Baseball War

Big league baseball would seem to have been a hard sell in 1942. World War II was not going well for the United States in the Pacific and not much better in Europe. Moreover, the country was in drastically short supply of ships, planes, submarines, torpedoes, and other war materials, and Uncle Sam needed men, millions of them, including those from 21 through 35 years of age who had been ordered to register for the draft, the age range of most big league baseball players.

From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives—an average of twenty-seven thousand a day. For...

In 1940, at just 15 years old, small-town baseball star Gene Moore was signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers, who saw in him the potential to become one of the great catchers of all time. Before that could happen, though, WWII intervened. Gene's story, a surprising paean to the power and humanity of a game, is told here by his son, a first-time author who exhibits the confidence and pacing of a pro.

Before the floodlights and television deals, before analytics and billion-dollar contracts, baseball was the story of a nation learning who it was. It rose from muddy fields and smoke-filled taverns, from gentlemen’s clubs and back alleys, from dreams stitched into horsehide and hope. It was America in miniature—its courage, its contradictions, its relentless ambition played out between the baselines. In Baseball- The Untold Story of America's Pastime, bestselling author, Tim Cooper, tells the sweeping, cinematic story of baseball’s evolution from a 19th-century curiosity to the ...

In 1943, while the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were winning pennants and meeting in that year's World Series, one of the nation's strongest baseball teams practiced on a skinned-out college field in the heart of North Carolina. Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Johnny Sain were among a cadre of fighter-pilot cadets who wore the Cloudbuster Nine baseball jersey at an elite Navy training school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

From acclaimed journalist Ben Bradlee Jr. comes the epic biography of Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams that baseball fans have been waiting for. Williams was the best hitter in baseball history. His batting average of .406 in 1941 has not been topped since, and no player who has hit more than...

From Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River and Shutter Island, comes the paperback edition of The Given Day, an unflinching family epic that captures the political unrest of a nation caught between a well-patterned past and an unpredictable future. This beautifully...

From New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane comes this epic, unflinching tale of the making and unmaking of a gangster in the Prohibition Era of the Roaring Twenties—now a Warner Bros. movie starring Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Zoe Saldana, and Sienna Miller. Meticulously researched...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER | Read by AudioFile Golden Voice, JD Jackson “I loved this book.... I looked forward to [it] more than any other in a long time, and Howard Bryant exceeded my great expectations. Kings and Pawns is brilliantly conceived and powerfully written.” — David Maraniss, author...

" Hynd has captured the spirit of the times in this quaint and entertaining sidelight to sports and show-biz history." - Publishers Weekly. Newly revised, expanded and re-illustrated....Mat 2021...... Here is a stunning and largely unknown true story about a scandalous romance, baseball and the American theater in the years before World War One. Think of this as the Joe Di Maggio and Marilyn Monroe of an earlier era. Former 'Sports Illustrated' contributor Noel Hynd has recreated a fascinating era in all its scandal, sexiness, charm and glamour. A memorable true tale! From Publishers Weekly...

“Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights is an American classic. With The Mosquito Bowl, he is back with a true story even more colorful and profound. This book too is destined to become a classic. I devoured it.” — John Grisham An extraordinary, untold story of the Second World War in the...

The only Major League ballplayer whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA, Moe Berg has the singular distinction of having both a 15-year career as a catcher for such teams as the New York Robins and the Chicago White Sox and that of a spy for the OSS during World War II. Here, Dawidoff provides "a careful and sympathetic biography" ( Chicago Sun-Times) of this enigmatic man.

The companion to Ken Burns’s magnificent PBS television series—updated and expanded to coincide with the broadcast of a new, two-part Tenth Inning directed with Lynn Novick. The authors of the acclaimed and bestselling The Civil War, Jazz, and The War turn to another uniquely American...

During World War II, a star baseball player trades his bat for a rifle and discovers that some battles can't be won on any field. Will Jamison has it all as a rising star for the Washington Senators when Pearl Harbor changes everything. Driven by patriotism and family legacy, he enlists in the Army, leaving behind fame, fortune, and his secret affair with the married Kay Barlow. During the Battle of the Bulge, Jamison's unit makes a heroic stand near Bastogne against overwhelming German forces. He earns a Silver Star, but the brutal carnage leaves invisible scars that no medal can heal.

The year is 1918. An influenza epidemic imperils the world. A world war rages, igniting protests on the American homefront and threatening to end professional baseball. Labor unrest is everywhere. The Red Sox are struggling to reach the World Series. Will Beaman is asked to investigate the disappearance of a derelict who has been hanging around Fenway Park bragging about becoming rich on fixed games. Will's search for the missing man triggers threats on his life, plunks him into the midst of Boston's volatile gambling community, identifies a host of rough-and-tumble suspects, and draws him ...

A "marvelous" (Sports Illustrated) portrait of the three men whose lives were forever changed by WWI-era Boston and the Spanish flu: baseball star Babe Ruth, symphony conductor Karl Muck, and Harvard law student Charles Whittlesey. In the fall of 1918, a fever gripped Boston. The streets emptied...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer. And in The Brothers K he tells a story...

It was the year that Joe DiMaggio set his 56-game hitting streak, that Ted Williams batted .406, that the Dodgers and the Yankees battled each other in a classic World Series, and that America went to war. In this look at what he calls "the best baseball season ever", Robert Creamer skillfully intertwines all these epochal baseball happenings with an informal history of a pivotal period in American life.

Two Harvard undergraduates must decide how to juggle their travails in Cambridge with the increased tensions in Europe. As they endure the horrors of the Western Front, William clings to the hope that he may somehow find answers about his past.

When the eleven- and twelve-year-olds on the Cannon Street YMCA All-Star team registered for a baseball tournament in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 1955, it put the team and the forces of integration on a collision course with segregation, bigotry, and the southern way of life. When all the White teams withdrew in protest, the Cannon Street team won the state tournament.