Best Sports Industry

The New York Times Bestseller With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and FOX Sports analyst Tom Verducci reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team that broke the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions. Tom Verducci, twice named National Sportswriter of the Year and co-writer of The Yankee Years with Joe Torre, will have full access to team president Theo Epstein, manager Joe Maddon, and the players to tell the story of the Cubs' transformation from perennial underachievers to the best team in baseball. Those dual qualities make him the perfect guy to not only capture the experience of what the Cubs at long last achieved, but to explain the thinking and planning that led to last Fall's crescendo of emotions.” —Bob Costas. "Verducci, a longtime baseball writer for Sports Illustrated, is perhaps the perfect scribe to tell this definitive tale, a generational talent who can talk numbers and remain awed at the game’s beauties. “In Mr. Verducci’s entertaining book, he notes that the ‘construction of a championship team is granular’ and the ‘final picture is a Seurat painting’ with ‘many tiny dots of color’ and ‘millions of reasons and thousands of cascading events.’ He’s right: The artistic brush containing the power of positivity helped make the Chicago Cubs winners once more.” — The Washington Times.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"But it is a beautiful story about good people, and for any baseball fan, a well-written dive into the best baseball story of the last century."
"While Tom Verducci’s The Cubs Way reads more like an eventual 108 year victory lap for long suffering Chicago Cubs fans, I think baseball fans in general can take a lot from the story of the 2016 Chicago Cubs."
"All in all this book will answer your Cubs questions and you have to admire this team even if your team is in the Natonal League Central...this is baseball...Theo Epstein has got to be one of the more interesting Baseball Executives ever as he's hall of fame bound already...he broke not 1 but 2 curses which amazes me...when he took over the Cubs i knew they'd improve but i didn't think they'd win a world series in only his 5th season at the helm...so impressive stuff and i'm not a Cubs fan per se but i like what they did with the team."
"The natural flow of the season, the various characters and the quest for a championship, coupled with a look at the vast remake that Theo Epstein and Tom Ricketts undertook make this a highly memorable baseball book. Added to this is Joe Maddon, the whiz on the bench who takes a team of young talent and some veterans to a place that many Cubs fans have dreamed of for over a century -. a championship."
"Congratulations to Mr. Verducci for this truly outstanding insight, into baseball in general... and, of course, the Chicago Cubs’ once-in-a-lifetime rise to the top after a century of ineptness and sorrow for their fervent and loyal fans."

Lewis mines all these possibilities—his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission—but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers—numbers!—collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors. Billy paid attention to those numbers —with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to—and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era ( Liar's Poker , The New New Thing ), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Lewis has somehow created a new genre - true stories of underdog's finding out something we all should have known and re-making the world as a result."
"Re-read Moneyball for the second time and it gets better the second time around."
"I don't know baseball well, but I really learned a ton about the scientific approach to the game and wonder how else we could bring this thinking in our life."
"Michael Lewis is a great author, and this book is another solid piece by him."
"Have watched the movie several times, wanted more information."
"It was great to see how the writer could clearly expose the baseball biases by allegedly honest men."
"Great read for baseball fans."
"Just in case you've been living on a deserted island for the past 15 years or so... this, indeed, is a fantastic book, for baseball fans, and for those of an analytical bent."

Mr. Colletti’s book might be even more groundbreaking [than Moneyball ] in some ways: It’s a nearly unprecedented opportunity to see what running a baseball franchise looks like through the eyeballs of an actual general manager. After reading this book, you will not only understand the job of a general manager better but also the game of baseball itself.”— Tom Verducci, author of The Cubs Way and co-author of The Yankee Years. An unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look at the career of famed former Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager (a position also known as “The Big Chair”), whose tenure spanned nine of the most exciting and turbulent years in the franchise’s history. During his tenure with the Dodgers, Colletti had the highest winning percentage of any general manager in the National League. In The Big Chair , he lets readers in on the real GM experience from his unique vantage point—sharing the inner workings of three of the top franchises in the sport, revealing the out-of-the-headlines machinations behind the trades, the hires and the deals; how the money really works; how the decision-making really works; how much power the players really have and why—the real brass tacks of some of the most pivotal decisions made in baseball history that led to great success along with heartbreak and failure on the field. Now, in The Big Chair , readers will hear the wisdom and perspective that helped the organization change its culture and reach levels never before accomplished.” — Brian Sabean, three-time World Series champion, Executive VP, Baseball Operations, San Francisco Giants. “Ned Colletti is the best kind of baseball lifer. “Ned Colletti's terrific account of the inner workings of a baseball team is engaging, honest, accurate and a great read. Sharing in his journey is a must for any baseball fan, including myself.” — Chris Berman, ESPN Sportscaster “Former Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti saw the team through a sale, 14 playoff wins, and the acquisitions of Clayton Kershaw and Yasiel Puig. I don't think I've ever read any baseball executive reveal his love and passion for baseball the way Colletti does here.” –John Schulian, winner of the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing "Hard to put down.” –Boston Globe “Part baseball handbook and part Cinderella story.” – Los Angeles Times “A fascinating behind-the-scenes account of his 35 years working in the front office of the Cubs, Giants and Dodgers....More than anything, Colletti shows how being a GM is a 24/7 thrill ride.” —. Chicago Tribune “Highly recommended.” – San Francisco Chronicle.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The harder parts are dealing with [often massaging] the wide range of egos and personalities that occupy clubhouses, locker rooms, ownership meetings and the like."
"Ned Colletti has had many jobs in sports, but the focus of this book (and the title) come from his years as general manager of the Dodgers."
"Great inside story on how baseball protocol REALLY works."
"Ned Colletti is the best!"
"Present for husband, he seems to like it."
"This book is not only for Dodger fans but ALL baseball fans, who would like to find out, what it is like to be a GM of a mlb team."
"This is a great book."
"Very real baseball story to reveal the difficulty of the GM job."
Best Entertainment Industry

