bookpagedev

Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching performances and the usual smattering of high-profile players changing addresses. Cal Ripken ended his streak, and the Florida Marlins ended their short-lived chance at dominance.

These are some of the subjects captured in the new roster of baseball books.

In his excellent Summer of ’98: When Homers Fell, Records Flew and Baseball Reclaimed America (Putnam, $23.95, 0399145141), esteemed sports columnist Mike Lupica eloquently reminds us what last season meant, not just to a nation of fans, but to a nation. The sensational race for the home run crown between the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, of the perennial rival Chicago Cubs (as Lupica says, you can’t make this stuff up), deservedly takes center stage here, but he reminds us of the other highlights and personalities that helped make the Summer of ’98 so special. To a large extent, the book also revolves around the relationship with his sons as they have come to the age when baseball takes its unrelenting grip on them. The fact that Lupica’s enthusiasm is so unguarded just makes the reading more enjoyable.

No sooner had the dust settled from McGwire v. Sosa than the publishers got busy. Perhaps the best of the lot on the subject is Celebrating 70: Mark McGwire’s Historic Season ($29.95, 089204621X), a joint effort by the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Sporting News. This painstaking chronicle captures all the drama and excitement of each homer with photos, quotes, and historical context. Surely Big Mac can now be considered among the all-time greats.

In fact, he’s already included in the next selections, not one but two new books which designate the top hundred players in the history of the game. It’s a David and Goliath author’s competition between the Bible of Baseball and a professor of philosophy.

The Sporting News Selects Baseball’s Greatest Players: A Celebration of the 20th Century’s Best by Ron Smith (The Sporting News, $29.95, 0892046082) has tradition going for it, calling on its vast archives for photos and narrative. Baseball’s Greatest Players does an even-handed job incorporating players from the Negro Leagues but exhibits some bias in picking players primarily from the pre-expansion era (prior to the 1960s).

On the other hand, Ken Shouler’s The Real 100 Best Baseball Players of All Time . . . and Why! (Addax Publishing Group, $22.95, 1886110468) claims to be devoid of sentiment, relying solely on the numbers as qualifications for membership into such an elite group. While Shouler excludes members of the Negro Leagues, he does include more players from the ’60s and later, perhaps to attract a younger readership. Sure, there are differences of opinions between the two books, and you might question the methodology used in the selection process, but part of the fun of being a fan derives from the kind of arguments that these volumes will undoubtedly generate.

The Autobiography of Baseball by Joseph Wallace is a different sort of best book and takes the concept of oral history to a new level. Previously all the players in such books would share a common bond, like a team or a time frame. But Wallace wonders how it might be to sit down old-timers with contemporary players for a discussion of their craft. Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds . . . Bob Feller and Greg Maddux . . . brothers of the diamond shooting the breeze. Using excerpts from old interviews, Wallace seamlessly blends the generations as they regale us in tales about the pressures a rookie faces, the joy of the cheers, and the heartbreak of realizing it’s time to hang ’em up. The choice of illustrations works extremely well in enhancing the stories.

The game’s visual beauty is also well represented in coffee-table books by two of the most recognizable sports photojournalists. Mickey Mantle, the Yankee Years: The Photographs of Ozzie Sweet (Tuff Stuff Books, $39.95, 0930625218) is an ode to the baseball hero of the boomer generation. The cameraman’s distinctive style, shooting at an upward angle against a solid background, emphasizes the slugger’s mythic strength and grace. Sweet’s yarns about the photo sessions offer a candid look at Mantle and his teammates.

Reflections of the Game Lives in Baseball: The Photographs of Ronald C. Modra (Willow Creek Press, $29.50, 1572231807) represents some of the best of this veteran lensman. The anecdotal reflections come from the artist and his subjects. Pat Jordan, ballplayer-cum-writer, provides a running essay on how he was instilled with a love for the game, from his days as a little leaguer through his abbreviated professional career.

For those of us who can never get enough of a good thing, there’s a new heavyweight (literally) for the reference section. It’s the All-Time Baseball Sourcebook (STATS, Inc., $79.95, 1884064531). What sets this massive volume (over 2,600 pages) apart from other such tomes is the breadth and breakdown of data previously unavailable to the average fan. Rather than listing the individual records of every player, which can be found elsewhere, the Sourcebook offers batting and pitching averages listed by decade, age, and time-span (as in best five-year stretch, seven-year, etc.), just to mention a few of the many sections. There is also an extensive franchise section where you can find out all manner of statistical information about your favorite team, along with almanac-like capsules presenting interesting factoids.

The Sourcebook also contains box scores from every All-Star and post-season game, along with summaries and registers of all the participants. The editors also give you their takes on 90 of the greatest games ever played and a fresh look at the history of baseball’s amateur draft.

Well, I don’t know about you, but all this baseball talk has made me hungry. Let’s see what’s in the Home Plate Cookbook: Recipes from Baseball Greats Just Great for Your Home Plate by Gary Saunders (Crane Hill Publishers, $14.95, 157587072X), a collection of recipes from players and others connected with the game. Hmmm, there’s Bob Feller’s fruitcake, Mickey Mantle’s Yankee Garlic Bread, and Willie Mays’s Say Hey Bran Muffins, among dozens of other delectables. There are also food-facts about the links and lore of ball park food. But be warned: Most of the dishes are definitely not politically correct in this era of healthy eating. Still, this fun book provides a heaping helping of lighthearted glimpses into the players which we seldom see.

Ron Kaplan is currently working on a book about baseball during the Korean War years.

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching…

Arts & CultureArt

The people behind a movement

Review by bookpagedev

"Art changes life" was a famous saying of the surrealists as they waged war on the established art conventions of their time. But what about the lives that changed art — the people behind the artistic movement? In Surreal Lives, social historian Ruth Brandon tells the fascinating stories of the men (and a few women) who shaped the movement that she claims "defined intellectual life between the wars."
 
