Take Me Out to the Ball Game: The Story of the Sensational Baseball Song by Amy Whorf McGuiggan

While I have never considered the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" sensational, it has always elicited pleasant daydreams of just spending an afternoon watching baseball games on green fields. The image is always of day games, as daytime is when baseball should be played, and the fields are always open to the sky. If Amy Whorf McGuiggan is right, a lot of people like this daydream, and sheet music sales and performance of the song have always been big. She tells the story in her new history Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

Imagine three intersecting circles. One is the history of baseball, a second is the history of Vaudeville, and the third is the history of popular song. The intersection of these three circle is where you find this book. McGuiggan gives each of these three subjects a quick review, focusing on how the song impacted each. It is also the story of several people, most especially the lyricist Jack Norworth (also known for "Shine On, Harvest Moon') and composer and publisher Albert Von Tilzer. At the end of the book, readers also learn about baseball team owner Bill Veeck and broadcaster Harry Carey, who started the singing of the chorus of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" a seventh inning stretch tradition.

Mystery is also an appeal element in Take Me Out to the Ball Game, as the early records of both baseball and Vaudeville are incomplete. McGuiggan attempt to pin down the first performance of the song lets readers know about a forgotten world of cheap theaters and the entertainers who traveled the Vaudeville circuit. Take Me Out to the Ball Game is a good book for readers who like light history.

McGuiggan, Amy Whorf. Take Me Out to the Ball Game. University of Nebraska Press, 2009. ISBN 9780803218918.

Elvis 1956 by Alfred Wertheimer

When RCA Records hired Alfred Wertheimer to photograph their newly-signed recording star Elvis Presley (1935-1977) performing on the Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show, the photographer had never heard of the twenty-one year old singer, but Wertheimer quickly recognized Presley as a great photographic subject. Within four months he shot hundreds of candid photos of the young Presley on stage, backstage, in hotels, on the street, on trains, and at home. These black-and-white photos have now been collected in Elvis 1956.

In his essay, Wertheimer claims that Presley was very accommodating and seemed oblivious to the photographer trailing him away from the stage. I can accept this for most of the photos, but Presley must have known Wertheimer was taking photos while kissing his "girl for the day" in a stairwell in Richmond, Virginia. How could Wertheimer have squeezed past the couple to get shots from both above and below?

Presley looks very young and unblemished in these evocative photos that seem from the distant past. The singer wears a lot of expensive looking jewelry. My favorite photo may be Presley in a diner with signs that read "grilled cheese 20¢" and "chicken salad 30¢." I also really like the shot of Presley singing "Hound Dog" to a basset hound on the Steve Allen Show.

Elvis 1956 is an attractive volume that may be consumed easily in a single sitting. It is a worthwhile addition to a library biography collection.

Wertheimer, Alfred. Elvis 1956. 2009. Welcome Books. 127p. ISBN 9781599620732.

J.M.W. Turner by Peter Ackroyd

Painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) brushed off admirers' praises with the claim that his genius was nothing but hard work, but he was not humble. He still expected the best space for hanging his pictures at annual Royal Academy exhibitions. He submitted paintings almost every year for fifty-eight years, missing only four times. By the time he died, the very private Turner was the most famous but perhaps least known painter in England. In J.M.W. Turner, prolific biographer Peter Ackroyd chronicles Turner's revolutionary career as the painter obsessed with light and color.

Often alone, never married, England's master of marine, landscape, and historical painting was not totally unsociable. He lived with his father, who helped him manage his house and studios. He also maintained quiet relationships with widows and had two daughters. Several patrons opened their homes to him at any time. Turner used his friend's hospitality to visit landscapes across England and the continent.

In this title from Ackroyd's Brief Lives, author Peter Ackroyd tries to recount Turner's career quickly. He mostly succeeds, leaving the read time to check out volumes of Turner's oils and watercolors.

Ackroyd, Peter. J.M.W. Turner. 2006. Doubleday. 173p. ISBN 0385507984.

Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand by Benita Eisler

After reading Chopin's Funeral by Benita Eisler, I had really high expectations for Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand. Perhaps, I expected too much from the book about the prolific French novelist, which may be considered a companion volume to the book about Sand's most famous lover. I thought Eisler would be just as creative in her telling of Sand's story. Starting Chopin's story with his death and funeral was a dramatic begining that set a tone for the whole book. Her telling of Sand's story, while at times full of events and famous people, was never as compelling. The French novelist's life seemed to be just one thing after another.

