re ae 2 Be ie Bc: Seay ie. ‘ Copy = From the OMAHA WORLD-HERALD Dece 12, 1958 oo Fe W. A 5-FOOT SHELF IN ONE VOLUME Better Basket Ball = By Dre Forrest C. MPhog" Allen, director of physical education and professor of basketball at the University of Kansase (McGraw-Hill); $2.50. This is the second trade volume to be authored by that charming paragon of versa- 2 tility, paradox and protracted youth, who during his nearly generation-long labors there & has made lovely Mount Oread the fountainhead of the appalling arcana that embroiders his . His maiden opus, the appearance of which several years ago was widely bruited by admiring sports writers, was aptly titled, "My Basket Ball Bible". Although his latest work represents a flabbergasting advancement in the intricate mysteries of a pastime that appears to the bleacher observer to be so darned simple, though taxing on the cardiac structure, throughout its 482 pages there is discernible the same good old Homer Rodeheaver evangelistic theme, altered slightly to the tempo of a brisk, crowd=yanking dribble, as was the soul and spirit of his literary firstling. Maybe It's There This time Dre Allen tells his customers everything -- except the ingredients and proportions of the pazzaza that has made his Jayhawker teams practical monopolists of conference championshipse I must qualify this statement. Perhaps Dre Allen does reveal absolutely all, but if this be the case, then the revelations are so diffuse and piece- meal and seemingly umrelated that a lay bloke simply is unable to savvy. If the secret of Dr. Allen's success cannot be written concisely, like a prescrip- tion for the relief of cholera morbus; if a heroic attempt at compression cannot reduce the number of pages below 482, plus necessary index, then to master all that is necessary for successful practice of his trade would require more than a Phi Beta Kappa'ts lifetime, even in this era of compulsory hygiene and mass intravenous injectionse This of necessity must be laymen's review. I can only survey the outer boundaries. I can only nibble timidly at the edges of the expansive cruste All This -- and More These things are plain: To get where he has got, Dr. Allen has made himself con- siderably more than a dilletante at (1) common kitchen cookery, (2) Dietetics, (3) bonesetting, (4) osteopathy, (5) medicine, (6) oratory of the moonlight-and-roses-and- bloody-shirt school, (7) freestyle religion, (8) showmanship, (9) classroom psychology, (10) practical psychology, (11) mechanical drawing, (12) legerdemain, (13) dry nursing, (14) the Roth memory course, famed in yesteryear; (15) the principles of Dale Carnegie's new hypnotism, (16) hymnology, (17) Eddie Guest poetry, (18) surgery, and (19) basket ball. Tjere are more items, but these will give you a feeble notion of the vast require-~ ments e These things may not be mecessary to mere successful basket ball pedagogy, but it : must be kept in mind that Dr. Allen has by no means confined himself to that. Unparalleled — though his success has been at teaching this sport, the critic does injustice who calls 3 him a specialist--unless the critic means a specialist-at-almost-all-trades. a