Here are 100 books that A Nice Little Place on the North Side fans have personally recommended if you like
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Major league baseball stadiums have always enthralled me—their architectures, their atmospheres, their surroundings. Each has a unique story to tell. So I decided to tell the story of how perhaps the greatest of all American ballparks, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, came to be. As an urban historian, I also wished to tell a broader story of how the argument between 1957 and 1962 over whether, where, and how to build the stadium helped make Los Angeles into the modern city we know today. So writing City of Dreamsallowed me to combine my passions for baseball, for stadiums, and for the history of American cities.
The most comprehensive history of the American baseball stadium ever produced, and one that could only have been written by Paul Goldberger, America’s preeminent architectural critic. Unlike many of his brethren, Goldberger’s writing has always been clean, clear, and blissfully jargon-free, and his historical tour of ballparks from their inauspicious 19th century beginnings to the retro pleasure-and-marketing palaces of our own time is authoritative and wonderfully readable.
An exhilarating, splendidly illustrated, entirely new look at the history of baseball: told through the stories of the vibrant and ever-changing ballparks where the game was and is staged, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic.
From the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn was a "saloon in the open air"), to the much mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit's Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati's Palace of the Fans), to the stadiums we fill today, Paul Goldberger makes clear the inextricable bond between the American city and America's favorite pastime. In the changing locations and architecture of our ballparks,…
Major league baseball stadiums have always enthralled me—their architectures, their atmospheres, their surroundings. Each has a unique story to tell. So I decided to tell the story of how perhaps the greatest of all American ballparks, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, came to be. As an urban historian, I also wished to tell a broader story of how the argument between 1957 and 1962 over whether, where, and how to build the stadium helped make Los Angeles into the modern city we know today. So writing City of Dreamsallowed me to combine my passions for baseball, for stadiums, and for the history of American cities.
One of the models for my own book, this study of Shibe Park—later named Connie Mack Stadium—places it in the context of the growth and decline of its North Philadelphia neighborhood. Home first to the Philadelphia Athletics, then the Athletics and Phillies, and then, until 1970, the Phillies alone, the stadium went from a position as the centerpiece of a vibrant industrial and residential community to a decaying symbol of urban decline by the 1960s. Still, there are those who remember and love it, and Kuklick has written a fascinating and evocative book that tells the story of a twentieth-century American city through its signature baseball stadium.
Shibe Park was demolished in 1976, and today its site is surrounded by the devastation of North Philadelphia. Kuklick, however, vividly evokes the feelings people had about the home of the Philadelphia Athletics and later the Phillies.
Major league baseball stadiums have always enthralled me—their architectures, their atmospheres, their surroundings. Each has a unique story to tell. So I decided to tell the story of how perhaps the greatest of all American ballparks, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, came to be. As an urban historian, I also wished to tell a broader story of how the argument between 1957 and 1962 over whether, where, and how to build the stadium helped make Los Angeles into the modern city we know today. So writing City of Dreamsallowed me to combine my passions for baseball, for stadiums, and for the history of American cities.
This is actually a book about a baseball stadium that was notbuilt—the Brooklyn Dodgers’ proposed new home in that borough’s downtown that fell victim to the shortsightedness of New York City elected officials and that of their master, building czar and power broker Robert Moses. This was the first systematic and objective examination of the emotionally-fraught subject of the team’s 1957 departure for Los Angeles and the promise of a new stadium there (the subject of my Cityof Dreams), and was instrumental in placing responsibility for the Dodgers’ move squarely on the shoulders of New York pols and the imperious Moses. Also highly recommended is Sullivan’sThe Diamond in the Bronx: Yankee Stadium and the Politics of New York.
For many New Yorkers, the removal of the Brooklyn Dodgers-perhaps the most popular baseball team of all time-to Los Angeles in 1957 remains one of the most traumatic events since World War II. Neil J. Sullivan's controversial reassessment of a story that has reached almost mythic proportions in its many retellings shifts responsibility for the move onto the local governmental maneuverings that occurred on both sides of the continent. Conventional wisdom has it that Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley cold-heartedly abandoned the devoted Brooklyn fans for the easy money of Los Angeles. Sullivan argues that O'Malley had, in fact, wanted to…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
My father used to take me to watch the Twins play at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, a twenty-minute drive from our house in suburban Minneapolis. As soon as the Twins announced their schedule each year, he would buy tickets for the doubleheaders. Our favorites were the twilight doubleheaders, when we watched one game by daylight, and the other under the night sky. Baseball was pure to me then: played outdoors on real grass. Seated beside my dad during those twin bills, I felt his love for the game seep into me and take root. All these years later, almost two decades after his death, that love remains strong.