Among the lives Brandon chronicles are Guillaume Apollinaire, the literary legend who, besides being a major figure in the French avant garde, wrote pornography rivaling the work of the Marquis de Sade; Marcel Duchamp, the French artist who achieved his greatest fame in the United States with works such as Nude Descending a Staircase; Tristan Tzara, known as the founder of the Dada movement, a Rumanian immigrant whose pursuit of notoriety foreshadowed the antics of today’s pop culture icons; Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia, who "with his magic lens was to become the wizard of surrealism" and made photography an important art form in the movement; Luis Bunuel, who distinguished himself as surrealism’s filmmaker, a Spaniard whose disgust with the Catholicism of his native land led him to take perverse pleasure in roaming the streets of Paris dressed as a nun or a priest; Salvador Dali, the Spanish painter who Brandon says "spent so much of his life constructing an elaborate and repellent front for public consumption that it has become hard to imagine why so many brilliant men and women found him (as they did) so extremely attractive"; Nancy Cunard, the rich, beautiful shipping-line heiress romantically involved with many of the movement’s leading names; and Andre Breton, the cold, prudish founder of surrealism, who complicated the movement’s politics by becoming involved with Nancy Cunard, his best friend’s lover.
 
Brandon writes as a cultural rather than art historian, and the result is a book that gives a fascinating look at an art movement without becoming mired in tedious discussions of style and technique. She obviously believes that it is the ideas behind art, and the lives behind the ideas, that makes art. Although she must wrestle with complex concepts, she combines ideas and story with the same skill as the Czech novelist Kundera.
 
Art historians and students of art will find the book invaluable, but lay people will also find it fascinating. Brandon chronicles events that often seem to come from the pages of a novel. When Paul Eluard, a lesser member of the surrealist circle, grows depressed over his and his wife’s involvement in a menage-a-trois with the German painter Max Ernst, he embezzles money from his father’s company to go on a binge. The wages of sin might be death for some, but not for Eluard. He doubles his money at the Monte Carlo casino and then runs off to Tahiti, following in Gauguin’s footsteps.
 
Surrealism is probably less understood than other 20th century art movements because it is less formalistic and more cerebral. Brandon shows how Breton and other surrealists, inspired by Freud’s theories, "lay the route-map for the great artistic journey of the coming century: the journey to the interior" and broke art’s devotion to representation and beauty. Although we might not know it by name, surrealism is now the guiding force behind much of today’s art, literature, and films.
 
David B. Hinton is dean of Academic Affairs at Watkins College of Art and Design in Nashville, Tennessee.

"Art changes life" was a famous saying of the surrealists as they waged war on the established art conventions of their time. But what about the lives that changed art -- the people behind the artistic movement? In Surreal Lives, social historian Ruth Brandon…

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Kinky Friedman, author, raconteur, country music singer ( They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore ), and private eye is back for his 11th investigative outing in Blast from the Past. In flashback, Kinky explains the series of events that ushered in his gumshoe career, a quirky and convoluted tale involving the usual cast of characters/suspects, as well as fellow country contra Chinga Chavin and Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, one of the inventors of the sixties. Shortly after having been convicted of complicity in the bombing of a Chicago bank, Abbie Hoffman went underground, where he remained for many years a fugitive from justice, always looking over his shoulder. Some of this time was spent in Kinky Friedman’s apartment or so Kinky tells it. Abbie and Kinky bore more than a passing resemblance to one another, so when someone took a potshot at Kinky, the immediate assumption was that Abbie was the intended target. But, as we all know, in a mystery novel nothing is ever quite that simple (particularly in a Kinky Friedman novel).

There is, of course, a girl. To protect the innocent, Kinky chooses to call her Judy. Judy is the proverbial bird with the broken wing; Kinky harbors no illusions, however, Once the wing heals good and strong, they beat you to death with it. To complicate matters, she may be sleeping with Kinky’s best friend, and she’s convinced she has seen the ghost of her flyer husband, killed in a plane crash in Vietnam.

Perhaps the best part of any Kinky Friedman novel is the barrage of topical one-liners and observations on subjects as varied as love and politics, death and cats. On the hippies and Yippies, The way I saw it, they hadn’t been wildly successful. When you start a revolution and you wind up with Nixon, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. On a little girl he met outside a Jane Street bakery, She had a spectacularly beautiful American face upon the planes of which intelligence and innocence fought a pitched battle that looked like it might last a lifetime. On his work, I felt particularly Christ-like as I cruised down Christopher Street, my cowboy drag drawing more than the usual number of stares from patrons of a leather bar just across the way. Like Jesus, I was without a home, without a wife, without a job. Also like Jesus, I was a skinny Jew who traveled around the countryside irritating people. It was good work if you could get it. Kinky Friedman is in a class by himself, some might say a world by himself, but from his little green trailer in Texas come some of the weirdest, darkest, and funniest mysteries of the decade.

Bruce Tierney lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Kinky Friedman, author, raconteur, country music singer ( They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore ), and private eye is back for his 11th investigative outing in Blast from the Past. In flashback, Kinky explains the series of events that ushered in his gumshoe career,…

Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching performances and the usual smattering of high-profile players changing addresses. Cal Ripken ended his streak, and the Florida Marlins ended their short-lived chance at dominance.

These are some of the subjects captured in the new roster of baseball books.

In his excellent Summer of ’98: When Homers Fell, Records Flew and Baseball Reclaimed America (Putnam, $23.95, 0399145141), esteemed sports columnist Mike Lupica eloquently reminds us what last season meant, not just to a nation of fans, but to a nation. The sensational race for the home run crown between the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, of the perennial rival Chicago Cubs (as Lupica says, you can’t make this stuff up), deservedly takes center stage here, but he reminds us of the other highlights and personalities that helped make the Summer of ’98 so special. To a large extent, the book also revolves around the relationship with his sons as they have come to the age when baseball takes its unrelenting grip on them. The fact that Lupica’s enthusiasm is so unguarded just makes the reading more enjoyable.

No sooner had the dust settled from McGwire v. Sosa than the publishers got busy. Perhaps the best of the lot on the subject is Celebrating 70: Mark McGwire’s Historic Season ($29.95, 089204621X), a joint effort by the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Sporting News. This painstaking chronicle captures all the drama and excitement of each homer with photos, quotes, and historical context. Surely Big Mac can now be considered among the all-time greats.

