Beatles vs. Stones by John McMillian

How could I not read Beatles vs. Stones by John McMillian? I was in fourth grade when I first heard the Beatles singing "She Loves You" and "I Saw Her Standing There." In fifth grade I saw A Hard Days Night. I have had Beatles recordings in my possession ever since.

I did not pay much attention to the Rolling Stones until their single "Ruby Tuesday." I considered them as just part of the wave of British bands that included Herman's Hermits, the Animals, the Dave Clark Five, the Who, and the Hollies. Just a music fan, not a critic, I did not rank them in any way. I also liked the Stones' "Get Off of My Cloud" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash," but I never bought another of their records until middle age.

Growing up in the middle of nowhere, not reading rock magazines, I was never aware of a rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Even as an adult reader, not seeking gossipy publications, I rarely found stories of a conflict, so a whole book on the topic caught me by surprise. Its cover suggests a boxing match or sporting event, which in the end seems an appropriate suggestion. The story of Beatles vs. Stones is that of competitors, not enemies.

In the beginning, the Beatles helped the Rolling Stones with advice, contacts, publicity, and songs. There might never have been much conflict if it were not for journalists asking leading questions. Young men with inflated egos and desiring attention often then responded to sensational negative reporting with trash talk. Friendships between members of the bands warmed and cooled throughout the active phases of their careers. The disputes were relatively juvenile until Mick Jagger recommended a crooked manager to John Lennon.

Beatles vs. Stones is an interesting and entertaining account of the bands and their times that will appeal to Baby Boomers and their children who have heard so much about the good old days. It does not take long to read and may nudge some readers to get out the old albums.

MacMillian, John. Beatles vs. Stones. Simon and Schuster, 2013. 303p. ISBN 9781439159699.

Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II by Vicki Constantine Croke

No one should be surprised that I read Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II by Vicki Constantine Croke. On this blog I have reviewed at least six elephant books, including The Elephant Scientist and The Elephant Whisperer recently. Also, I have featured news about the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which operates elephant preserves in Kenya. Elephants, pandas, and birds are high on the scale of our interests in our household and at this book review.

Closer inspection of the three titles above reveals that the books are also about people who study, protect, and work with elephants. In Elephant Company, the subject is Billy Williams, who went to Burma in 1920 to work with Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, a British company that harvested teak logs from rain forests. Williams had always loved and worked with animals in his native England and quickly developed the skills of an elephant veterinarian. Working closely with the mahouts who road the elephants as they hauled logs, Williams introduced more humane treatment of elephants, lengthening their lives and saving the company having to capture more wild elephants - dangerous work that often involved injury and death of elephants and humans.

Elephant Company compares well with the other elephant books that I have read. The author tells a story that seems new to contemporary readers but would have been known to many newspaper readers in the 1930s and 1940s. She vividly describes life in a remote region of the waning British Empire and recounts a horrific period of Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia. She also celebrates the relationship between Williams and an elephant known as Bandoola. I enjoyed several happy days of reading.

Croke, Vicki Constantine. Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II. Random House, 2014. 343p. ISBN 9781400069330.

JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President by Thurston Clarke

Over time, stories of decades often are reduced to key events. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is certainly one of those events. It tops the list of pivotal moments in the 1960s, a decade of great promise and disappointment. In JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President, author Thurston Clarke expands the story of the early 1960s, reminding older readers of the complex national and international politics of the Kennedy White House.

Like many history books focusing on specific time frames, JFK's Last Hundred Days includes many stories from outside its focus. Clarke includes accounts of John F. Kennedy's childhood, youth, service in World War II, early political career, marriage, and first two years as president. These accounts are inserted as flashbacks as Clarke counts down the days to Kennedy's visit to Dallas in November 1963. In doing thus, Clarke makes almost every day rich and lively. Deep in details, though I certainly knew the outcome of the story and noticed foreshadowing, the assassination still seemed to spring on me as a reader.

Clarke's attitude toward his subject is apparent from the title. What might not be expected by readers is how thoroughly the author describes Kennedy's faults, such as vanity, recklessness toward personal safety, and adultery. Whether the reader leaves the book with a positive, negative, or mixed attitude may depend more on the reader than the author's story. Clarke seems to tell us everything.

