BOOKS

[Farfromgeneva]

Just the first thing I pulled from the google machine for a reference point. If you like Lewis writing style and storytelling (liars poker, moneyball, the new new thing, blind side, the big short, etc) you’ll find this one similar in terms of readability.

[foreverlax]

I like everything I have read by Lewis...Big Short was fascinating.

Am reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - interesting perspective on how to determine the things that are worth giving a fig about.

[Brooklyn]

Gilgamesh ~ the Herbert Mason version

https://www.amazon.com/Gilgamesh-Verse- ... 0618275649




Read it was a college freshman about 49 years ago. I find it more striking today than I did back then. Perhaps I just might go back to reading some of those old classics that people used to read so much more often back in the day.

[Brooklyn]

Douglass & Melville by Robert K Wallace





https://www.amazon.com/Douglass-Melvill ... 0932027911



There are a great many racial implications in the novel Moby Dick that have overlooked by readers and by Hollywood for far too long. For example, in the movies Father Mapple has always been presented by being white. But the narrative in the book describes him as black ~ "large brown hands ... wipes his swarthy brow". A black man who preaches to a white audience. The essence of his speech: "you and I are brothers and sisters, we are equal". This sent shock waves to critics back in the antebellum era which is something the modern audience is not aware of all too often today. Viewed from this perspective, the book takes on a very different meaning from what is accepted nowadays.

[Brooklyn]

The Third Man by Graham Greene

[Brooklyn]

Leveling the Playing Field: The Story of the Syracuse Eight by David Marc


https://tinyurl.com/s4t6xqp

[Brooklyn]

THE HAMILTON COLLECTION: The Wisdom and Writings of the Founding Father





https://www.hamiltonbook.com/the-hamilt ... -hardbound


The hit musical Hamilton has put Alexander Hamilton back into the limelight, yet this complex and mercurial Founding Father often remains elusive. This collection of Hamilton's personal letters, business and political correspondence, and excerpts from significant published writings (including The Federalist Papers) provides firsthand insight into the man who engineered the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, created the United States' financial system, and re-established trade relations with Britain. Along with 50 pages of illustrations, the annotated book includes love letters to his wife Elizabeth Schuyler—and correspondence with his friend-turned-nemesis Aaron Burr.

[Brooklyn]

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/book ... otion.html


Americans claimed Shakespeare as their own partly because he spoke to the grand questions that stirred the nation. “Issues like immigration and race that couldn’t be dealt with directly could be confronted through Shakespeare,” Professor Shapiro said. “We didn’t have a language to express our feelings about these troubling questions. There probably wasn’t another writer on either side of the Atlantic that allowed audiences to work through issues and divisions as he did.”



I have always been fascinated by the infamous Astor Place Riots (1849) which this book covers that issue in great detail:


https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu ... -new-york/

[Brooklyn]

Also reading the Bonnie Yochelson volume.

Some great photos of old New York. Viewing pics and reading articles about old Gotham is a hobby I've had for many decades and remains one of my favorite activities.

[Brooklyn]

Hilarious!


https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-us/book ... 14QAvD_BwE

[Brooklyn]

Education of Henry Adams



Generally acknowledged as the greatest American nonfiction book ever written. I do not quite agree with this exceedingly generous assessment but agree it is worth reading with great interest. HA is a complex man with a Boston Brahmin heritage. One would think he had everything that anyone could want in life. Indeed, he did but still was not satisfied as something was missing. And that was likely a proper education for the times that were to come. The book was written in the third person. One of the most striking parts is the portion that reveals a 20 year gap between periods covered in his narrative. Some say it would have included events that may possibly explain why his wife Clover committed suicide. It may also includes details as to why such a distinguished scholar and Brahmin like him was never hired as a college professor. But we can only speculate as to this. One thing he deliberately omitted was his Antisemitism - a subject omitted in many public discussions & lectures about him.

[Brooklyn]

Via audio book:




“There are times when I feel like a stranger in this country. I am not complaining and it’s not for lack of opportunity. But it is something of a disappointment. I never would have imagined that after having spent thirty five years in the United States I would still be a stranger to so many. But that’s how it is”.


https://jorgeramos.com/en/stranger-chal ... rge-ramos/

[Brooklyn]

Uppity: My Untold Story About the Games People Play






https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-446-55525-8


Honest, accomplished, and revered on and off the field, White, who played first base for the Giants, Cardinals, and Phillies, tells the story of his rise in baseball—how he weathered the racist catcalls from the stands and inferior accommodations, considering it all a necessary evil at minor league ballparks in his preparation for the big leagues during the Jim Crow era. Old pros Monte Irvin and Willie Mays, who wrote the appreciative foreword, shepherded him through the rough times, along with the "tough love" shown by New York Giants manager Leo Durocher transforming White into an All-Star first baseman. Upon concluding his stellar career on first base with the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies in 1969, he joined the colorful Phil Rizzuto in the broadcast booth to call New York Yankees games. His on-target comments about baseball's front office are grounded in the petty skirmishes and grand accomplishments of his five-year stint as president of the National League from 1989 to 1994. Sometimes brutally frank, White dishes the dirt on almost all of the leading baseball and broadcasting names in a truly controversial baseball memoir that will not be easily forgotten.



