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What Are You Reading

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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33,715
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Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Just finished "Baseball Has Done It," by Jackie Robinson. Not a biography or a work about "inside baseball," this 1964 book is a fascinating look into the status of integration as the Civil Rights Movement was reaching its peak --- not just sports integration, but integration as it stood in general American life. Robinson positions baseball -- which was strongly and securely integrated by the mid-sixties -- as an example that the rest of society ought to follow.

The bulk of the book consists of interviews between Robinson and various baseball personalities of the past and then-present about how integration has changed the game, about their own experiences of integration, and about how those experiences have changed them. Most of the top African-American players of the time are interviewed, and give extremely candid assessments -- Henry Aaron, for one, comes across as much more of a firebrand than his later image would lead one to expect, and Ernie Banks isn't far behind. Frank Robinson is, as you might expect, quite outspoken as well. Two players who refused to be interviewed come in for harsh words -- Maury Wills, who insisted he didn't want to get involved in politics, and Willie Mays, who declined by saying he wouldn't know what to say. Robinson doesn't call them Uncle Toms straight out, but he sternly rebukes both of them for their indifference to an issue that should, in his view, be at the forefront for every American, and especially every African-American.

A number of white players and former players also speak. Some don't come off well at all - Alvin Dark, then manager of the Giants, is embarassingly patronizing in a good-ole-boy kind of way. But Robinson's former teammate Bobby Bragan -- who had publicly opposed Robinson's presence on the Dodgers in 1947 -- states flatly that integration has made him question everything he ever believed about race, and that it's made him in every way a better American, and a better man. Another former Robinson teammate who had opposed his presence in 1947, former Dodger star Dixie Walker declined to give a full interview, stating with obvious embarassment that he wants to forget what happened in those days. But he does talk about the African-American players he was then working with as a coach for the Braves, and points out that without such talent, the game as it stood in the early sixties would have been in very big trouble. Robinson, in turn praises Walker as a "man of eminent fairness," whose love for baseball clearly transcended whatever racial feelings he might have had in 1947.

This is an interesting book to read today, in 2016, when African-American participation in baseball is far less than it was fifty years ago, and when racial tensions are still very evident in many aspects of American life. It would be interesting to read what Robinson would have written if he had lived long enough to update this book for the twenty-first century.
 

Retromoto

One of the Regulars
Messages
228
Location
MI
I'm into 1900-1930's Mysteries and stumbled across John Jay Chichester's work a few years back, amazing, well ahead of it's time. Currently re-reading " Rogues of Fortune". Great stuff if you ever come across it. If I've ever read a collection of books which beg to be made into a movie, this is it.
Retromoto
 
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Benzadmiral

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,815
Location
The Swamp
Re-reading Stephen King's The Dark Half. It was very modern for its time, 1989, but it seems odd to me now that the writer in the story had no computer -- he used a typewriter -- and everybody has to hunt up pay phones. And that was only a little more than 25 years ago.
 
Messages
17,190
Location
New York City
^^^ I work in a business where being able to be reached by phone is a must. If you didn't live it like we did, it is hard for young people today to understand the effort that it took to be sure people could reach you or having to "call in" regularly to check if you were needed. I spent many days off, finding phones, calling in, leaving numbers, etc., it was exhausting - and not inexpensive.
 

Harp

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,508
Location
Chicago, IL US
Media censorship: Freedom versus responsibility; Irum Saeed Abbasi, Laila Al-Sharqi; Journal of Law and Conflict Resolution, Vol 7, August 2015
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,715
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
"The Universal Baseball Association Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." by Robert Coover.

I've heard about this strange little novel, published in 1968, for years, and am only now getting around to it. It works on multiple levels -- on the surface it's the story of a lonely middle-aged man whose lifelong obsession with a dice-and-charts tabletop baseball game triggers his descent into madness. On another level it's a religious allegory speculating on the nature of a God who sets a universe into motion and then chooses not to interfere in its outworking, even though the events that occur there pain him terribly. And on a third level, which Coover couldn't have considered when he wrote the book, it works as an allegory for the Internet and what it does to people who let virtual worlds become more real to them than the worlds outside their door. A strange, unforgettable book.
 