In fact, he’s already included in the next selections, not one but two new books which designate the top hundred players in the history of the game. It’s a David and Goliath author’s competition between the Bible of Baseball and a professor of philosophy.

The Sporting News Selects Baseball’s Greatest Players: A Celebration of the 20th Century’s Best by Ron Smith (The Sporting News, $29.95, 0892046082) has tradition going for it, calling on its vast archives for photos and narrative. Baseball’s Greatest Players does an even-handed job incorporating players from the Negro Leagues but exhibits some bias in picking players primarily from the pre-expansion era (prior to the 1960s).

On the other hand, Ken Shouler’s The Real 100 Best Baseball Players of All Time . . . and Why! claims to be devoid of sentiment, relying solely on the numbers as qualifications for membership into such an elite group. While Shouler excludes members of the Negro Leagues, he does include more players from the ’60s and later, perhaps to attract a younger readership. Sure, there are differences of opinions between the two books, and you might question the methodology used in the selection process, but part of the fun of being a fan derives from the kind of arguments that these volumes will undoubtedly generate.

The Autobiography of Baseball by Joseph Wallace (Abrams, $35, 0810919257) is a different sort of best book and takes the concept of oral history to a new level. Previously all the players in such books would share a common bond, like a team or a time frame. But Wallace wonders how it might be to sit down old-timers with contemporary players for a discussion of their craft. Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds . . . Bob Feller and Greg Maddux . . . brothers of the diamond shooting the breeze. Using excerpts from old interviews, Wallace seamlessly blends the generations as they regale us in tales about the pressures a rookie faces, the joy of the cheers, and the heartbreak of realizing it’s time to hang ’em up. The choice of illustrations works extremely well in enhancing the stories.

The game’s visual beauty is also well represented in coffee-table books by two of the most recognizable sports photojournalists. Mickey Mantle, the Yankee Years: The Photographs of Ozzie Sweet (Tuff Stuff Books, $39.95, 0930625218) is an ode to the baseball hero of the boomer generation. The cameraman’s distinctive style, shooting at an upward angle against a solid background, emphasizes the slugger’s mythic strength and grace. Sweet’s yarns about the photo sessions offer a candid look at Mantle and his teammates.

Reflections of the Game Lives in Baseball: The Photographs of Ronald C. Modra (Willow Creek Press, $29.50, 1572231807) represents some of the best of this veteran lensman. The anecdotal reflections come from the artist and his subjects. Pat Jordan, ballplayer-cum-writer, provides a running essay on how he was instilled with a love for the game, from his days as a little leaguer through his abbreviated professional career.

For those of us who can never get enough of a good thing, there’s a new heavyweight (literally) for the reference section. It’s the All-Time Baseball Sourcebook (STATS, Inc., $79.95, 1884064531). What sets this massive volume (over 2,600 pages) apart from other such tomes is the breadth and breakdown of data previously unavailable to the average fan. Rather than listing the individual records of every player, which can be found elsewhere, the Sourcebook offers batting and pitching averages listed by decade, age, and time-span (as in best five-year stretch, seven-year, etc.), just to mention a few of the many sections. There is also an extensive franchise section where you can find out all manner of statistical information about your favorite team, along with almanac-like capsules presenting interesting factoids.

The Sourcebook also contains box scores from every All-Star and post-season game, along with summaries and registers of all the participants. The editors also give you their takes on 90 of the greatest games ever played and a fresh look at the history of baseball’s amateur draft.

Well, I don’t know about you, but all this baseball talk has made me hungry. Let’s see what’s in the Home Plate Cookbook: Recipes from Baseball Greats Just Great for Your Home Plate by Gary Saunders (Crane Hill Publishers, $14.95, 157587072X), a collection of recipes from players and others connected with the game. Hmmm, there’s Bob Feller’s fruitcake, Mickey Mantle’s Yankee Garlic Bread, and Willie Mays’s Say Hey Bran Muffins, among dozens of other delectables. There are also food-facts about the links and lore of ball park food. But be warned: Most of the dishes are definitely not politically correct in this era of healthy eating. Still, this fun book provides a heaping helping of lighthearted glimpses into the players which we seldom see.

Ron Kaplan is currently working on a book about baseball during the Korean War years.

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching…
Religion & Spirituality

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Christianity and Buddhism at first glance appear as distant and as opposite one another as east and west. Both religious paths host incredible numbers of worshipers of their respective faiths. However, both seem to know little about each other. Author and spiritual figure Thich Nhat Hanh discusses the unique relationship that Christians and Buddhists share. In fact, he refers to Jesus and Buddha as allegorical brothers walking side by side, not in front of or behind the other.

Explaining the essential concepts of Christianity to a Buddhist, or Buddhism to a Christian, is not easy. In a manner of speaking, it’s like trying to separate the wave from the water; both are important to the existence of the other. Metaphorical comparisons work well for Thich Nhat Hanh. It’s apparent from the introduction onward that his goal is not to bury his readers in theological jargon. The single most comprehensive comparison he makes between Christianity and Buddhism is an analogy about oranges and mangoes. To paraphrase, Christianity is not a kind of Buddhism or the reverse. A mango cannot be an orange. However, both mango and orange are fruits. People can perceive and celebrate the differences of each. And no two oranges or two mangoes are the same. It is such analogies that encourage the reader to think of the affinities and the differences between the two.

Going Home is Thich Nhat Hanh’s latest title of more than two dozen books covering diverse aspects of Buddhism, Christianity, meditation, and spirituality in general. Whether you are a Christian, a Buddhist, or a member of another denomination, Going Home transcends any one religion and is a tome worth reading and returning to.

