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What: High Hopes: Taking the Purple to Pasadena, by Gary Barnett with Vahe Gregorian

Price: $18.95

Book-buyer, beware: Gary Barnett communicates with so many metaphors, analogies and allegories, this doesn’t read like a glowing memento of Northwestern’s 1995 march to the Rose Bowl so much as a collection of camp-fire coaching tales.

Or a glorious audition for the motivational speakers tour--who wants to follow Wayne Fontes when you could open for Anthony Robbins?

Barnett hits the highlights, of course, the victory over Notre Dame to start the season, the ensuing loss to Miami of Ohio, then the wild run to the roses and his eventual decision not to leave to take the UCLA job last January.

But what keeps this book fresh--even now, more than a year since the 1996 Rose Bowl--is that it is the farthest thing from a scrapbook.

Want to be a coach? Motivate downtrodden kids? Figure out how to steel yourself against the wind and rebuild the sorriest football program in Division I?

Barnett will tell you about Ahab the Arab, or give you the monkeys and Oreos story, or talk about flowers growing in his garden. The eye of the wolf. The pennies on the scale. Singing “High Hopes” after every practice to bond his team in the drudgery of summer.

“You know that Michigan is the oyster,” he recalls telling his team before the pivotal game at Ann Arbor, Mich. “Michigan doesn’t have to struggle for anything.

“They open their mouths, and recruits come. We are the eagle. We’re the ones who struggle. We’re the ones who don’t have an indoor facility to practice in. We’re the ones who have had to meet all the adversities.”

The gist: To win, you have to believe. Read this book, and you will believe Barnett can levitate mountains, will footballs to do strange and wonderful things and even turn down Notre Dame.