Like all good history, JFK's Last Hundred Days is still relevant. Readers may rethink whether today's politics is really meaner than ever before. They may also question whether promises to keep American soldiers out of combat zones will be kept. The audiobook is a good option for busy readers.

Clarke, Thurston. JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President. Penguin Press, 2013. 432p. ISBN 9781594204258.

Audiobook. Penguin Audio, 2013. 12 compact discs. ISBN 9781611761719.

The Penguin Book of Witches edited by Katherine Howe

Novelist Katherine Howe's interest in editing The Penguin Book of Witches is similar to my interest in reading it. Her short bio in the book states that she is descended from three of the accused Salem witches. It does not say which three. I am descended from Susannah Martin who denied her guilt and tried to defend herself by ridiculing the proceedings. Being dismissive of her charges on the witness stand while teenage girls in the courtroom moaned and claimed to see a shadowy figure whispering in Martin's ear did not succeed. She was hung as a witch.

Documents relating to the Salem Witch Trials make up the central part of The Penguin Book of Witches. In this section of the book, most of the documents are transcripts from the trials. Howe provides an introduction to each, telling how the prosecution has again and again expanded its mandate to rid the area around Salem of witches. My ancestor gets slightly more than three pages.

The first 121 pages of the book set the stage for the Salem trials by recounting the development of laws and court procedures for convicting and executing witches. Howe introduces important British and colonial documents, some of which are legal depositions and others essays from important authors, including King James I and Reverend Samuel Willard. Readers learn how the severity of punishment increased over time, peaking in Salem in 1692. Some of the early documents are pretty dense reading, unlike the dramatic documents in the Salem section. Thankfully, Howe's explanatory paragraphs highlight key points.

The final section of documents illustrates how the fear and belief in witches declined dramatically within several decades after the Salem Trials, from which many New Englanders quickly tried to distance themselves.

Since it is the season for students coming to the library with American history assignments, this is a good time to add this updated title to public library collections.

Howe, Katherine, ed. The Penguin Book of Witches. Penguin Books, 2014. 294p. ISBN 9780143106180.

The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption by John Rosengren

I remember a newspaper picture of the fight. San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal hit Los Angeles Dodgers catcher John Roseboro with his bat when they tussled near home plate in an August 1965. Sandy Koufax ran into the scene. I read that Roseboro required stitches for his head wound. I was shocked that a player would hit another player with a bat, but being an eleven-year-old boy in rural Texas, I then thought nothing more of it. I continued thinking of Marichal and Roseboro as stars in my baseball card collection.

I have seen photos and an occasional reference to the incident since, but I never realized that the memory of the fight dominated Marichal and Roseboro's lives for decades. In his new book The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption, sports writer John Rosengren tells how the players tried to put the incident behind them, but friends, fans, and journalists continued to ask about it. Only public acts of contrition and reconciliation years later finally eased the stress. Marichal and Roseboro even became friends.

The Fight of Their Lives illustrates a point made at an Adult Reading Round Table meeting focusing on sports books. Sports books are usually about something other than games. This dual biography recounts how two men rose from poverty thanks to their athletic ability but how little of their wealth came from their paychecks. Baseball salaries except for star players were pretty blue collar in the 1960s. Rosengren also examines race and ethnic relations in 1960s baseball. You do not have to be a baseball fan to enjoy his book.

Rosengren, John. The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption. Lyons Press, 2014. 277p. ISBN 9780762787128.

This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems by John Shaw

2014 is the 200th anniversary of "The Star Spangled Banner," the official national anthem of the United States. It is not, however, the only song used to evoke love of country. "America the Beautiful," "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and "Stars and Stripes Forever" are also often played or sung at public ceremonies. Most anthems are really old, but there are two songs from the 20th century in their class, "God Bless America" written by Irving Berlin and "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie. Author John Shaw explains the evolution of the two songs in This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems.

