Baseball in the Garden of Eden
by John Thorn
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Branch Rickey
by Jimmy Breslin
(Viking, $20)
Branch Rickey, the man who integrated baseball by bringing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, “is not nearly as famous as he ought to be,” said Julia Keller in the Chicago Tribune. “Irked to no end” by this fact, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jimmy Breslin seeks to set the record straight. Breslin’s “seriously entertaining book” evokes the “rough, red meat world of professional sports in the first half of the 20th century” while paying “grand tribute to the man who became baseball’s conscience.”
Campy
by Neil Lanctot
(Simon & Schuster, $28)
“As the second great black ballplayer to join Rickey’s Dodgers, Roy Campanella had it easier, and tougher,” said Chris Foran in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Jackie Robinson bore the brunt of white prejudices, but Campanella, who would become a Hall of Fame catcher, “did not get his share of the credit.” Neil Lanctot’s “aggressively reported” biography inspires as it charts both Campanella’s rise from the streets of Philly and also his “second life,” following a 1958 car crash, as a quadriplegic and advocate for the disabled.
56
by Kostya Kennedy
(Sports Illustrated, $27)
There have been 17,290 athletes who have played in the majors, but only one who got a hit in 56 consecutive games, said Allen Barra in Newsday. In sparkling prose, Kostya Kennedy captures the excitement of the summer of 1941, when a nation bracing for war relieved anxiety by following Joe DiMaggio’s monumental streak. “You can almost smell the marinara sauce simmering and hear the crackling of radios” as Americans tuned in daily to see whether the great DiMaggio got another hit.
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What to know before turning to AI for financial advicethe explainer It can help you crunch the numbers — but it might also pocket your data
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Book reviews: 'The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief' and 'Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run'Feature The search for a headache cure and revisiting Springsteen's 'Born to Run' album on its 50th anniversary
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Keith McNally' 6 favorite books that have ambitious charactersFeature The London-born restaurateur recommends works by Leo Tolstoy, John le Carré, and more
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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.”