Braving the Flames
Peter Micheels
In New York City, an average of eleven fires are reported every hour of the day and night, 365 days a year. Now, hear the stories behind the news reports, as America’s courageous fire fighters tell their stor...
Showstopper!
G. Pascal Zachary
Showstopper is the dramatic, inside story of the creation of Windows NT, told by Wall Street Journal reporter G. Pascal Zachary. Driven by the legendary Bruce Cutler, a picked band of software ...
Double Feature
Herbert H. Stein, MD
a) What recent smash hit movie secretly depicted fear of the female breast? b) Name some recent films that were preoccupied with castration anxiety? c) Would you be surprised to know that reliving our childhoo...
Seven Keys to Texas
T.R. Fehrenbach
T.R. Fehrenbach defines Texas as "a state of mind." In THE SEVEN KEYS TO TEXAS, he provides us with a seven-part framework for understanding this unique and ever-important state: its people, frontiers, land,...
Outward Leg
Tristan Jones
After seven years ashore and after having his left leg amputated, Tristan Jones decided to return to the sea. He began to piece together Operation Star and found the perfect vessel in a 36-foot trimaran. In ...
Lessons in Life I Learned From My Baseball Cards
by Patrick J. Caraher[ Non-Fiction ]
Remember when the most exciting moment of your childhood was opening a fresh pack of baseball cards? How you gazed lovingly at the pictures of your heroes, pored over their statistics, thrilled to their exploits and identified with their lives? We all know someone whose baseball card collection was the most significant touchstone of his childhood. Baseball card collector Patrick Caraher has turned his lifelong passion into a spiritual odyssey in Lessons in Life I Learned from Baseball Cards. Selecting some prize items from his collection, Caraher has reflected on their larger resonance and produced this little gem of a book, the sports equivalent of Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. With deft cameos of stars whose admirable lives and careers characterized such virtues as fortitude, humility, determination, honesty, and decency, Caraher has breathed life into the statistics behind baseball's role models and produced a collection of miniature portraits that illuminates the national pastime as few other books have.
Introduction
Every Christmas I give one of my nephews a card from my baseball card collection. And every year, whether spoken out loud or just with his eyes, he asks the same question.
"What's it worth?"
The answer always comes as a struggle because when talking about the value of my baseball cards we speak two different languages. He wants to know the market price for the card and, while sensitive to the business aspect of baseball cards, that is not what I consider the gift to be.
There is no quick answer to this question and I have worked to come up with the best response. Now, let me tell you what these cards are worth...