While these two newer songs differ much in tone, and their authors held very different political positions, Shaw shows that they have over time converged in many ways. "God Bless America" began as a strident war march, and "This Land is Your Land" began as a labor rights anthem. There was little love in either. Verses were added and dropped, and performers also reinterpreted the songs in ways unplanned by the composers. As their composers softened and added more spiritual lyrics for their songs, they became more like we know them today.

Setting is very important in this story. The author spends much time on the lives of the composers and political and economic history of the country during the periods in which the composers lived. Shaw also tells abbreviated stories of other American anthems that have risen and fallen in popularity. Readers who enjoy dual biographies or micro-histories may enjoy This Land That I Love.

Shaw, John. This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems. Public Affairs, 2013. 274p. ISBN 9781610392235.

Audiobook. Audio Go, 2013. 6 compact discs. ISBN 8671482931853.

The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China by Julia Lovell

In 1839, the British Empire was ruled by a monarch from a German family while China was ruled by Manchurians who invaded the empire several centuries before. From their palaces with little true appreciation for what they asked, both rulers directed diplomats and generals to secure territory and wealth. A trip by sea from London to China took about six months, and there was no faster means of communication. Because diplomats were bound to their monarchs' bidding, even when the tasks were unwise and next to impossible, respectful negotiations were improbable. Mix in the greed of British and Chinese merchants, and readers discover the plot of the Opium Wars for 1839-1842 and 1856-1860.

Most modern readers from Europe or America know very little about these wars, according to historian Julia Lovell in her new book, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China. Few readers studied these nineteenth century conflicts in their schools. Many are truly shocked to learn that the British Empire insisted that the China buy its opium from India, and when the Chinese emperor said no - the official Chinese position was to discourage the use of the narcotic drug - the British sent its navy to level coastal cities and slaughter many Chinese soldiers and citizens.

Nearly every Chinese citizen alive after the Communist takeover of the late 1940s, on the other hand, has heard the Party's very slanted story about this unjust Western imperial violation of the Chinese nation. The example of the Opium Wars is at the foundation of Communist Party thinking about Western capitalism and is still very relevant today. The Party even used the Opium Wars to mask its own actions in 1989 in the aftermath of its killings at Tiananmen Square.

Some readers may find The Opium War challenging to read because of its many unfamiliar place and personal names. The author includes a roster of principle characters in the appendix, which I recommend to anyone wanting to distinguish Yan Fu from Yang Fang and Yijing from Yishan. I also commend the book to anyone wanting to learn about nineteenth century history for the sake of understanding the present.

Lovell, Julia. The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China. Overlook Presss, 2014. 480p. ISBN 9781468308952.

The Mayflower Compact by Jamie Kallio

On Wednesday, I reviewed Written in Bone by Sally M. Walker, a book for youth about the Jamestown and St. Mary's colonies. I had ancestors in both. Let's move north along the Atlantic Coast to Plymouth Colony today, where I had some other ancestors. Jamie Kallio, a librarian who used to work with us at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library and now works for the Orland Park Public Library has written The Mayflower Compact, a volume in the Foundations of Our Nation series for ABDO Publishing Company.

Jamie, who has long expressed a love of history, introduces the subject of American democracy in this book aimed at 3rd through 6th grade readers. She sets the stage by telling about the Pilgrims sailing across the Atlantic and how they arrived in America hundreds of miles away from their destination of the Virginia Colony. Recognizing that they were not keeping to the charter that they had been given by the Crown by remaining in what became New England, the Pilgrims and the Strangers wrote the Mayflower Compact in 1620, creating the first representative government in North America.

The title seems a bit narrower than the actual content of the book, as Jamie also tells us about life in the Plymouth Colony and adds an account of the war with the Wamponoag in 1674-1676. She notes that the Mayflower Compact was terminated by the incorporation of the Plymouth Colony into the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. Jamie includes a timeline, a glossary, and questions for student research. The Mayflower Compact is a useful primer for elementary students or even for adults looking for the basic facts in an understandable context.

Jamie is continuing to write nonfiction for children. I look forward to seeing her just published books about Virginia and Alabama, as well as another about the immigration station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

Kallio, Jamie. The Mayflower Compact. ABDO Publishing Company, 2013. 48p. ISBN 9781617837111.

