Books about Tattered from Amazon.com

SI.com "College Football Mailbag" author Stewart Mandel tackles the ten issues that confound college football fans--with a new chapter on the 2007 season

"An intricate tour through the ills of the college football world (and there are many), but still manages to take on a breezy, airy tone."
----The Quad, NYTimes.com

"Stewart Mandel writes about college football's major controversies with a wit and depth of knowledge that will impress even the most obsessed fans. And because he's both fair and objective, there is something in this book to infuriate nearly everyone."
----Warren St. John, author of the bestselling Rammer JammerYellow Hammer: A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania

"In a book dripping with sarcasm, Stewart Mandel plays tour guide on an interesting ride through the college football nuthouse."
----Bruce Feldman, author of Meat Market and senior writer for ESPN the Magazine

"If you're confused by the world of college football, particularly the BCS and how the present polls are conducted, then I will recommend to you Bowls, Polls & Tattered Souls."
----Football Outsiders

"Presents history and insights on all aspects of the sport, from recruiting to the bowl system to why certain teams play in certain conferences. A great read for fans with thirty days or thirty years of experience."
----Orlando Sentinel

If your heart beats faster on Saturday afternoons as your team takes the field, this book will give you new insight into the fanaticism and chaos that characterize college football today. Stewart Mandel takes a provocative, hard-hitting look at the hot-button issues: the controversial BCS; the polls and their largely arbitrary rankings; the ego-inflating recruiting craze; cheating and recent scandals; the huge pressures and salaries heaped on coaches; the Heisman hype-fest; the NFL draft; the clunky conference expansions; privileged Notre Dame, college football's greatest juggernaut; and the proliferation of bowl games. You'll get behind-the-scenes insights on how the issues evolved and why some are almost impossible to resolve in a book that's as entertaining, passionate, and thought-provoking as the game itself..
Price: $7.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This stunning volume focuses on the qualities of the old things in our homes (the patina of an old table, pewter dulled by age, old floorboards that creak) and how to live with and incorporate them into our personal aesthetic. Divided into chapters by the qualities of old—peeling, dried, tarnished, faded, chipped, frayed, rusty, and mossy—this unique book not only pays tribute to furniture, textiles, china, silver and other accessories with these qualities but also shows us how best to preserve, adapt, and arrange them. Lavishly illustrated with beautiful photographs that highlight the warm colors and rich textures of wood and paint, cloth and leather, For the Love of Old also includes ideas and recipes for saving old items from the junk pile, preserving and caring for the old things you have, giving newer things a lived-in feel, and bringing an enduring personality to every home..
Price: $28.64 [Notify me when price goes down.]

“I am no longer a poet. I have lost all my words.”

Vibrant, intelligent, and active, nineteen-year-old college student Karla Smith embraces the future with unbridled enthusiasm. But when she suddenly loses interest in everything she always loved, her family is understandably alarmed. Where is the bubbly, optimistic Karla they all know and love?

Weeks go by and Karla hides under her bedcovers, refuses to engage in any of her passions, and returns only a wall of silence to her family’s pleading questions. Eventually diagnosed as bipolar, Karla experiences the illness’s major symptoms of recurring depression and periodic mania. Her parents, Fran and Tom, and her twin brother, Kevin, endure her tragic lows and euphoric highs for seven long years before Karla loses the battle with her illness, committing suicide at the tender age of twenty-six.

The Smith family weaves threads of pain, confusion, grief, and hope into a moving portrait of the challenge and tragedy of bipolar disorder. But it’s Karla’s own story—her brave fight against the debilitating disorder and her enduring struggle for balance, acceptance, and peace—that lies at the heart of this book, offering hope and strength for everyone who suffers from bipolar disorder and their loved ones.

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Price: $6.53 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With dreams of a better life for themselves, Thomas, Edward, Mary Jane, and their parents say goodbye to the only home they have ever known. They leave crowded, dirty London behind for good when they board a ship that promises to take them across the wide Atlantic Ocean to the colonies The long, treacherous journey is filled with uncertainty, and readers will cheer when this brave family takes their first wobbly steps in the New World..
Price: $4.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Buddhism, Booze, and the Four Noble Truths

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Price: $3.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $12.27 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Best known for her Gothic language handbooks, Karen Elizabeth Gordon here turns her extraordinary talents to fiction, and the result is as unconventional as her seductive grammar dramas. The Red Shoes consists of tatters of a half-dozen tales ("The Glass Shoe," "The Gingerbread Variations," "The Little Match Girl," "Don Juan Is a Woman," and the title story, among others), sewn together into a novel by two seamstresses. "Fabric, fabricationsuch is the stuff of these lost chronicles come together here," Gordon writes in her introduction. "Swinging their hatboxes, swaying their hips, chapters with torn slips wander in on high heels and blistered feet." Looking back to the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, but also casting sidelong glances at metafictional sugardaddies like Queneau, Nabokov, Cortazar, Gass, and Milorad Pavic, The Red Shoes is a Rabelaisian romp through the language of sensuality..
Price: $7.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]