Philip J. Lowry is an engineer and also a college professor who teaches Arabic language and Middle East politics. But Lowry’s special passion is baseball in particular, baseball stadiums. Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of Major League and Negro League Ballparks is an update of Lowry’s incredibly useful reference on baseball stadiums throughout the U.S., specifically those used in the major leagues and pro-level Negro Leagues during the past 140 years. Coverage is from Akron to Zanesville, from the long-defunct or demolished to the newly constructed. For each of the 405 stadiums, Lowry provides specific location, playing-field dimensions, crowd capacity (even as it changed through the years) and all manner of trivia about the stadium’s structural quirks and the teams that played there. Black-and-white archival photos of these venerable venues stud the text, and some of them are just good enough to evoke misty-eyed memories in the nostalgic baseball fan. An excellent index speeds access.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