From one of the co-founders of Pixar Animation Studios—the Academy Award–winning studio behind Coco, Inside Out, and Toy Story —comes an incisive book about creativity in business and leadership for readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Huffington Post • Financial Times • Success • Inc. • Library Journal “[ Creativity, Inc. ]. just might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”— Fast Company Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”. Praise for Creativity, Inc. “Over more than thirty years, Ed Catmull has developed methods to root out and destroy the barriers to creativity, to marry creativity to the pursuit of excellence, and, most impressive, to sustain a culture of disciplined creativity during setbacks and success.” —Jim Collins, co-author of Built to Last and author of Good to Great “Too often, we seek to keep the status quo working. Any reader of Creativity, Inc., Catmull’s new book on the art of running creative companies, will have to agree. Catmull, president of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, has written what just might be the most thoughtful management book ever.” — Fast Company “It’s one thing to be creative; it’s entirely another—and much more rare—to build a great and creative culture. Over more than thirty years, Ed Catmull has developed methods to root out and destroy the barriers to creativity, to marry creativity to the pursuit of excellence, and, most impressive, to sustain a culture of disciplined creativity during setbacks and success. Catmull’s book is quickly becoming the latest bible for the show business crowd.” —The New York Times “The most practical and deep book ever written by a practitioner on the topic of innovation.” —Prof. [Catmull] uses Pixar’s triumphs and near-disasters to outline a system for managing people in creative businesses—one in which candid criticism is delivered sensitively, while individuality and autonomy are not strangled by a robotic corporate culture.” — Financial Times “A wonderful new book . An immensely readable and rewarding book that will challenge and inspire readers to make their workplaces hotbeds of creativity.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Punctuated with surprising tales of how the company’s films were developed and the company’s financial struggles, Catmull shares insights about harnessing talent, creating teams, protecting the creative process, candid communications, organizational structures, alignment, and the importance of storytelling. [ Creativity, Inc. ] will delight and inspire creative individuals and their managers, as well as anyone who wants to work ‘in an environment that fosters creativity and problem solving.’” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “For anyone managing anything, and particularly those trying to manage creative teams, Catmull is like a kind, smart godfather guiding us toward managing wisely, without losing our souls, and in a way that works toward greatness. What Ed Catmull shares instead is his astute experience that creativity isn’t strictly a well of ideas, but an alchemy of people. In Creativity, Inc. Ed reveals, with commonsense specificity and honesty, examples of how not to get in your own way and how to realize a creative coalescence of art, business, and innovation.” —George Lucas “This is the best book ever written on what it takes to build a creative organization.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Managers, as well as anyone who wants to better understand how companies work and what elements are necessary to make and keep them successful, will appreciate Catmull’s insight on leadership, nurturing creative environment, and protecting it from invisible threats. After reading the book, I constantly find myself quoting the concepts and examples described there when talking to my husband or friends about their jobs or my own and discussing what works, what doesn’t, and why."
"This book has radically altered all of my pre-existing views about what it means to be creative, to strive for quality, to lead a team, and to be passionate and persevere in the face of obstacles."
"Ed shared several amusing experiences creating these magnificent movies to illustrate management concepts."
"Mr. Catmull presents an impressive analysis of how corporate culture can negatively impact creativity, even when corporate leaders proclaim their support for creativity and truly believe they are doing everything they can to foster and support it."
"Whether you're just a Pixar fan, or you're looking for ways to improve your company, you can't go wrong with this book."
"It tells of how the company was formed and the various challenges and changes along the way as well as how the people in charge are constantly attempting to maintain Pixar as a separate entity from Disney after being purchased by the latter while fixing Disney's animation studios and making Disney a world class entity itself."
Best Park & Recreation Industry

In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recent. additions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres. If Ken Burns’s upcoming documentary film on America’s National Parks is as good as the book laying open before me, he has another huge winner. The result is almost elegiac, producing the same kind of goose bumps that Burns created in his early work on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Civil War . Namely, as Burns puts it in the introduction, “for the first time in human history, land--great sections of our natural landscape--was set aside, not for kings or noblemen or the very rich, but for everyone, for all time.” As Wallace Stegner once observed, and the book’s subtitle echoes, this may have been “America’s best idea.” Burns links the idea to Jefferson’s magic words in the Declaration of Independence (i.e. “We hold these truths...”), our quasi-sacred text on human freedom, which takes on an almost spiritual resonance amidst the vistas of Yosemite or Yellowstone. Dayton Duncan , Burns's longtime colleague, has provided most of the text, which is designed to cast a spell that matches the wonder of the stunning illustrations.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This book is full of breathtaking images, making it the perfect coffee table book for anyone who enjoys exploring our beautiful country and its national parks."
"Great photos and historical commentary."
"Beautiful book with gorgeous pictures!"
"We were given this book as a gift and are now getting it to give to a family member as a gift."
"This presentation is more than 5 stars !!!"