Wherever I Wind Up
by R.A. Dickey (Blue Rider, $27)
Like the knuckleball R.A. Dickey throws to other major-leaguers, this compelling memoir “tacks in unpredictable ways,” said L. Jon Wertheim in Sports Illustrated. The New York Mets’ “teetotaling, bibliophilic, deeply introspective” pitcher offers “brutally honest” accounts here of childhood sexual abuse and his failings as a husband, then tops those with intriguing meditations on today’s game. The result might just be “the finest piece of nonfiction baseball writing since Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.”
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Damn Yankees
edited by Rob Fleder (Ecco, $28)
What more is there to say about the most storied franchise in baseball? said David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times. Judging from this “remarkable” essay collection, there’s plenty. Frank Deford’s piece doesn’t add much, only reaffirming his status as “America’s most overrated sportswriter.” But Leigh Montville entertains by imagining Babe Ruth as a contemporary player, and Nathaniel Rich establishes a useful theme by asking what, exactly, underlies Yankee fans’ insatiable need to win.
Calico Joe
by John Grisham (Doubleday, $25)
John Grisham’s new novel doesn’t even sniff a courtroom, said Chris Foran in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It opens with an invented moment set during the 1973 National League pennant race—the beaning of a promising Chicago Cubs rookie named Joe Castle. Grisham’s attempt to create a redemption tale from the long aftermath “is more bloop single than home run,” but fans of 1970s baseball “will find plenty of memory-lane material” to keep the pages turning.
Bill Veeck
by Paul Dickson (Walker & Co., $28)
“To be ignorant of Bill Veeck’s legacy to baseball is akin to being unaware of Steve Jobs’s role in computers,” said Mark Hodermarsky in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “A maverick and visionary,” Veeck owned four big-league teams across four decades, and his penchant for upsetting the status quo included using exploding scoreboards and signing Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League. This biography is “as close to a must-read as any baseball book in recent memory.”
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”