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker

Laura in the Youth Services Department at Thomas Ford Memorial Library grew up in Maryland. When I mentioned that I took a trip to St. Mary's County in Maryland to do some family history research, she suggested that I read Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker. A day or two later in the lunch room, Uma, head of the Youth Services Department, saw that I was reading a Sally M. Walker book. She said that Walker is a well-known author of nonfiction for youth and that our library usually buys her books. A lot of hands touched the book before it landed in my hands, for which I am grateful.

Reading Written in Bone is much like watching an episode of Nova on our local PBS station. Walker shows in pictures and explains through text the work and findings of forensic archaeologists uncovering burial sites in two of our country's original English colonies. Her reporting is on the spot down in the dirt. You can almost feel the Chesapeake heat and humidity as the archaeologists brush the soil from the bones of individuals who died in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Better yet, you get to witness how they examine evidence to learn how the early settlers lived and died.

Looking at our library's catalog of books, I see that Walker has written books at various grade levels. I am attracted to two titles similar to Written Bone. Frozen Secrets recounts Antarctic exploration, and Secrets of a Civil War Submarine uncovers another a bit of American history. I am glad to be a big kid set loose in the children's book collection.

Walker, Sally M. Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland. Carolrhoda Books, 2009. 144p. ISBN 9780822571353.

The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel

I find it fascinating to read about all the news I did not notice as a child. Of course, children are not really concerned with world affairs when they have play with their friends and going to school as their everyday business. Still, some news is so big that even the kids pay attention. When I was a kid NASA's space program was headline news. I became aware of it during the telecast of John Glenn's orbits around the earth. Then I followed all of the missions through the Apollo program, but I tuned out whenever the cameras focused on astronauts' families. So Lily Koppel's The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story tells me much I did not know.

Even if I had paid attention, The Astronaut Wives Club would still be a revelation, because NASA and the cooperating media of the time only presented the happier side of astronauts' family stories. Besides experience as a test pilot and passing many physical and psychological exams, a candidate needed to have a seeming happy wife and attractive children to become an astronaut. The wives were expected to be wholesome and elegant. Of course, not everyone was as happy and stable as they pretended.

Koppel starts her story with the formation of NASA and the introduction of the Mercury Seven astronauts and their wives in 1959. She continues the story through each space launch in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, noting the addition of the New Nine astronauts and wives in 1962 and Group 3 in 1963. Readers get to know the Mercury Seven wives and selected wives from other groups well. She continues her story to the present, telling what has become of the many wives, widows, and divorcees.

The Astronaut Wives is entertaining and informative and should interest Baby Boomers and anyone interested in either the space program or the stories of women's lives.

Koppel, Lily. The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story. Grand Central Publishing, 2013. 272p. ISBN 9781455503254.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

The epic history The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson sat on my want-to-read list for a long time. Its size was daunting. Because our church book group chose it for discussion, I finally borrowed it as an audiobook and dove in. Finding the stories compelling and having much early summer gardening to do (time good for listening), I finished its 19 discs (23 hours) in a little over a week.

In her afterward, Wilkerson tells how she researched the migration of blacks from the South to the North, Midwest, and West between 1900 and 1970. Her interest began with her mother's escape from the South. She took that story as inspiration and identified many other migration stories, but in the end, she chose just three stories to tell in detail. Three is the magic number in this book. The stories have three origins: Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana. These migrations took place in the 1930s, the 1940s, and the 1950s, each with a different quality. The cities to which the migrants moved were Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

Though the journeys began and ended in different places, the people about whom Wilkerson wrote had many similar stories to tell. Jim Crow laws made their lives in the South intolerable and dangerous. Leaving on short notice or without alerting whites who would want to stop them presented a challenge. They all found their new lives better but still subject to acts of discrimination.

Having read numerous books about race relations in American history, I did not expect to be surprised by the cruelty described in this book, but Wilkerson's research unearthed injustices I had not imagined. I felt anger rising as I read about the theft, torture, and murder allowed under Jim Crow laws. Others in our book group reported similar reactions.