Messages
10,832
Location
vancouver, canada
"The Universal Baseball Association Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop." by Robert Coover.

I've heard about this strange little novel, published in 1968, for years, and am only now getting around to it. It works on multiple levels -- on the surface it's the story of a lonely middle-aged man whose lifelong obsession with a dice-and-charts tabletop baseball game triggers his descent into madness. On another level it's a religious allegory speculating on the nature of a God who sets a universe into motion and then chooses not to interfere in its outworking, even though the events that occur there pain him terribly. And on a third level, which Coover couldn't have considered when he wrote the book, it works as an allegory for the Internet and what it does to people who let virtual worlds become more real to them than the worlds outside their door. A strange, unforgettable book.

Is it still in print?
 
Messages
12,942
Location
Germany
Translated:
"The hour of clearing", by Heinz Böhm, 1976.

It´s a (christian-lasting) book for kids, which I choosed, by redeem a coupon, gifted on the Leipziger Buchmesse.

The book is about old-fashioned, in the nature playing kids (boys). ;)
In the woods, there are mysterious things going on, the forester of the area is horrified by these punctual demolitions and, maybe, step by step, the smart ones of the boys will find out, what is the secret, behind these curious or even psychopathic things.
 

Harp

I'll Lock Up
Messages
8,508
Location
Chicago, IL US
The Making of Casablanca; Bogart, Bergman, and World War II by Aljean Harmetz

A superbly cast classic with haunting music, drama, romance, commitment and renunciation scored against
a world at war, Casablanca is as Aljean Harmetz sums, "a place and time when love and heroism
were not only possible but necessary."
Originally published twenty four years ago as Round Up the Usual Suspects before reissue title dub
for the sixtieth anniversary edition, former New York Times journalist Harmetz interviewed many
surviving production principals and scoured archives and personal papers to properly focus the
creative process that birthed the film; while searing Warner Bros corporate soul and Hollywood's
old studio system. TMC concludes with Casablanca's cultural evolve.
A wonderful read.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,715
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
"Anything But Love," by Elizabeth Hawes.

I've been trying to get my hands on this one for a long time, and I'm not disappointed. Published in 1948 by the well-known high-end fashion designer turned rabble-rousing labor radical, this is a gut-bustingly funny satire on self-help books coupled with a savage critique of the whole "manufactured femininity" industry and its influence on women's roles in society. Hawes presents the book as a sarcastic "guide to being a perfect American woman," based on the drippy image promoted by postwar advertising, women's magazines, movies, radio, and general popular culture. There is a great deal of serious cultural criticism packed among the jibes, including a lacerating takedown of the postwar back-to-the-kitchen movement, and some serious questioning of the mixed messages society offered women on the question of their own sexuality.

This book should be much better known than it is. Unfortunately, Hawes was red-baited out of the country not long after it was published, it got zero promotional support from the publisher, and has never been reprinted. Copies today are quite rare -- but if you really want to know what a thinking woman had to say about what the Boys From Marketing were trying to sell to postwar women, keep an eye out for a copy.
 

DNO

One Too Many
Messages
1,815
Location
Toronto, Canada
Just finished 'Wind in the Wires' by Duncan Grinnell-Milne and now starting Cecil Lewis' 'Sagittarius Rising'. Both are memoirs of RFC/RAF pilots in WW1. I'm most interested in Lewis' account. I believe he served as an army cooperation pilot before moving to single seat scouts and I've become interested in the experience of the two-seater crews. Most accounts concentrate on the fighters rather than the two-seaters.
 

AmateisGal

I'll Lock Up
Messages
6,126
Location
Nebraska
Guys and gals, I have a book for you! I just got this at the library so I cannot say whether it's good or bad, but the premise itself is extraordinary. Front Lines is a novel by Michael Grant and although it is shelved in the young adult section, I have found many YA books to be universal in their appeal.

From the author: "What if a Supreme Court decision in 1940 had made women subject to the draft and eligible for enlistment in the military? That is the simple idea behind FRONT LINES. What if women had gone to war - into combat - alongside the men? I use this approach as a lens to look at America’s role in World War 2."

If you're interested, here's more info: http://www.frontlinesbook.com/book.php

Can't wait to dive into this book tonight!

ETA: I'm hooked. Great writing, great story.
 
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