unique combination of pencils, inks and grey-scale markers. Hugely influential on the likes of Chris Ware, Seth and many others, this long out-of-print cult work finally gets a proper release with this deluxe new hardcover edition.$24.99

Best American Comics 2007 a predilection toward Midwestern artists) is what you get when Ware (Acme Novelty Library) is guest editor. The book includes work from 39 different artists, but it’s hard to find a weak entry, even if the editors are cheating a bit by including sections from already thunderously (and rightly) acclaimed book-length works like Charles Burns’s Black Hole, Miriam Katin’s We Are on Our Own and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Gilbert Hernandez contributes a particularly funny bit of his patented soap opera-comedy, while Adrian Tomine’s selection from Optic Nerve, an epic of self-loathing and confusion, shows why he’s one of the comics artists best worth watching. -PW Review, Hardcover $22.00

MOOMIN, The Complete Comic Strip (VOLUME 2) by Tove Jansson. The Moomin family is a charmingly weird bunch of hippo-like creatures, and their adventures gently poke fun at our modern social conventions. A lost classic, rediscovered by the folks at D&Q. “This stunningly packaged second installment is another unmistakable reminder of exactly what we’ve been missing all of these years. Beautifully drawn and wonderfully scripted, Jansson’s masterwork follows the chapter length adventures of the Moominvalley residents, which play out like Pogo minus the political bent or Peanuts without the crippling depression. The Moomin clan are naturally curious, charmingly daft, occasionally nervous, and above all, ultimately happy.

That Moomin has been previously unavailable in our neck of the woods should be considered a crime. Fortunately, D&Q’s collection does the work justice, with books that would sit happily on any shelf next to Fantagraphics’ Krazy Kat, Peanuts, and Popeye collections—company with which Jansson’s work has every right to stand, a sentiment echoed by the quotes from Jeff Smith and Neil Gaiman that grace the book’s back cover.

However, this collection should be regarded as more than just quote fodder amongst the comics elite. Moomin deserves to be shared with anyone—adults and children alike—who have love for a beautifully crafted story.” –Brian Heater, The Daily Crosshatch. Hardcover $19.95. Volume One of MOOMIN is also available.

NON-FICTION FOR ADULTS:

Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won’t Do) (Hardcover) »is a practical guide to using Yiddish words and expressions in day-to-day situations. Along with enough grammar to enable readers to put together a comprehensible sentence and avoid embarrassing mistakes, Wex also explains the five most useful Yiddish words – shoyn, nu, epes, takeh, and nebakh – what they mean, how and when to use them, and how they can be used to conduct an entire conversation without anybody ever suspecting that the reader doesn’t have the vaguest idea of what anyone is actually saying. Readers will learn how to shmooze their way through such activities as meeting and greeting; eating and drinking; praising and finding fault; maintaining personal hygiene; going to the doctor; driving; parenting; getting horoscopes; committing crimes; going to singles bars; having sex; talking politics and talking trash. Hardcover, $23.95 a sequel to the author’s Born to Kvetch. (now in paperback).

CREEM: America’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll Magazine (Hardcover) »A product of Detroit’s revolutionary counterculture, CREEM cultivated an incredibly gifted staff of iconoclastic scribes, editors, photographers, and graphic artists whose work continues to resonate today, including: Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Richard Meltzer, Nick Tosches, and a not-so-famous Cameron Crowe. They invented a raucous new form of journalism, where the writing and photographs were as much an expression of rock ‘n’ roll as the music itself. CREEM embraced and abused the best and the worst of the era: MC5, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Faces, Lou Reed, the Stooges, T.Rex, Kiss, Mott the Hoople, the Who, the New York Dolls, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, the Ramones, Cheap Trick, the Clash, and Van Halen, among many others.