We filled our evening with questions, memories, and observations, as The Warmth of Other Suns proved a worthy discussion book as well as a good read.

Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. Random House, 2010. 622p. ISBN 9780679444329.

Audiobook. Brilliance Audio, 2011. 19 compact discs. ISBN 9781455814237.

Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr

Astronaut Sally Ride was a very private person, a tough position to keep for someone so famous, an icon for the women's movement and hero of many children. Being the first American woman in space in 1983 put her in the national spotlight and subjected her to media attention for several years. Offered publishing contracts, she resisted writing anything more than a few magazine articles and a children's book about herself, and those writings can be described as more inspirational than personally revealing. She kept her affairs private. So, it was a surprise to the public when her obituary revealed that she enjoyed a long same-sex relationship.

Two years after her death, Ride is the subject of a biography by one of the journalists who closely followed her career from her early days at NASA. Lynn Sherr also counted herself as one of Ride's friends, having often had dinner with her over the course of nearly 30 years. In Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space, Sherr admits that even she knew nothing about her friend's secret relationship.

While Ride's sexual orientation may now be the topic that may bring many readers to Sherr's book, it is not the overriding focus of the biography. Even Ride's initial trip into space is just an episode (though a very important episode) right at the halfway point in the book. Sherr takes a look at all of Ride's life, showing how her subject identified herself more as an athlete, physicist, and educator than astronaut, not exactly the person the media portrayed.

Because Sherr says so much about America from the 1950s to the present, the biography Sally Ride serves as a portrait of all of us, showing the way we reacted to Ride's fame and now to her death. Sympathetic to Ride, never sensational, this new biography may help us understand the way we treat science, celebrity, and controversy.

Sherr, Lynn. Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space. Simon and Schuster, 2014. 320p. ISBN 9781476725765.

Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics by Kathryn J. Atwood

The first global war of the twentieth century was a sad yet in some ways exciting time for women. Their brothers, husbands, and sons rushed off to battle for personal glory or the honor of their "king and country," leaving them to take up men's work. Those in Belgium, Serbia, and other invaded countries were in harm's way. In the shadow of a war that proved to be long and bloody, some strong women felt compelled to take up causes or even join the men in battle. Kathryn J. Atwood has written about them in Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics. 

Atwood's new book is a logical and useful prequel to her book Women Heroes of World War II. In both books she sets the historical stage and profiles women who acted bravely for causes in which they believed. A few of the women, such as mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart, were famous in their time, and others, such as Emilienne Moreau, became national heroines, but most are names current readers will not recognize. Atwood thinks they should.

With interesting sidebars explaining important details in the stories, such as the use of poison gases in warfare or the popularity of the song "Over There," and with a generous use of photographs, Women Heroes of World War I is a good introduction to the war that started 100 years ago for readers of any age. It is also a helpful addition to the literature of women's studies. Look for it to be popular in school and public libraries.

Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics. Chicago Review Press, June 2014. 246p. ISBN 9781613746868.

The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible ... on Schindler's List: A Memoir by Leon Leyson

Many baby boomers grew up with fathers who never talked about their World War II experiences until late in their lives. Leon Leyson was like them, but instead of being a soldier, he was a Jewish boy in Poland in and out of work camps run by the Nazis throughout the war. In post-war America, he wanted to live in the present and raise his children as average citizens of no particular origin. Only with the release of Stephen Spielberg's epic movie Schindler's List did Leyson begin to tell his incredible story, one bound to interest listeners for it included his working for Oskar Schindler, who saved his family from certain death. He told the story in his posthumously published The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible ... on Schindler's List: A Memoir.

Throughout World War II, Leyson was malnourished and small, not a good candidate for factory work. In the camps, he had to endure through heavy manual labor and show no sign of failing to keep from being executed, as so many children and older adults were. Luckily for Leyson, his father was a skill worker who was able to get the sympathetic Schindler to employ Leon. When Nazi inspectors came through Schindler's factory, he would stand on a box behind equipment to appear larger and capable of the work.