Christianity and Buddhism at first glance appear as distant and as opposite one another as east and west. Both religious paths host incredible numbers of worshipers of their respective faiths. However, both seem to know little about each other. Author and spiritual figure Thich Nhat…

Memoir

Review

Review by bookpagedev

In 1985, David Owen bought an old house in the country, fleeing the concrete cubic-foot confinement of an apartment in the Big Apple. Owen’s new home was built in 1790, a big old dilapidated house that had been a former prep-school dormitory. Casting sensibility to the winds, he and his wife purchased it on pure intuition, omitting research into its faults that surely would have persuaded them not to buy it in the first place.

Then they began renovating, slowly. He wrote a book about it, called The Walls Around Us, and if you haven’t read it yet, you’ve missed a funny and insightful book on old-house renovation, resonant with undertones of confidence fueled by the heat of burned bridges. By itself, the section on How to Find the Best Paint is worth the price of that book.

Around the House takes readers even deeper into the mystical aspects of home ownership, one salient of which is an unwritten law: those who work on their houses always wind up remodeling the space between their ears. Like an ancient house, the book has some funny rooms, with chapters like Nature’s Double Standard and Benign Neglect. Well-written humor comes as no surprise to those familiar with Owen’s previous books.

However, this one sings in the darndest places. Part of it is the astounding ease with which Owen gives you back fleeting moments of your own childhood, exploring mysterious rooms in creaky old houses. Some of it can be found in beautifully crafted epigrams, such as Owen’s Law: whatever you learn by renovating an old house is exactly what you needed to know before you started. Much of it lies in the fact that, while Owen blithely tackles gigantic projects and labors that would startle Hercules he bought his first computer in 1981, to give you an idea of his daring he relies on manly instincts of procrastination when it comes to nonessential repair. Roof leaks? Find bucket. Air infiltration? Duct tape. He is one of us.

Best of all, though, Owen leads by example, showing his readers the utter futility of working on a house with the goal of finishing it. Like most, he is neither a working fool nor a loafer, although his apathy toward yard work will endear him to every homeowner in America. His dogged quest for more storage space balances it nicely, even when he explains that the concept of enough storage space is a wholly nonexistent ideal. Pursuing lost causes is its own reward.

The essays are short but full of sweetness, philosophy, humor, hopeless optimism, cautionary tales, and practical advice on how to saw the legs of a bed when the floors slope. Around the House will make you think, especially at those critical times just before you start tinkering with your own rooftree. Read this book first, to prepare your psyche for the adventure. Like any big project, it’s a labor of love, which is always much wiser than mere logic.

Jeff Taylor is author of the book Tools of the Trade: The Art and Craft of Carpentry and the upcoming Tools of the Earth: The Practice and Pleasure of Gardening, both from Chronicle Books.

In 1985, David Owen bought an old house in the country, fleeing the concrete cubic-foot confinement of an apartment in the Big Apple. Owen's new home was built in 1790, a big old dilapidated house that had been a former prep-school dormitory. Casting sensibility to…

Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching performances and the usual smattering of high-profile players changing addresses. Cal Ripken ended his streak, and the Florida Marlins ended their short-lived chance at dominance.

These are some of the subjects captured in the new roster of baseball books.

In his excellent Summer of ’98: When Homers Fell, Records Flew and Baseball Reclaimed America (Putnam, $23.95, 0399145141), esteemed sports columnist Mike Lupica eloquently reminds us what last season meant, not just to a nation of fans, but to a nation. The sensational race for the home run crown between the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, of the perennial rival Chicago Cubs (as Lupica says, you can’t make this stuff up), deservedly takes center stage here, but he reminds us of the other highlights and personalities that helped make the Summer of ’98 so special. To a large extent, the book also revolves around the relationship with his sons as they have come to the age when baseball takes its unrelenting grip on them. The fact that Lupica’s enthusiasm is so unguarded just makes the reading more enjoyable.

No sooner had the dust settled from McGwire v. Sosa than the publishers got busy. Perhaps the best of the lot on the subject is Celebrating 70: Mark McGwire’s Historic Season ($29.95, 089204621X), a joint effort by the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Sporting News. This painstaking chronicle captures all the drama and excitement of each homer with photos, quotes, and historical context. Surely Big Mac can now be considered among the all-time greats.

In fact, he’s already included in the next selections, not one but two new books which designate the top hundred players in the history of the game. It’s a David and Goliath author’s competition between the Bible of Baseball and a professor of philosophy.

The Sporting News Selects Baseball’s Greatest Players: A Celebration of the 20th Century’s Best by Ron Smith has tradition going for it, calling on its vast archives for photos and narrative. Baseball’s Greatest Players does an even-handed job incorporating players from the Negro Leagues but exhibits some bias in picking players primarily from the pre-expansion era (prior to the 1960s).

On the other hand, Ken Shouler’s The Real 100 Best Baseball Players of All Time . . . and Why! (Addax Publishing Group, $22.95, 1886110468) claims to be devoid of sentiment, relying solely on the numbers as qualifications for membership into such an elite group. While Shouler excludes members of the Negro Leagues, he does include more players from the ’60s and later, perhaps to attract a younger readership. Sure, there are differences of opinions between the two books, and you might question the methodology used in the selection process, but part of the fun of being a fan derives from the kind of arguments that these volumes will undoubtedly generate.

The Autobiography of Baseball by Joseph Wallace (Abrams, $35, 0810919257) is a different sort of best book and takes the concept of oral history to a new level. Previously all the players in such books would share a common bond, like a team or a time frame. But Wallace wonders how it might be to sit down old-timers with contemporary players for a discussion of their craft. Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds . . . Bob Feller and Greg Maddux . . . brothers of the diamond shooting the breeze. Using excerpts from old interviews, Wallace seamlessly blends the generations as they regale us in tales about the pressures a rookie faces, the joy of the cheers, and the heartbreak of realizing it’s time to hang ’em up. The choice of illustrations works extremely well in enhancing the stories.

The game’s visual beauty is also well represented in coffee-table books by two of the most recognizable sports photojournalists. Mickey Mantle, the Yankee Years: The Photographs of Ozzie Sweet (Tuff Stuff Books, $39.95, 0930625218) is an ode to the baseball hero of the boomer generation. The cameraman’s distinctive style, shooting at an upward angle against a solid background, emphasizes the slugger’s mythic strength and grace. Sweet’s yarns about the photo sessions offer a candid look at Mantle and his teammates.