THE NEW KINGS OF NONFICTION by Ira Glass is a collection of stories, some well known, some more obscure -capturing some of the best storytelling of this golden age of nonfiction. An anthology of the best new masters of nonfiction storytelling, personally chosen and introduced by Ira Glass, the producer and host of the award-winning public radio program “This American Life,” These pieces on teenage white collar criminals, buying a cow, Saddam Hussein, drunken British soccer culture, and how we know everyone in our Rolodex-are meant to mesmerize and inspire. paperback, $15.00

SOUND ART:Beyond Music, Between Categories (Book & CD) by Alan Licht and forward by Jim O’Roarke. Over the past century, an art form has emerged that draws from the worlds of visual art and music. Sound art’s roots can be found in the experimental work of Italian Futurism, Dada, and later the Fluxus group and the pioneering efforts of the American composer and artist John Cage. In the wake of this groundbreaking work, sound art began to mature into a movement, and artists explored the interactive possibilities of sound and in turn created entirely new modes of experiencing and engaging with art. In this volume, the complete story of sound art is told by one of the country’s leading critics and scholars. The author traces the history of this form of art–highlighting the convergence of the indie world bands such as Sonic Youth with the art world–looking at the critical cross-pollination that has led to some of the most important and challenging art being produced today, including work by Christian Marclay, LaMonte Young, Janet Cardiff, Rodney Graham, and Laurie Anderson, among many others. Hardcover with CD $49.95

20 to Life: The Life and Times of John Sinclair DVD John Sinclair is a poet, revolutionary, band manager, activist and lover of rhythm and blues who arose up from the intense cultural climate of the sixties to become a hero and a legitimate political prisoner. 20 to Life tells Sinclair’s story through interviews with him and his friends, family, and cohorts from the past. Sinclair sought to destroy the status quo by a “total assault on the culture by any means necessary” through “a new music, new politics, and a new way of life.”

NOISE/MUSIC : A HISTORY by Paul Hegarty, looks at the phenomenon of noise in music, from experimental music of the early 20th century to the Japanese noise music and glitch electronica. This work situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyses them in terms of cultural aesthetics. paperback $22.95

PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST by Jonah Lehrer. With impressively clear prose, Lehrer explores the oft-overlooked places in literary history where novelists, poets and the occasional cookbook writer predicted scientific breakthroughs with their artistic insights. The 25-year-old Columbia graduate draws from his diverse background in lab work, science writing and fine cuisine to explain how Cézanne anticipated breakthroughs in the understanding of human sight, how Walt Whitman intuited the biological basis of thoughts and, in the title essay, how Proust penetrated the mysteries of memory by immersing himself in childhood recollections. Lehrer’s writing peaks in the essay about Auguste Escoffier, the chef who essentially invented modern French cooking. The author’s obvious zeal for the subject of food preparation leads him into enjoyable discussions of the creation of MSG and the decidedly unappetizing history of 18th- and 19th-century culinary arts. Hardcover $24.00

BO’S LASTING LESSONS: The Legendary Coach Teaches the Timeless Fundamentals of Leadership by Bo Schembechler and John U. Bacon.With a style so conversational that readers will almost be able to hear the voice of the late, great Michigan Wolverines football coach, Schembechler (1929-2006), it seems as if coauthor and sportswriter Bacon did little more than push the record button and let Schembechler dictate this exceedingly unconventional business title. The coach—who earned the respect of practically every player, coach and fan during his 30 years as Michigan’s head coach—lets loose his boisterous personality in italicized and capitalized words, exclamation points and rhetorical questions that punctuate otherwise simple statements and observations. Completed just days before the coach was brought down by heart disease, this volume spells out the leadership principles by which he lived en route to 13 Big 10 titles and 10 Rose Bowl appearances. Hardcover, signed by John U. Bacon, $25.99

The Book Beat is a drop off point for THE GIFT OF READING PROGRAM, which distributes new books to underprivileged children in our community. We discount your gift of reading donation 20% when purchased at our store.

We would like to thank the more than 500 people who came out to hear Christopher Paul Curtis speak at the Berkley High School auditorium in November. It was a great success, thank you!

All listed books are now in stock and subject to prior sale. We are still adding more gift ideas online, new arrivals daily, please check our newsletter section or blog for late additions. The Book Beat is an independent, locally owned bookstore serving the Detroit metro area for 25 years+. Visit our brick store for a great selection of Art, photo, Quality lit and children’s books, plus nifty odds and ends at; 26010 Greenfield in Oak Park, MI. Our hours are Mon-Fri: 10 AM-9 PM, Sat: 10 AM- 7 PM, Sun: 12-5 PM. Thank you for your support. Happy Holidays! Visit us online at: The Book Beat Cavern

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