There have been many Holocaust stories written in the last half century, and The Boy on the Wooden Box fares well among them. Leyson told a compelling story with a great cast of characters about one of the most dramatic periods in our recent history. I listened to it read by five-time Tony Award nominated actor Danny Burstein. My interest never wavered.

Leyson, Leon. The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible ... on Schindler's List: A Memoir. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2013. 231p. ISBN 9781442497818.

audiobook. Recorded Books, 2013. 4 compact discs. ISBN 9781740369439.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink

I think Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink is one of the most disturbing books that I have read in a long time. While there are no totally evil people on which to blame what may have been unnecessary Hurricane Katrina-related deaths at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans in 2005, many seemingly good people behaved in ways inconsistent with their training and ideals. The doctors and nurses at Memorial were obviously in a crisis and not helped by the shockingly inadequate response of the corporation that owned the hospital, but they let their fears blind them to other courses of action than those that they took. Tragically, they had more resources within easy reach than they realized. Lack of planning and poor communications inside and outside the hospital led to confusion. Patients could have been treated for their diseases and kept more comfortable throughout the crisis. Some might have been saved. Fink tells the story in much fascinating and dramatic detail.

There are many lessons to be learned from Hurricane Katrina stories, but, as the author tells in the later chapters and the appendix to Five Days at Memorial, people are not learning them. Our society does not as a whole have a will to make the sacrifices and do the work necessary to prevent future tragedies. Fink tells how a hospital in New York performed much better in Hurricane Sandy, showing that preparation and clearer thinking can make a difference, but she also reports on many cases in which medical personnel and community emergency workers make the same mistakes made in New Orleans.

Five Days at Memorial is too large a book for many book discussion groups, which is unfortunate as there are so many topics to discuss. Groups that focus on public policy or meet quarterly (giving members more time to read) can tackle it. Five Days at Memorial is a great read for someone willing to make the effort.

Fink, Sheri. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital. Crown Publishers, 2013. 558p. ISBN 9780307718969.

Unabridged audiobook: Random House Audio, 2013. 14 compact discs. ISBN 9780804128094.

Pitching in a Pinch: Baseball from the Inside by Christy Mathewson

Christy Mathewson was one of the most important figures in early 20th century baseball. Not only was he a great pitcher and later an able manager, he was college educated and an important symbol for the proponents of a more gentlemanly game of baseball than had been played in the late 19th century. He was one of five great players honored with election to the first class of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Knowing he could cash in on his fame, he "wrote" a column for the New York Herald with much assistance from sports writer John Wheeler, and from those pieces came his 1912 book Pitching in a Pinch: Baseball from the Inside. It was his moment, as he had been a star for slightly over a decade and his skills were just starting to decline. He had already witness and been part of many legendary games. His World War I disability and early death were yet to come.

The state of baseball in 1912 was far different in many ways from 2014. It was a dead-ball era when few hitters could clear the fences (hit a home run). Most players were paid poorly. Pitchers were frequently called "twirlers." The Chicago Cubs were a dominant team. But a 21st century reader of Pitching in a Pinch will find much familiar as well, especially in the descriptions of pitcher-batter encounters, which Mathewson describes with great clarity. Pitchers still need to get ahead in the count to be effective. Batter should still pick their pitch.

Penguin's 2013 republication of Mathewson's book is a must for baseball fans interested in the history of the game. Readers learn much about Giant's manager John McGraw, Mathewson's Giant teammates, and opponents, especially the Cubs Tinker, Evers, and Chance. Readers also get a foreward by novelist Chad Harbach and an afterward by famed sports writer Red Smith.

Mathewson, Christy. Pitching in a Pinch: Baseball from the Inside. Penguin Books, 2013. 178p. ISBN 9780143107248.

Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone

I have been naive. I have always thought that scientists and inventors were mostly driven by wonder and curiosity. Men and women, I thought, wanted to discover how things work just because they longed to know. I thought most invention was a test of intellect and creativity. I understood that some research was driven by necessity, such as the need to cure diseases or protect the environment, but even then, part of the results should be joy for work well done. What I did not count on was anyone like Wilbur Wright. Intent on exploiting his patents for profit even before he and his brother successfully flew, he seemed to find little joy in putting pilots in the air.