Reflections of the Game Lives in Baseball: The Photographs of Ronald C. Modra (Willow Creek Press, $29.50, 1572231807) represents some of the best of this veteran lensman. The anecdotal reflections come from the artist and his subjects. Pat Jordan, ballplayer-cum-writer, provides a running essay on how he was instilled with a love for the game, from his days as a little leaguer through his abbreviated professional career.

For those of us who can never get enough of a good thing, there’s a new heavyweight (literally) for the reference section. It’s the All-Time Baseball Sourcebook (STATS, Inc., $79.95, 1884064531). What sets this massive volume (over 2,600 pages) apart from other such tomes is the breadth and breakdown of data previously unavailable to the average fan. Rather than listing the individual records of every player, which can be found elsewhere, the Sourcebook offers batting and pitching averages listed by decade, age, and time-span (as in best five-year stretch, seven-year, etc.), just to mention a few of the many sections. There is also an extensive franchise section where you can find out all manner of statistical information about your favorite team, along with almanac-like capsules presenting interesting factoids.

The Sourcebook also contains box scores from every All-Star and post-season game, along with summaries and registers of all the participants. The editors also give you their takes on 90 of the greatest games ever played and a fresh look at the history of baseball’s amateur draft.

Well, I don’t know about you, but all this baseball talk has made me hungry. Let’s see what’s in the Home Plate Cookbook: Recipes from Baseball Greats Just Great for Your Home Plate by Gary Saunders (Crane Hill Publishers, $14.95, 157587072X), a collection of recipes from players and others connected with the game. Hmmm, there’s Bob Feller’s fruitcake, Mickey Mantle’s Yankee Garlic Bread, and Willie Mays’s Say Hey Bran Muffins, among dozens of other delectables. There are also food-facts about the links and lore of ball park food. But be warned: Most of the dishes are definitely not politically correct in this era of healthy eating. Still, this fun book provides a heaping helping of lighthearted glimpses into the players which we seldom see.

Ron Kaplan is currently working on a book about baseball during the Korean War years.

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching…
NonfictionEssays

Review

Review by bookpagedev

This is Robert D. Kaplan’s vision of America’s future: a collection of city-states where political power and decision making are concentrated locally. Rather than set broad policy and enforce law, the federal government would provide a protective shield against such hazards as global terrorists and computer hackers and supply aid such as specialized military units for floods and earthquakes. This new political arrangement is what Kaplan describes as an empire wilderness, vast, remote, decentralized. And this outlook forms the cornerstone for Kaplan’s new book, An Empire Wilderness.

It is best described as a political travelogue, one pilgrim’s impressions formed while progressing down his country’s interstates and back roads. The journey is set in the West, where Kaplan shakes his East Coast shackles and witnesses America’s still-open, still-developing vistas. He travels some of the same trails as Kerouac. But where Kerouac wrote for the Beat Generation, Kaplan writes for a Baby Boom Generation which approaches the 21st century harboring worries about old age and the future of its offspring.

Kaplan, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, has established a niche for himself with this style of writing. He traveled through Bosnia and made controversial political observations in his best-selling Balkan Ghosts. And he roamed from West Africa to Central and South East Asia to pen The Ends of the Earth. In An Empire Wilderness, Kaplan visits such places as Fort Levenworth, Kansas, Orange County, California, Tucson, Arizona, Nogales, Mexico, and Vancouver, Canada, developing some intriguing insights into America’s future: Foreign policy will, over the decades, be increasingly influenced by the military, as war, peacekeeping, famine relief, and the like grow too technical and complex for civilian managers to control. Despite attempts to curb the number of immigrants from Latin America and Asia, large scale immigration may have to continue, if for no other reason than to provide an army of younger workers to support America’s retirees. Efforts to revive decaying urban downtowns are threatened by suburbanization and computerization. No one needs to go [downtown] to shop, see a movie, or go to a fancy restaurant. And the residents can be hooked up to the world from their homes. Thus, the essence of An Empire Wilderness is a glimpse at a horizon that Kaplan sees as neither too bright, nor too bleak. Recalling Rome, Athens, and other empires that have risen and fallen, Kaplan somewhat cryptically predicts that the changes being experienced in America are part of an evolution toward finality. The next passage will be our most difficult as a nation, he writes, and it will be our last. John T. Slania is a writer in Chicago, Illinois.

This is Robert D. Kaplan's vision of America's future: a collection of city-states where political power and decision making are concentrated locally. Rather than set broad policy and enforce law, the federal government would provide a protective shield against such hazards as global terrorists and…

Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching performances and the usual smattering of high-profile players changing addresses. Cal Ripken ended his streak, and the Florida Marlins ended their short-lived chance at dominance.

These are some of the subjects captured in the new roster of baseball books.

In his excellent Summer of ’98: When Homers Fell, Records Flew and Baseball Reclaimed America (Putnam, $23.95, 0399145141), esteemed sports columnist Mike Lupica eloquently reminds us what last season meant, not just to a nation of fans, but to a nation. The sensational race for the home run crown between the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, of the perennial rival Chicago Cubs (as Lupica says, you can’t make this stuff up), deservedly takes center stage here, but he reminds us of the other highlights and personalities that helped make the Summer of ’98 so special. To a large extent, the book also revolves around the relationship with his sons as they have come to the age when baseball takes its unrelenting grip on them. The fact that Lupica’s enthusiasm is so unguarded just makes the reading more enjoyable.

No sooner had the dust settled from McGwire v. Sosa than the publishers got busy. Perhaps the best of the lot on the subject is Celebrating 70: Mark McGwire’s Historic Season, a joint effort by the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Sporting News. This painstaking chronicle captures all the drama and excitement of each homer with photos, quotes, and historical context. Surely Big Mac can now be considered among the all-time greats.

In fact, he’s already included in the next selections, not one but two new books which designate the top hundred players in the history of the game. It’s a David and Goliath author’s competition between the Bible of Baseball and a professor of philosophy.