Reading via audio book. Lots of great details about MLB in those controversial years.

[Brooklyn]

Play Hungry: The Making of a Baseball Player
by Pete Rose

[Brooklyn]

Great book about NYC gangster.





✱✱✱✱✱


Am surprised you guys aren't reading new books anymore.

[Brooklyn]

What a book!

So hard to believe that places I used to pass by or hang out in were once headquarters or hangouts for Murder, Inc. What a revelation!


Back in the bad old days this was their principle headquarters and here it is today:


https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the ... n-new-york

[Brooklyn]

The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature by Ben Tarnoff


https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/ ... -bohemians


The unforgettable story of the birth of modern America and the western writers who gave voice to its emerging identity

The Bohemians begins in 1860s San Francisco. The Gold Rush has ended; the Civil War threatens to tear apart the country. Far from the front lines, the city at the western edge roars. A global seaport, home to immigrants from five continents, San Francisco has become a complex urban society virtually overnight. The bards of the moment are the Bohemians: a young Mark Twain, fleeing the draft and seeking adventure; literary golden boy Bret Harte; struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protectorate of the group. Ben Tarnoff’s elegant, atmospheric history reveals how these four pioneering western writers would together create a new American literature, unfettered by the heavy European influence that dominated the East.

Twain arrives by stagecoach in San Francisco in 1863 and is fast drunk on champagne, oysters, and the city’s intoxicating energy. He finds that the war has only made California richer: the economy booms, newspapers and magazines thrive, and the dream of transcontinental train travel promises to soon become a reality. Twain and the Bohemians find inspiration in their surroundings: the dark ironies of frontier humor, the extravagant tales told around the campfires, and the youthful irreverence of the new world being formed in the west. The star of the moment is Bret Harte, a rising figure on the national scene and mentor to both Stoddard and Coolbrith. Young and ambitious, Twain and Harte form the Bohemian core. But as Harte’s star ascends—drawing attention from eastern taste makers such as the Atlantic Monthly—Twain flounders, questioning whether he should be a writer at all.
The Bohemian moment would continue in Boston, New York, and London, and would achieve immortality in the writings of Mark Twain. San Francisco gave him his education as a writer and helped inspire the astonishing innovations that radically reimagined American literature. At once an intimate portrait of an eclectic, unforgettable group of writers and a history of a cultural revolution in America, The Bohemians reveals how a brief moment on the western frontier changed our country forever.




Excellent book.

[Brooklyn]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/362 ... -to-chance



Their names were chanted, crowed, and cursed. Alone they were a shortstop, a second baseman, and a first baseman. But together they were an unstoppable force. Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance came together in rough-and-tumble early twentieth-century Chicago and soon formed the defensive core of the most formidable team in big league baseball, leading the Chicago Cubs to four National League pennants and two World Series championships from 1906 to 1910. At the same time, baseball was transforming from small-time diversion into a nationwide sensation. Americans from all walks of life became infected with “baseball fever,” a phenomenon of unprecedented enthusiasm and social impact. The national pastime was coming of age.

Tinker to Evers to Chance examines this pivotal moment in American history, when baseball became the game we know today. Each man came from a different corner of the country and brought a distinctive local culture with him: Evers from the Irish-American hothouse of Troy, New York; Tinker from the urban parklands of Kansas City, Missouri; Chance from the verdant fields of California’s Central Valley. The stories of these early baseball stars shed unexpected light not only on the evolution of baseball and on the enthusiasm of its players and fans all across America, but also on the broader convulsions transforming the US into a confident new industrial society. With them emerged a truly national culture.

This iconic trio helped baseball reinvent itself, but their legend has largely been relegated to myths and barroom trivia. David Rapp’s engaging history resets the story and brings these men to life again, enabling us to marvel anew at their feats on the diamond. It’s a rare look at one of baseball’s first dynasties in action.

[Brooklyn]

Lincoln's Last Trial: The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency
by Dan Abrams, David Fisher


At the end of the summer of 1859, twenty-two-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln was hired to defend him. This was to be his last great case as a lawyer ... Lincoln’s Last Trial captures the presidential hopeful’s dramatic courtroom confrontations in vivid detail as he fights for his client—but also for his own political future.

[youthathletics]

Just opened up: Lincoln's Battle with God : A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America
by Stephen Mansfield