Perhaps writing about Chopin was easier. He was a more identifiable character with steadier beliefs, and he matured. Sand was a maddeningly variable character who never really defined herself well. She was at moments an aristrocrat and at others a commoner, sometimes radical and then conservative. She was just as unfair to her daughter as her mother was to her. For someone who seemed full of compassion, she never seemed to see her own faults and how they hurt others. I found her constant changing of lovers rather dull and self-centered. From what Eisler describes, I have no desire to read any of Sand's books.

You might feel different. Perhaps I was just the wrong reader.

As I said, I really enjoyed Chopin's Funeral, which somehow seemed more joyful.

Eisler, Benita. Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand. Counterpoint, 2006. ISBN 9781582433496.

The Secret World of Walter Anderson by Hester Bass

Nature artist Walter Anderson was a bit like St. Francis of Assisi, Henry David Thoreau, and Vincent Van Gogh. He befriended animals on Horn Island in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Mississippi. He alternated his time between his retreats to the humanly uninhabited island and working for the family manufacturing business. While alone he painted swirling, colorful natural scenes that almost move right off the canvas. Alabama author Hester Bass tells the painter's story in The Secret World of Walter Anderson, a children's picture book illustrated by E. B. Lewis.

Bass and Lewis depict Anderson as having childlike enthusiasm for his vocation. He is shown climbing trees to see nests and wading into the gulf to sketch a moth on the water. On most pages there is an animal observing the gentle man. His retreating from family and society is just accepted as the way of an artist.

The author includes explanatory notes at the end of the book from which readers learn that Hurricane Katrina destroyed some of Anderson's estate. Luckily some of the paintings were in a small museum on higher ground away from the coast. Part of the profit from this attractive book will be used for restoration and support of Walter Anderson Museum of Art.

Bass, Hester. The Secret World of Walter Anderson. Candlewick Press, 2009. ISBN 9780763635831.

For the Pitchers and Catchers in Camp: A Poem

For the pitchers and catchers in camp,
The mornings are chilly and damp.

For players brought up from the farm,
Noon is both sunny and warm.

For the weary and crippled old vet,
We are sad the sun will soon set.

For all it's the season to dream
Of hot summer days with the team.

May the snows soon all melt away
For the fans waiting for opening day.

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone

An excellent reason for writing history is reminding older readers and informing younger readers how our society has changed for the better. In Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream, Tanya Lee Stone does so by reviving a mostly forgotten story about gender discrimination in the American space program.

Since 1995, when NASA honored the thirteen women who wanted to train to be astronauts in the late 1950s and early 1960s, journalists have acknowledged the women in human interest stories, but NASA's role in keeping them on the ground is usually secondary. A research subcontractor named Randy Lovelace knowing that women were as a rule lighter and smaller than men believed that they would be easier to send into space at less cost. He ran his candidates through many of the same strenuous tests as the male astronauts and found the women scored as well or better in many of the trials. How NASA ignored and hid his findings while using the women for publicity is part of Stone's story.

Lee completes the story with how women did make it to space as researchers during the Shuttle program but never as a pilot in command until 1999. She also tells what has become of the women who were grounded so long ago. This book aimed at upper elementary and middle school readers is an interesting read for anyone interest in women's rights.

Stone, Tanya Lee. Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream. Candlewick Press, 2009. ISBN 9780763636111.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

If our area library group The Big Read had not chosen The Help by Kathryn Stockett as its community book, I might never have listened to this audiobook about the lives of black maids in Mississippi in the 1960s. I rarely read fiction and usually avoid anything on the fiction best seller lists other than books by Alexander McCall Smith or J.R.R. Tolkien. But they did, and I did, and I'm pleased with how it all worked out. The Help is a fascinating book with interesting characters and a generous serving of history.

Being a baby boomer, I knew a lot of what Stockett writes about The Help - the Civil Rights Movement, the Jim Crow laws, the KKK, ladies bridge clubs, etc. I grew up in West Texas, which was a bit removed from the Deep South, but we still had segregated schools and neighborhoods for the few blacks in our small town. The concern of the Jackson, Mississippi ladies for segregated toilets in their homes was a revelation to me. My grandparents were the only people I knew in Big Lake with a toilet in the garage, but they never hired maids. My grandfather liked to run the Hoover himself when he came in from the ranch.