The Sporting News Selects Baseball’s Greatest Players: A Celebration of the 20th Century’s Best by Ron Smith (The Sporting News, $29.95, 0892046082) has tradition going for it, calling on its vast archives for photos and narrative. Baseball’s Greatest Players does an even-handed job incorporating players from the Negro Leagues but exhibits some bias in picking players primarily from the pre-expansion era (prior to the 1960s).

On the other hand, Ken Shouler’s The Real 100 Best Baseball Players of All Time . . . and Why! (Addax Publishing Group, $22.95, 1886110468) claims to be devoid of sentiment, relying solely on the numbers as qualifications for membership into such an elite group. While Shouler excludes members of the Negro Leagues, he does include more players from the ’60s and later, perhaps to attract a younger readership. Sure, there are differences of opinions between the two books, and you might question the methodology used in the selection process, but part of the fun of being a fan derives from the kind of arguments that these volumes will undoubtedly generate.

The Autobiography of Baseball by Joseph Wallace (Abrams, $35, 0810919257) is a different sort of best book and takes the concept of oral history to a new level. Previously all the players in such books would share a common bond, like a team or a time frame. But Wallace wonders how it might be to sit down old-timers with contemporary players for a discussion of their craft. Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds . . . Bob Feller and Greg Maddux . . . brothers of the diamond shooting the breeze. Using excerpts from old interviews, Wallace seamlessly blends the generations as they regale us in tales about the pressures a rookie faces, the joy of the cheers, and the heartbreak of realizing it’s time to hang ’em up. The choice of illustrations works extremely well in enhancing the stories.

The game’s visual beauty is also well represented in coffee-table books by two of the most recognizable sports photojournalists. Mickey Mantle, the Yankee Years: The Photographs of Ozzie Sweet (Tuff Stuff Books, $39.95, 0930625218) is an ode to the baseball hero of the boomer generation. The cameraman’s distinctive style, shooting at an upward angle against a solid background, emphasizes the slugger’s mythic strength and grace. Sweet’s yarns about the photo sessions offer a candid look at Mantle and his teammates.

Reflections of the Game Lives in Baseball: The Photographs of Ronald C. Modra (Willow Creek Press, $29.50, 1572231807) represents some of the best of this veteran lensman. The anecdotal reflections come from the artist and his subjects. Pat Jordan, ballplayer-cum-writer, provides a running essay on how he was instilled with a love for the game, from his days as a little leaguer through his abbreviated professional career.

For those of us who can never get enough of a good thing, there’s a new heavyweight (literally) for the reference section. It’s the All-Time Baseball Sourcebook (STATS, Inc., $79.95, 1884064531). What sets this massive volume (over 2,600 pages) apart from other such tomes is the breadth and breakdown of data previously unavailable to the average fan. Rather than listing the individual records of every player, which can be found elsewhere, the Sourcebook offers batting and pitching averages listed by decade, age, and time-span (as in best five-year stretch, seven-year, etc.), just to mention a few of the many sections. There is also an extensive franchise section where you can find out all manner of statistical information about your favorite team, along with almanac-like capsules presenting interesting factoids.

The Sourcebook also contains box scores from every All-Star and post-season game, along with summaries and registers of all the participants. The editors also give you their takes on 90 of the greatest games ever played and a fresh look at the history of baseball’s amateur draft.

Well, I don’t know about you, but all this baseball talk has made me hungry. Let’s see what’s in the Home Plate Cookbook: Recipes from Baseball Greats Just Great for Your Home Plate by Gary Saunders (Crane Hill Publishers, $14.95, 157587072X), a collection of recipes from players and others connected with the game. Hmmm, there’s Bob Feller’s fruitcake, Mickey Mantle’s Yankee Garlic Bread, and Willie Mays’s Say Hey Bran Muffins, among dozens of other delectables. There are also food-facts about the links and lore of ball park food. But be warned: Most of the dishes are definitely not politically correct in this era of healthy eating. Still, this fun book provides a heaping helping of lighthearted glimpses into the players which we seldom see.

Ron Kaplan is currently working on a book about baseball during the Korean War years.

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching…

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Normally, when I read a book I either like it or I don’t like it. I don’t usually feel like inviting its author over for a pajama party. But this one had that effect on me. I’d never read anything by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith before, I’m sorry to say, but I think I’ve got a crush on her.

An American Killing is a murder mystery/thriller, narrated by a true-crime writer clearly based on the real-life crime writer Ann Rule (who, I bet, never figured she’d turn up as the protagonist of a novel). Rule, like the heroine of An American Killing, was a journalist whose longtime office buddy was arrested for a mass murder. In Rule’s case the friend and murder suspect was Ted Bundy; in the novel his name is different, but the details of the murders are pretty much the same. The arrest changed Rule’s life: at first convinced that a tragic error had been made, she decided to look into the case, and was deeply shaken to discover there’d been no mistake. She became fascinated by the idea that there are people who are evil inside, but who look and act just like you and me. She wrote a book about the Bundy case kind of a true-crime version of Hannah Arrendt’s book The Banality of Evil about the trial of Adolph Eichman. Rule’s book was a bestseller and led to a series of true-crime books that explored the same ground one about a mother who shoots her own children; another about a poisoner. Denise Burke’s career, in An American Killing, has been identical, up until now. This case is different: this one investigates a triple murder for which an innocent man is framed. In addition to her professional life, Denise is also married to a key member of the Clinton administration. (Hillary Clinton calls her occasionally to ask stuff like, what do regular mothers wear to school on Parents’ Day?) She’s got a complicated history, two teenage kids, a dog, a large house with a dining room in dire need of redecorating, and a summer place in Rhode Island. She manages this female I-can-have-everything-and-do-it-brilliantly prototype with humor, a heartwarming lack of efficiency, and exactly the right amount of cynicism. At one point it’s got to be either the dining room or the affair with the Rhode Island congressman, and she chooses the congressman probably, in retrospect, a bad choice. Still, that choice sets in motion the series of events that frame this book.