I love the books that go behind the scenes and show us more of a story we thought we knew. This is one of those. Josh Prager pulls back the curtain on Bobby Thomsen’s "shot heard round the world" with startling revelations from his research.
I was left with mixed emotions and uncertainty about a feat that had initially appeared nothing but heroic.
This is the untold story of the secret scandal behind baseball's most legendary moment:The Shot Heard Round the World. A Washington Post Best Book of the Year.
At 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca. The ball sailed over the left field wall and into history. The Giants won the pennant. That moment—the Shot Heard Round the World—reverberated from the West Wing of the White House to the Sing Sing death house to the Polo Grounds clubhouse, where hitter and pitcher forever turned into hero and goat. It was also in that…
I was a teen in the midwest in the 1990s, so my debut novel, To the Top of Greenfield Street, really hits home. There’s something so potent about where I grew up, and who I met at that formative age, that doesn’t leave me, no matter how hard I try. Professionally or non, I’ve always written, drawn, and acted on stage, and the theater background ensured every conflict in my book was soaked with in-the-moment urgency and discovery. Most of all, I wanted honesty to come through. Thoughts and decisions were as real as possible, and characters breathed with laughter and tears along the way.
My debut novel contains a scene at Wrigley Field, and why not? It’s the most beautiful stadium in professional sports and an unforgettable place to visit. Rich Cohen does a great job with his retelling of the bittersweet 2016 season when the Cubbies finally won it all. He also blends in some little-known historical trivia, without getting too dry, or stat-overloading, like many sportsbooks. Also, Cohen brings in himself, with his own first-person Cubs stories, which I love to see in narrative nonfiction.
The New York Times bestselling author of Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football “knocks it out of the park” (Vanity Fair) in this captivating blend of sports reportage and memoir, exploring the history of the 2016 World Series champions, the Chicago Cubs.
When Rich Cohen was eight years old, his father took him to see a Cubs game. On the way out of the park, his father asked him to make a promise. “Promise me you will never be a Cubs fan. The Cubs do not win,” he explained, “and because of that, a Cubs…
I split my writing time between fiction and non-fiction, the latter usually baseball-themed, and I’ve published two books of baseball writing. My reading is similarly bifurcated; there’s always a baseball book on my nightstand. I’ve also got a background in history, and I genuinely enjoy deep research (it’s a great way to put off, you know, writing). Baseball is such fertile ground, so ripe for deep dives—the nexus of sport, culture, entertainment, economics, labour relations, etc. The best baseball books are more than boxscores and transactions, they place the game in its historical context. Books that manage to synthesize all of the above are some of my favourite reads.
We move into the twentieth century with Murphy’s book, a chronicle of a strange and thrilling season smack in the heart of the Deadball Era, when the two leagues we know today—the National and American—had solidified, their champions meeting each autumn in the still-new World Series. Crazy ’08 focuses on the pennant races that year, especially the National League race, between the Chicago Cubs, New York Giants, and Pittsburgh Pirates, which reached its fevered crescendo with a game that featured what’s known as “Merkle’s Boner.” But the book’s broader concern is the atmosphere of political corruption, racial strife, crime, and social upheaval which surrounded baseball. Murphy’s research is deep, but the book reads like journalism because she’s got a storyteller’s heart.
From the perspective of 2007, the unintentional irony of Chance's boast is manifest—these days, the question is when will the Cubs ever win a game they have to have. In October 1908, though, no one would have laughed: The Cubs were, without doubt, baseball's greatest team—the first dynasty of the 20th century.
Crazy '08 recounts the 1908 season—the year when Peerless Leader Frank Chance's men went toe to toe to toe with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson's New York Giants and Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates in the greatest pennant race the National League has ever seen. The American League has…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
As the author of 73 published books, I have four goals for writing. I want to write more women into history, emphasize how everyday activities children accomplish are important, empower young readers, and tell a story that moves readers, either through an emotional response or the knowledge that they can do what whoever I wrote about did. My biographies cover role models who have been groundbreakers in their time and place. Readers can be, too.
I love to read (and write) about talented, dedicated females.
This middle-grade biography about Dottie Kamenshek tells of how one talented woman of many dazzled spectators in the groundbreaking All-American Girls Softball League. Her talent lifted the spirits of a nation worried about men drafted into the military to fight during World War II.
What started as a stunt to keep viewers while male players were away turned into an amazing experiment where female athletes could shine. Go Kammie!