Readers of Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone will get their fill of Wilbur Wright. He truly loved his family, including the brother he sometimes bullied, but his opinion of the rest of humanity seems to have been low. He felt that all modern people owed the Wright brothers a debt for the discovery of powered flight. He expected that the brothers' broadly written patents gave them a well-earned monopoly of the industry. He also expected the U.S. and foreign governments to contract through the Wright firm for all of their aircraft development. When other inventors and manufacturers opposed paying royalties and pilots fought against paying license fees for the right to fly, he filed law suits.

Engine builder and pilot Glenn Curtis was among the many inventors who felt the Wright Brothers had learned as much from their experimental designs as they learned from the brothers. An entire society of flying men and women had been trying to fly for years before the Wright brothers even started. They took offense at the Wright brothers' notion that air flight belonged to them alone. Mostly ignoring the Wright brothers and their demands, they continued to fly, risking their lives to test and demonstrate aircraft. In a four year period, 142 of these barnstorming pilots died in accidents.

Birdmen is a great in-depth story that shows a dark side to American business history. Look for it at your public library.

Goldstone, Lawrence. Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies. Ballantine Books, 2014. 448p. ISBN 9780345538031.

An Autobiography of Black Chicago by Dempsey Travis

If bookshelves were streets, you would find An Autobiography of Black Chicago by Dempsey Travis at the busy intersection of Chicago Way and Memory Lane. Stopped at this corner, the book's pages would open for you to see billboards for black-owned real estate, banking, and insurance companies and in the shop windows posters asking you to march for civil rights. And you would hear a calm, steady voice explaining to you why you have to get up early and do your part to change the world. By all accounts, black businessman and civil rights leader Dempsey Travis (1920-2009) did his part.

An Autobiography of Black Chicago was first published in 1981. That this memoir was ever written is remarkable, because in 1946 when he enrolled in college, Travis's poor reading ability forced him into remedial classes. When challenged by the probable failure of many in his situation, he applied himself and succeeded in college and business thereafter. Near the end of his book, he wrote of the importance of daily study for business people, stating that he read from ten newspapers each day.

In his book, Travis recounted what he saw in Chicago from the early 1920s to 1981 when Ronald Reagan became president. The account may surprise readers who mistakenly think that Jim Crow attitudes were confined to the South. 20th century Chicago was a very racist city, where most of the discrimination radiated from industry, unions, banks, real estate, and professional organizations, most controlled by white people. Blacks could only take the lowest paid jobs in factories, could not secure business loans, could not rent or buy properties in many neighborhoods, and were denied opportunities to join professional organizations, even when they had gotten college degrees. Fighting discrimination and making opportunities for himself and his race was Travis's mission.

Chicago was not the only stage in Travis's book. He was active in national business, professional, and civil rights organizations and eventually became an advisor to several presidents. He also was greatly shaped by a childhood trip to a funeral in Kentucky and his experiences in a racially-segregated military during World War II.

Agate Publishing put out a new paperback edition of An Autobiography of Black Chicago in 2013, preserving the essential Travis book but eliminating a collection of short autobiographical pieces by other black leaders. Serious students of Black Chicago may want to seek the older edition, which also includes many illustrations, but many contemporary readers will be more attracted to the new slimmer edition with greatly improved font and the most compelling part of the older book. An Autobiography of Black Chicago belongs in many Chicago area libraries and is a worthy addition to any collection on the national civil rights movement.

Travis, Dempsey. An Autobiography of Black Chicago. Agate Publishing, 2013. 216p. ISBN 9781932841671.

All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michele Guesdon and Philippe Margotin

The spindle on my inner phonograph is stacked high with Beatles records. I have just finished reading All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michele Guesdon and Philippe Margotin, a huge book that chronicles the recording history of the Fab Four. At the moment as I write, I'm hearing "Words of Love," the group's cover of a Buddy Holly song found on the album Beatles for Sale. When I woke awhile ago, it was a George Harrison composition "Don't Bother Me" from the With the Beatles album. I am obviously more cheerful than I was 30 minutes ago. As I finished the big book Saturday night, it was "Two of Us" and "Across the Universe" from Let It Be. I have been in many musical moods the last week.