Plot aside (and I don’t mean to downplay it the plot is good), there is a sensibility at work here that is clear-eyed, contemporary, and incredibly charismatic. Tirone Smith has written four other novels. Prepare, as I will, to hunt them up and read them. And, Mary-Ann, if you’re ever in New Jersey, definitely call.

Nan Goldberg is a freelance writer in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Normally, when I read a book I either like it or I don't like it. I don't usually feel like inviting its author over for a pajama party. But this one had that effect on me. I'd never read anything by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith before,…

Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching performances and the usual smattering of high-profile players changing addresses. Cal Ripken ended his streak, and the Florida Marlins ended their short-lived chance at dominance.

These are some of the subjects captured in the new roster of baseball books.

In his excellent Summer of ’98: When Homers Fell, Records Flew and Baseball Reclaimed America, esteemed sports columnist Mike Lupica eloquently reminds us what last season meant, not just to a nation of fans, but to a nation. The sensational race for the home run crown between the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, of the perennial rival Chicago Cubs (as Lupica says, you can’t make this stuff up), deservedly takes center stage here, but he reminds us of the other highlights and personalities that helped make the Summer of ’98 so special. To a large extent, the book also revolves around the relationship with his sons as they have come to the age when baseball takes its unrelenting grip on them. The fact that Lupica’s enthusiasm is so unguarded just makes the reading more enjoyable.

No sooner had the dust settled from McGwire v. Sosa than the publishers got busy. Perhaps the best of the lot on the subject is Celebrating 70: Mark McGwire’s Historic Season ($29.95, 089204621X), a joint effort by the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Sporting News. This painstaking chronicle captures all the drama and excitement of each homer with photos, quotes, and historical context. Surely Big Mac can now be considered among the all-time greats.

In fact, he’s already included in the next selections, not one but two new books which designate the top hundred players in the history of the game. It’s a David and Goliath author’s competition between the Bible of Baseball and a professor of philosophy.

The Sporting News Selects Baseball’s Greatest Players: A Celebration of the 20th Century’s Best by Ron Smith (The Sporting News, $29.95, 0892046082) has tradition going for it, calling on its vast archives for photos and narrative. Baseball’s Greatest Players does an even-handed job incorporating players from the Negro Leagues but exhibits some bias in picking players primarily from the pre-expansion era (prior to the 1960s).

On the other hand, Ken Shouler’s The Real 100 Best Baseball Players of All Time . . . and Why! (Addax Publishing Group, $22.95, 1886110468) claims to be devoid of sentiment, relying solely on the numbers as qualifications for membership into such an elite group. While Shouler excludes members of the Negro Leagues, he does include more players from the ’60s and later, perhaps to attract a younger readership. Sure, there are differences of opinions between the two books, and you might question the methodology used in the selection process, but part of the fun of being a fan derives from the kind of arguments that these volumes will undoubtedly generate.

The Autobiography of Baseball by Joseph Wallace (Abrams, $35, 0810919257) is a different sort of best book and takes the concept of oral history to a new level. Previously all the players in such books would share a common bond, like a team or a time frame. But Wallace wonders how it might be to sit down old-timers with contemporary players for a discussion of their craft. Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds . . . Bob Feller and Greg Maddux . . . brothers of the diamond shooting the breeze. Using excerpts from old interviews, Wallace seamlessly blends the generations as they regale us in tales about the pressures a rookie faces, the joy of the cheers, and the heartbreak of realizing it’s time to hang ’em up. The choice of illustrations works extremely well in enhancing the stories.

The game’s visual beauty is also well represented in coffee-table books by two of the most recognizable sports photojournalists. Mickey Mantle, the Yankee Years: The Photographs of Ozzie Sweet (Tuff Stuff Books, $39.95, 0930625218) is an ode to the baseball hero of the boomer generation. The cameraman’s distinctive style, shooting at an upward angle against a solid background, emphasizes the slugger’s mythic strength and grace. Sweet’s yarns about the photo sessions offer a candid look at Mantle and his teammates.

Reflections of the Game Lives in Baseball: The Photographs of Ronald C. Modra (Willow Creek Press, $29.50, 1572231807) represents some of the best of this veteran lensman. The anecdotal reflections come from the artist and his subjects. Pat Jordan, ballplayer-cum-writer, provides a running essay on how he was instilled with a love for the game, from his days as a little leaguer through his abbreviated professional career.

For those of us who can never get enough of a good thing, there’s a new heavyweight (literally) for the reference section. It’s the All-Time Baseball Sourcebook (STATS, Inc., $79.95, 1884064531). What sets this massive volume (over 2,600 pages) apart from other such tomes is the breadth and breakdown of data previously unavailable to the average fan. Rather than listing the individual records of every player, which can be found elsewhere, the Sourcebook offers batting and pitching averages listed by decade, age, and time-span (as in best five-year stretch, seven-year, etc.), just to mention a few of the many sections. There is also an extensive franchise section where you can find out all manner of statistical information about your favorite team, along with almanac-like capsules presenting interesting factoids.

The Sourcebook also contains box scores from every All-Star and post-season game, along with summaries and registers of all the participants. The editors also give you their takes on 90 of the greatest games ever played and a fresh look at the history of baseball’s amateur draft.

Well, I don’t know about you, but all this baseball talk has made me hungry. Let’s see what’s in the Home Plate Cookbook: Recipes from Baseball Greats Just Great for Your Home Plate by Gary Saunders (Crane Hill Publishers, $14.95, 157587072X), a collection of recipes from players and others connected with the game. Hmmm, there’s Bob Feller’s fruitcake, Mickey Mantle’s Yankee Garlic Bread, and Willie Mays’s Say Hey Bran Muffins, among dozens of other delectables. There are also food-facts about the links and lore of ball park food. But be warned: Most of the dishes are definitely not politically correct in this era of healthy eating. Still, this fun book provides a heaping helping of lighthearted glimpses into the players which we seldom see.

Ron Kaplan is currently working on a book about baseball during the Korean War years.

