Trophy Son
By Douglas Brunt
St. Martin’s Press
The competitive world of tennis, and how young you have to think about a professional career, is explored adeptly by New York Times bestselling author Douglas Brunt in his third novel, Trophy Son.
Brunt also addresses the deeply important topic of the cost of early excellence in our achievement-obsessed society.
Continue reading BrooklynFans Of Books: “Trophy Son” Examines Tennis World
Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I’m Not Allowed to Say on TV
By Joe Buck
Dutton
Joe Buck, the face of FOX Sports as its lead announcer for Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and USGA Golf coverage, has written an entertainingly candid, self-deprecating memoir.
In Lucky Bastard, Buck writes a lot about his father, Jack, the legendary St. Louis Cardinals announcer and the impact he had on his life and career. Joe grew up sitting in the booth while Jack called Cardinals games, and started calling games himself at the age of 19.
Continue reading BrooklynFans of Books: Joe Buck On Being A “Lucky Bastard”
The Euro: How A Common Currency Threatens The Future Of Europe
Joseph E. Stiglitz
W.W. Norton & Company
Since 2010, Europe has been in economic crisis, as the 19 countries that share the euro currency have been rocked by stagnation and debt crisis.
Some countries have been in depression for years while the eurozone’s governing powers have gone from emergency to emergency, most notable in Greece.
Nobel Prize-winning economist and best-selling author Joseph E. Stiglitz examines in The Euro the causes for the endless crisis and mistakes made around the creation of the single currency. He lays bare the European Central Bank’s misguided inflation-only mandate and explains how eurozone policies, especially toward the crisis countries, have further exposed the zone’s flawed design. Continue reading BrooklynFans of Books: The Euro, by Stiglitz
Right Down the Middle
Ralph Terry with John Wooley
Mullerhaus Publishing Arts, Inc. – the book is releasing with a hard bound collectors edition, signed and numbered limited edition. The total is 338, one for each game Ralph started in MLB. Please follow us on Facebook “RalphTerryBaseball” or order direct a soft bound copy from Amazon.com, Prime.
Ralph Terry, the top right-handed pitcher on the fabled New York Yankees teams of the early 1960s, is known for two big moments at the end of one of their many World Series.
Terry is the only pitcher to throw the final pitch in two World Series Game Sevens. He gave up the game-winning home run to Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates in 1960 and, two years later, he went the distance in the finale against the Giants to help the Yankees win the title, and was only the seventh man in history to win the World Series MVP Award in 1962.
Right Down The Middle is an inspiring story of an 18-year-old rookie from small-town Oklahoma taking the field with the likes of Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Billy Martin, Whitey Ford, and Moose Skowron while playing on the biggest baseball stage, Yankee Stadium.
Continue reading BrooklynFans of Books: Ralph Terry’s Unique Place In Yankees History
Ten Years Later
By Lisa Marie Latino
Long Shot Publishing
We all remember what it was like to get the “save the date” for a high school or college reunion and feeling the pressure to show your classmates how far you’ve come.
Ten Years Later is the debut novel for Lisa Marie Latino, the Executive Producer of Long Shot Productions and the Production Coordinator for New York Giants radio broadcasts.
The book centers around Carla D’Agostino and her friends Dante, Katie, and Andrea, and the year leading up to their 10th anniversary high school reunion.
Continue reading BrooklynFans of Books: “Ten Years Later” Shows Anything Is Possible
Players
By Matthew Futterman
Simon & Schuster
People in this day and age are used to seeing Peyton Manning doing advertisements for multiple products while watching a game.
It wasn’t too long ago that athletes were not seen as endorsers, or anything beyond what they did on the field of play.
Matthew Futterman’s Players writes the story of how this changed, and says of the landscape of pro sports up until about 60 years ago, “The story of professional sports in the United States for the first eight decades of the twentieth century is largely one of exploitation. It’s a story of one-sided contracts and lopsided deals in which teams, leagues, national and international sports federations, and countless other moneyed interests who had put themselves into positions of power took advantage of athletes who were some combination of too young, too uninformed, or too uneducated to realize just how they were being used, and too unrepresented to do anything about it.”
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(Netherlands vs Brazil, World Cup, July 2, 2010. Photo by Mark Leech, featured in Who Shot Sports)
Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History 1843 to the Present
By Gail Buckland
Alfred A Knopf
Who Shot Sports, which is also an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum until January 8, 2017, brings together 165 extraordinary photographers who have captured some of the most famous images ever, but the person behind the camera is unknown.
Buckland is a former curator of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and Benjamin Menschel Distinguished Visting Professor at Cooper Union.
For Who Shot Sports, Buckland draws upon the work of more than 59 archives, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to Sports Illustrated, Conde Nast, Getty Images, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, L’Equipe, The New York Times, and the archives of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.
My Father & Atticus Finch: A Lawyer’s Fight For Justice in 1930s Alabama
By Joseph Madison Beck
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
When one thinks of an intrepid lawyer defending a black man accused of rape in the South, one thinks of Atticus Finch in the landmark novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
The thing is there were figures in real life in the South during the time Mockingbird was set, including Foster Beck.
Joseph Madison Beck tells the story of his father’s courageous defense of a black man in South Alabama.
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The Cardinals Way: How One Team Embraced Tradition and Moneyball at the Same Time
By Howard Megdal
Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin’s Press
The St. Louis Cardinals are one of the great franchises in baseball, and they are in the midst of one of the most successful periods in their history.
They have made the playoffs in each of the past five seasons. In that time, they won the World Series in 2011, made it back to the Fall Classic in 2013, and reached the National League Championship Series twice, losing to San Francisco both times, in 2012 and 2014.
Howard Megdal takes an extensive look into their history, dating back to the days of Branch Rickey a century ago, in The Cardinals Way.
“Coming on the heels of Tony LaRussa’s 2011 World Series championship in his final season, the Cardinals have put together the kind of sustained success that is rare in baseball, drawing all kinds of attention and a simple question. How are they doing it?
Continue reading BrooklynFans Of Books: Megdal Examines “The Cardinals Way”
One of the most incisive comics today is Pearls Before Swine, which is written by Stephan Pastis and chronicles the friendship of Rat, Pig, Goat, and Zebra.
I’m Only In This For Me is the latest collection of the daily comic strip, which runs in the Daily News here in New York City.
Continue reading BrooklynFans Of Books: “I’m Only In This For Me”