All the Songs is a huge book for Beatles fans interested in the origins and recording of songs the group released on vinyl singles, EPs, and LPs between 1962 and 1970 in Great Britain and the United States. The songs are organized chronologically by year. Within each year, albums are first and then the singles. Songs are listed in order by track on the British editions of the albums. Had the songs been alphabetically arranged, All the Songs would be a mere dictionary and not the rich chronicle that it is.

By being chronological, All the Songs reveals the artistic development of the band and much about the personal lives of its members. I have been reading about the group for 50 years and recognized some of the facts and stories, but I still learned much I did not know. Some of the facts were little things, such as George Harrison inserted "beep beep" into "Drive My Car" or that the constant tapping in "Blackbird" was Paul McCartney tapping his feet, not a metronome as previously reported.

Some of the information is disturbing. I never dreamt that the narrator in "Norwegian Wood" sets fire to the apartment in the last verse. Though the song is basically John Lennon's composition, Paul McCartney suggested the bizarre twist. I'm still not sure that it is true.

Undoubtedly, all readers who take on reading the whole book will understand why the Beatles could not have possibly continued past 1970.

With help of lists in the appendix, I better understand the differences between the British and American markets for Beatles music in the 1960s. Americans were more willing to buy lots of records, and Capitol Records took advantage of American Beatlemania by putting out more albums with fewer songs on each. There were also many more singles in the U.S. than England. I was shocked to learn that "Yesterday" was never released as a single in the U.K. It was such a big hit in America.

Americans were also more enamored with Ringo Starr than his countrymen. I remember how my drum-crazy friends and I thought Starr as the key Beatle. All my fourth grade friends wanted to be Ringo.

Having read about the songs, I noticed new sounds and meanings as I listened to CDs this past week. I don't really need another reason to listen to the Beatles, but I am making my way through the catalog again. All the Songs has refocused my attention, and I feel about 40 years younger.

"Eight Days a Week" is now playing in my head.

Guesdon, Jean-Michele and Philippe Margotin. All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Beatles Release. Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2013. 671p. ISBN 9781579129521.

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson

Would you call The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson a microhistory? In this book, Nelson recounts a bit more than a century of discovery and application of atomic science, in a sense a narrow topic, but one that has had so much impact on politics, the economy, the environment, and all of our lives. Applying this science has come close to killing us.

Like an epic novel, Nelson's history has many characters, and like great novelists, the author has made many of them memorable. These are famous atomic physicists, names that most of us already know, but I will wager many of us really could not identify them in a pop quiz. Nelson knows them well.

About Pierre and Marie Curie, he wrote, "When the couple pressed glowing radium against their eyelids, they saw fireworks and meteors flashing across the retinas." (p. 31)

About Enrico Fermi,  he quotes Nobel prize winner Hans Bethe, "Fermi seemed to me at the time like bright Italian sunshine. Clarity appeared wherever his mind took hold ..." (p. 61)

"Niels Bohr was both a famed soccer player in his youth and Ping-Pong champion as an adult, while Werner Heisenberg spent his life downhill racing, at one time clocked at an alarming fifty miles an hour." (p. 66)

Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and on and on. It helps to keep a scorecard. It also helps to take the book slowly and let the story steep. It took me 9 or 10 days to pass from the early days of atomic discovery, past the World War II race to build a weapon, through the Cold War, to the present, when keeping weapons out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states is a top concern.

Passing through the decades, I felt many moods while reading. I enjoyed the scientific discovery period, futilely rued weapons development (hopelessly hoping the bomb would never work), and cursed the decades of senseless proliferation of bigger and deadlier weapons. The author makes clear the cost of atomic power and weapons to individuals and society. I am not certain the author state his opinion this way (the age of atomic science is a complicated story), but my take is that money, lives, and the integrity of our governments have often been wasted on systems that have failed to benefit humankind. The Age of Radiance is a sad but important story. I hope it generates will for positive changes.

Nelson, Craig. The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era. Scribner, 2014. 448p. ISBN 9781451660432.