Dorothy Mary Kamenshek was born to immigrant parents in Norwood, Ohio. As a young girl, she played pickup games of sandlot baseball with neighborhood children; no one, however, would have suspected that at the age of seventeen she would become a star athlete at the national level.
The outbreak of World War II and the ensuing draft of able-bodied young men severely depleted the ranks of professional baseball players. In 1943, Philip K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, led the initiative to establish a new league-a women's league-to fill the ballparks while the war ground on in Europe and…
I am a professor of American Jewish history who has written extensively on how sports have impacted the lives of American Jews. I have been especially interested in how the acceptance or rejection of Jews in the sports arena has underscored that group’s place within this country’s society. I have been likewise intrigued by how the call of athleticism has challenged their ethnic and religious identity. The saga of Marty Glickman, a story of adversity and triumph, speaks boldly to critical issues that this minority group has faced.
During the mid-1960s, Sandy Koufax was a dominant baseball pitcher and was destined to be the youngest player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
For Jewish fans however, of my generation and beyond, he was an iconic Jewish hero most notably for his determination in 1965 to sit out a World Series game in deference to Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Leavy, an extraordinarily talented writer, tells this sports and Jewish story with keen insights into Koufax’s personality.
“The incomparable and mysterious Sandy Koufax is revealed…. This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.” —Wall Street Journal
“Leavy has hit it out of the park…A lot more than a biography. It’s a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero’s self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory… a remarkably rich portrait.” — Time
The instant New York Times bestseller about the baseball legend and famously reclusive Dodgers’ pitcher Sandy Koufax, from award-winning former Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy. Sandy Koufax reveals, for the first time, what drove the three-time Cy…
We raised three children who loved athletics, but as we parented them through what we came to term the youth sports industry, we gradually realized how dramatically and for the worse, youth sports had changed since we were kids. The present profit-based model treats children as commodities, and we feel strongly that this is the worst way to approach youth sports. So, yes, we feel passionately about this topic, especially about the need for reform.
Admittedly not a happy read, we believe this is a necessary one to grasp the sickening, heart-breaking overuse injury aspect of youth sports with stories from individual athletes, teams, and coaches from around the country.
The term "career-ending injury" is now increasingly applied to teenage athletes as a result of overuse injuries! The author critically examines the roles of parents, coaches, professional sports leagues, and national sports organizations that turn a blind eye to the wreckage left in the wake of the overuse epidemic.
Yahoo’s lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports—the pitching arm—and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.
Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game’s lifeblood. Their import is exceeded only by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue in the elbow, the ulnar collateral ligament, is snapping at unprecedented rates, leaving current big league players vulnerable and the coming generation of baseball-playing children dreading…
Marianne Bohr and her husband, about to turn sixty, are restless for adventure. They decide on an extended, desolate trek across the French island of Corsica — the GR20, Europe’s toughest long-distance footpath — to challenge what it means to grow old. Part travelogue, part buddy story, part memoir, The…
No one really knows who invented baseball. Games involving balls hit with sticks, runners, and bases are as old as time. By the middle of the 1800s, everybody in America was playing baseball. And I mean everybody—girls, boys, women, and men from all walks of life and heritage. While researching baseball history for The House That Ruth Built, I read stacks of baseball books about baseball legends—for the most part, White players like Babe Ruth or Black players like Jackie Robinson who broke the color barrier. I was surprised and delighted when I came across books about baseball players who represented the rest of everybody—hence this list.
There are lots of books about famous White and Black baseball players, but there are few books about Native pro baseball players, and definitely not about two!
This dual biography of NY Giants power hitter John Meyers and Charles “Al” Bender, pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics, who faced off in the 1911 World Series features realistic illustrations bordered with traditional designs, bookended with the play-by-play of the game.
More than baseball, Sorell’s text addresses the adversity both players overcame, along with the prejudice and injustices they faced, for the love of the game. Injustices, Sorell points out, Native players still contend with today.
Tracie Sorell is a member of the Cherokee Nation; Arigon Starr is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma.
The true story of John Meyers and Charles Bender, who in 1911 became the first two Native pro baseball players to face off in a World Series. This picture book teaches important lessons about resilience, doing what you love in the face of injustice, and the fight for Native American representation in sports.
Charles Bender grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Northwestern Minnesota. John Meyers was raised on the Cahuilla reservation in Southern California. Despite their mutual respect for each other's talents and their shared dedication to Native representation in baseball, the media was determined to pit them…