Out of the ballpark: bats and stats Perhaps no baseball season has been as closely monitored and analyzed as 1998. Balls were rocketing out of the parks at an amazing rate, and the Yankees were leaving the competition in the dust. There were formidable pitching…

Biography

Review

Review by bookpagedev

In Dean Acheson’s 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his years in the State Department (1941-1953), Present at the Creation, he wrote, In a sense, the postwar years were a period of creation, for the ordering of which I shared with others some responsibility. Historian James Chace demonstrates in his outstanding biography, Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World, that as Under Secretary and then as Secretary of State, Acheson was the prime mover behind major U.S. foreign policy initiatives in this period when a new world was being created. Chace considers Acheson the most important figure in American foreign policy since John Quincy Adams, and his book meticulously details why this is so. As Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Acheson faced many challenges. He played a key role in clarifying the language of the Lend-Lease agreement between the U.S and Great Britain, led the State Department’s delegation to the Bretton Woods conference where the International Monetary and the World Bank were agreed on, skillfully crafted the Truman Doctrine, and began work on the studies that led to the proposal for a Marshall Plan to assist Europe economically. All of these endeavors required doing a super sales job on Congress.

During his tenure as Secretary of State, he pushed for the security pact which later became known as NATO. In 1950 he and the President decided to treat the North Korean aggression as a local war and thus established a Cold War precedent for fighting a limited war rather than a general war. Acheson backed Truman’s dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur for exceeding his authority during the Korean War. And Acheson was never more masterful than when he spent seven days before Senate committees defending administration policy in that matter. Decisions on China, the unification and/or division of Germany, how to assist Japan, and many other policy matters were made which shaped the way much of the world developed for decades. Acheson and State Department employees were attacked mercilessly during this period by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others for alleged disloyalty and losing China. The key to Acheson’s achievements and the administration’s was that, unlike some other presidents, President Truman did not want to run foreign policy from the White House. Instead, he wanted respect, consultation, and the right to make final decisions. Acheson understood this and never failed to provide him with the personal touches that Truman craved. Acheson was not and ideologue but an intensely pragmatic man, impatient with abstractions. Although he became strongly anti-Communist, he did not have a grand design. After leaving office, his advice was sought by other presidents, Kennedy, Johnson, and even Richard Nixon, who had been one of Acheson’s most vociferous critics.

Chace’s superb study helps to view the private person as well as the public figure, detailing Acheson’s early career as a law clerk and the influential relationships in his life, including those with friends and family. Acheson is absorbing reading about an extraordinary, if, at times, controversial, public servant who helped to chart the way through the uncertain foreign policy waters at a crucial point in our history. Roger Bishop is a monthly contributor to BookPage.

In Dean Acheson's 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his years in the State Department (1941-1953), Present at the Creation, he wrote, In a sense, the postwar years were a period of creation, for the ordering of which I shared with others some responsibility. Historian James…

Sports

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Get in the swing of it The Masters golf tournament just isn’t fair . . . to its viewers on television. Picture the typical rabid golfer who lives in the Northeast or Midwest. It’s April. He or she has been sitting around all winter, wearing out the living room carpet with putting practice. Then the Masters, the first major golf tournament of the season, appears on television. And everything is perfect. The azaleas are in full bloom, and the world’s best golfers are hitting magnificent drives and sinking eagle putts. No wonder the ratings are always good. Spring doesn’t seem so distant anymore, and anything is possible. This will be the year when you break 80, or 90, or 100. The Masters only lasts for four days in April, but you can take a longer time to read about that competition and the other major tournaments in a pair of new golf books that are just out.

The top release is John Feinstein’s annual literary effort, this time called The Majors (Little, Brown, $25, 0316279714; Time Warner AudioBooks, $17.98, 1570426848). It’s an up-close look at the four major golf championships: the Masters, U.

S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship. You might remember Feinstein’s book on golf from a couple of years ago, A Good Walk Spoiled. That could have been called A Year in the Life of the PGA Tour. It caught the golf boom at just the right time and was a bestseller. A Good Walk Spoiled was good. The Majors is better. In his books, Feinstein usually introduces his cast of characters and slowly lets them play out the season. No matter how thorough and how good the writing, it’s still tough to get everything in while reviewing an entire year. But four tournaments are a different story. Each event has a small list of contenders, and there’s plenty of time to find out what went right, and wrong. Feinstein does a particularly good job of informing the reader about the pressures involved in trying to win a major. It’s the only time of the year when the golfers are playing for history more than the prizes, and it shows up in a variety of hooks and slices that can make the best professional look like a duffer.

Feinstein had a good run of tournaments in 1998: a Masters triumph on the final hole by Mark O’Meara, who went on to double at the British Open; an exciting comeback by Lee Janzen at the U.

S. Open; and a two-man duel at the PGA that was won by Vijay Singh. There are plenty of fun details along the way. When you finish this book, you’ll take greater enjoyment from watching the major championships in 1999.

For those who want to learn more about the first major championship on the calendar, The Making of the Masters: Clifford Roberts, Augusta National, and Golf’s Most Prestigious Tournament will do the trick. The Masters is a little different from the other majors. It is played on the same course every year, Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, and is not a professional or national championship. The Masters started off as a cozy little event hosted by Bobby Jones, a legendary amateur golfer from the 1920s. Jones was helped by Clifford Roberts, who was head of the club for more than 40 years and was a perfectionist when it came to the course and the tournament.

The author, David Owen, has written the story of how the Masters grew to obtain the status it has today. The research is rather remarkable. Owen had access to Augusta National’s archives, and the detail is reflected throughout the book. If a tree was moved on one of Augusta’s holes, Owen comments on it. If a player from the 1930s complains years later that a late pairing was unfair, Owen pulls out the starting times and shows the player’s complaint is invalid. As a result, The Making of the Masters clears up some misconceptions about the tournament and its founders and offers a favorable but relatively balanced portrait of all concerned.

Budd Bailey is a frequent reviewer of sports books in Buffalo, New York.

Get in the swing of it The Masters golf tournament just isn't fair . . . to its viewers on television. Picture the typical rabid golfer who lives in the Northeast or Midwest. It's April. He or she has been sitting around all winter, wearing…

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