While I enjoyed the characters of Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny, I think Hilly Holbrook may the name to remember years from now. Early in the book I wondered if Hilly would just be a pathetic comic target, such as Frank Burns in M.A.S.H., but her evil expands as the narrative progresses. I hope to never cross anyone of her kind but to have courage of my convictions if I do. I also enjoyed the comic touches in The Help. Stockett changes moods very effectively throughout the book.

I listened to The Help on an audiobook featuring four readers, one each for the three main characters of Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter and another reader for the chapter about the Junior League benefit for children in Africa. When I saw that the audiobook was over nineteen hours, I expected to be listening for several weeks, as I only spend about an hour driving and cooking each day. After a couple of days of listening, I starting extra housecleaning and finding other quiet chores so I could continue listening. I even stopped and just listened without multitasking, which I rarely do for an audiobook. I finished the very entertaining audiobook in only nine days.

I think everyone in my library's adult services department has read the book now. Perhaps it will be one of the most remembered books from 2009-2010 decades from now, a symbol of common experience.

Stockett, Kathryn. The Help: A Novel. Penguin Audio, 2009. ISBN 9780143144182

Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage by Stephan Budiansky

In novels and movies, Sir Francis Walsingham (1530?-1590), principal secretary and privy councilor under Queen Elizabeth I, is sometimes portrayed as sinister and diabolical, a man who would kill for his queen. In disguises he visits Paris and Scotland to gather intelligence, plant false information, and assassinate enemy spies. According to historian Stephan Budiansky in his book Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage, this is just fiction. He agrees that Walsingham was a loyal and devoted servant but claims the queen's man was a serious Puritan with a conscience.

Two topics dominate Budiansky's book. The first is the queen's campaign to prevent invasion of Protestant England by Roman Catholic forces of France and Spain. Serving as ambassador to France, Walsingham was the primary negotiator trying to arrange Elizabeth's marriage to one of the French king's younger brothers. At points when the deal seemed almost done, the queen always backed out, leaving Walsingham to pay all the debts of the diplomatic mission. Later as principal secretary, he developed a team of double agents who misinformed England's enemies about the island nation's military and financial resources. The second topic is Walsingham's efforts to protect the queen from assassins trying to supplant her with Mary of Scotland. He arranged to read all of Mary's secret correspondence and eventually provided the evidence to condemn her.

In this account of Walsingham's life at court, where most councilors sought power and prestige, the author shows how the spymaster worked quietly and carefully under the queen's ever-changing foreign policy. Budiansky's reassessment of Walsingham will interest English history fans.

Budiansky, Stephen. Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage. Viking, 2005. ISBN 0670034266

The Sisters of the Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels by Janet Soskice

When wealthy Scottish lawyer John Smith died in 1866, his twin nineteen year old daughters Agnes and Margaret surprised their neighbors by wasting no time in mourning; instead, they used a bit of their large inheritance to take a boat tour of the Egyptian Nile. The adventure proved to be just a prelude to the subsequent travels of Agnes Smith Lewis (1843-1926) and Margaret Dunlap Gibson (1843-1920), learned Presbyterian sisters who spoke numerous modern and ancient languages. Biblical scholar Janet Soskice recounts the lives of two remarkable women in The Sisters of the Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels.

Bible research was a male-dominated field at the point the sisters tried their hand at the acquiring the oldest surviving Biblical texts, found only in remote monasteries in countries along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. When not on expeditions, they spent their time in Cambridge, England, where they made friends and enemies of leading Biblical scholars at a time of religious uncertainty. There were some religious leaders who wanted research stopped because finding variations in old texts might cause some people to doubt the absolute truth of scriptures. The sisters saw old texts as no threat to their faith and dedicated themselves to finding, translating, and publishing the texts for all scholars to study.

The sisters built a large home outside the campus of Cambridge University, endowed library collections, and founded Westminster College at Cambridge, a college for Presbyterians where there had only been Anglicans until the 1880s.

In Sisters of the Sinai, readers learn much about the hazards of nineteenth century travel and the jealousies of ambitious academic authors. An entertaining dual biography.

Soskice, Janet. The Sisters of the Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. ISBN 9781400041336.

The Convertibles Sing Out at Friday at the Ford

I knew we would have a good turnout for the Convertibles at our Friday at the Ford concert early in the week, for people kept asking about the barbershop-doowop fusion quartet. I told inquirers that I had been very entertained the many times that I had seen them. Depending on who asked, I also mentioned that one of the singers was a close personal friend. The quartet even sang at my daughter Laura's graduation party, as shown in the picture at the right. Left to right are Tom, Lou, Ron, and Glenn. Yes, I know the Convertibles and recommend them.

I did not, however, anticipate the crowd that appeared Friday evening. I opened the doors five minutes early and by stated opening time had a room half-filled. Soon all the chairs were taken, and we were dragging more in from all over the library. Latecomers had to stand, and I never did get a really firm count.

I asked people how they learned of the concert. Many said our newsletter and the article in the Chicago Tribune Local, but almost as many said word-of-mouth. A couple said they were drawn in by our new outdoor sign. A few saw our posters around the library. Only one person said she learned of the concert on our website.

The Convertibles rose to the occasion and sang between twelve and fifteen songs that most people knew well, such as "Get a Job," "Only You," and "409." They asked the crowd to join them in singing several times, which they did willingly. Unlike earlier performances that I have seen, they used much less of their traditional barbershop repetoir and sang more of the hits of the 1950s and early 1960s, which really pleased our crowd. Their antics between songs also garnered many laughs. A good time was had by all.

Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge

Only forty-five years ago in Selma, Alabama and surrounding counties, African-Americans were systematically kept from voting through the biased use of poll taxes and citizenship tests. If those stumbling blocks did not deter a persistent black, loss of employment and Klan violence were threatened. As a result, Dallas County, Alabama's voter rolls were ninety-nine percent white. In nearby Lowndes County, not only were there no black votes, there had been none for sixty-five years in a county that was nearly eighty percent black. In 1965, the year after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, Selma blacks decided it was time to challenge the system. White supremacists fought back violently. The bloodshed shown on network television shocked the nation. Noted children's author Elizabeth Partridge tells the story in Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary.

Marching for Freedom is the kind of children's book that should also move many adults. Partridge combines the stories of many people who were children at the time to tell of their experiences, including meeting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the famous march from Selma to Montgomery. In tandem with vintage black and white photos of the determined marchers and the attacks by police, the stories remind us that blatant racism and disregard for justice are still part of our recent memory. March for Freedom should be in all public libraries.

Partridge, Elizabeth. Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary. Viking 2009. ISBN 9780670011896.

Promising Biographers for Readers to Consider

In Appendix B of my book Real Lives Revealed, I identify top biographers, authors who have at least three biographical titles in their portfolios. Here are some additional names to consider when looking for biographical authors. Some have only two titles but show promise of making a career in the genre. Most are younger. A couple I just overlooked.


Adams, Henry (1949- ): Writes about 20th century artists.

* Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist
* Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original
* Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

Carlin, Peter Ames: Writes about pop music figures.

* Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boy's Brian Wilson
* Paul McCartney: A Life

Carlo, Philip: Novelist turned biographer who grew up among future mafia bosses.

* The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez
* The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer
* Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss
* The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath

Clinton, Catherine: Historian who writes about nineteenth century American women.

* Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom
* Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars
* Mrs. Lincoln: A Life

Gavin, James: Writes about jazz musicians.

* Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker
* Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne


Goldstone, Nancy: Novelist now writing about historical queens.

* Four Queens
* The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily

Gooch, Brad: Among his many books are two well-reviewed biographies.

* City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara
* Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor

Holroyd, Michael: Writes about British art and literary figures.

* Hugh Kingsmill
* Lytton Strachey
* Augustus John
* Bernard Shaw
* A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Their Remarkable Families (2009)

Krakauer, Jon: Two of his popular works are biographical.

* Into the Wild
* Where Men Win Glory

Louvish, Simon: Writes about comic actors and film directors.

* Man on the Flying Trapeze: The Life and Times of W. C. Fields
* Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers
* Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy
* Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Max Sennett
* Mae West: It Ain't No Sin
* Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art

Rogak, Lisa: Writes about contemporary authors.

* A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein
* The Man Behind the Da Vinci Code: An Unauthorized Biography of Dan Brown
* Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King

Schiff, Stacy: Versatile biographer.

* Saint-Exupery: A Biography
* Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
* A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America