Cap Anson, The Grand Old Man of Baseball by  David L. Fleitz; 2005; McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina; 338 pages; 0-7864-2238-6; 10/27-10/29

Adrian “Cap” Anson was the first player to have over 3,000 hits, hit over .300 21 times, played 27 seasons in the Major League, was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939 and was instrumental in getting African-Americans banned from playing in the major leagues.

An excellent biography of one of the great ballplayers of the early years of organized baseball, who helped the game become what it is today.  Traces his life from the early days in Marshalltown, Ohio to fame and fortune in Chicago to a penniless ending.  During his life he was the man in major league baseball, he was the first superstar of the game, he predates Cobb, Ruth, and just barely Cy Young.  Things he did help mold baseball into what it is today, but part of his downfall was a reluctance to change from the “traditional” way of doing things.  He and his teammates refused to play against a team with Moses Fleetwood Walker on it, because Walker was African-American.  Because Anson took the stand, it emboldened many others to refuse to play against African-Americans which was why Jackie Robinson had to break the color line in 1947.  Ansons’ headstrong ways caused him to burn bridges with those in power in baseball and after he left baseball he tried to capitalize on his fame, but never found the venture.  He ended up penniless living with a daughter and son in law.  RRR

Lie Down with The Devil by Linda Barnes; 2008; St. Martin’s Minotaur, New York, NY; 292 pages; 978-0-312-33289-1; 10/24-10/27

Linda Barnes brings back Carlotta Caryle, the sexy red headed cab-driving PI in Boston, in an adventure that covers a good chunk of  he Eastern Seabord.  She is hired by a bride who thinks her fiancee is cheating on her. It turns out to be a lie, and leads Carlotta into a mystery that involves her Mob boss boyfriend, Indian tribal rights, old friends from the Boston PD and a secret from Carlotta’s past.  She and Mooney who have been partners, friends and co-workers have finally realized that there is a mutual attraction there.  It is a great mystery with the reason I like series like this so much the characters continue and grow and are affected by the events that they have been subjeted to.  RRRR

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini; 2007; Riverhead Books, New York, NY; 372 pages; 978-1-59448-950-1; 10/22-10/24

Our good friend, Diana Lee Jackson, loaned me this book a while back and kept asking me when I was going to read it.  I kept telling her when I read everything that I had checked out of the library I would.  I found a gap in the due dates from the library and picked up the book.  I had resisted reading it because as a friend of mine observed yesterday, I tend to read more obscure books and mostly shy away from the very popular books.  I am glad that Diana kept on me to read it.

Set mainly in Afghanistan over the last thirty years, this is a story of love and war.  There are three love stories, the love between a man and a woman, the love between two wives, the love between mother and child.  The book starts with the story of Mariam, the result of an illegitimate relationship and follows her for fifteen years and then seemingly discards the story to pick up the story of Laila.   Slowly the two stories come together and become a very moving story.  Laila grows up in a moderate Kabul with her young friend Tariq.  Life is changed forever when the Soviets invade Afghanistan and then war comes to Afghanistan and never leaves, the factions or nations fighting change.  The severity of the fighting changes, the ruling groups change, but love lives on.  Tariq disappears, Laila’s family is killed, she is told Tariq is dead, and marries a man, Rasheed, who she has no love for, but who has cared her after she is injured.  He is already married and Laila and his first wife, Mariam, come to love one another, like sisters and then like mother and daughter. Rasheeds’ attitudes and abuse of the women is what at first keeps them apart and then eventually moves them together.  So much of what he is foreign to those of us in the west, but Hosseini paints it so vividly that we must accept it as reality.  Unfortunately there are people of Rasheeds ilk throughout the world they are not confined to one ethnic group or religion or geographic area.

Crazy for God, How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Help Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back by Frank Schaeffer; 2007; Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, NY; 417 pages; 978-07867-1891-9; 10/16-10/22

Frank Schaeffer has been many people in his 56years.  His answer to the question who are you is When.  We are different people all through our lives as we experience different things, as we have crisis of faith, as others come and out of our lives, as we gain perspective on things, as we learn more and more.  If we are not learning more as we get older we are like a pool of stagnant water, an incubator for disease.  I would that no one would be the same person at 12, at 21 or at 50.  If not I would be worried for them.

Frank Schaeffer was raised in a Christian community by parents that were revered by many young Christians of the 60’s and 70’s.  Like many who were immersed in the “Lords work”  many of the children were  overlooked.  Frank takes us backstage with Francis and Edith Schaeffer at L’Abri in Switzerland.  His shy, reclusive father who was often angry with his family and played the part of senior Christian spokesman, Francis seemingly would have been pleased haunting the museums of Europe.  Edith, turned everything in to a spiritual, and I do mean everything.  Schaeffer gives us backstage looks at many more members of the religious right, Dobson, Graham, Falwell, Robertson and Reed.  He tells of how he and his father and these other men took the matter of abortion and used it to turn a group of Christians into a major player in politics.  Along the way Frank began to question what he was doing and the faith that he had been indoctrinated in and had adopted almost with thinking.  He has become almost, but not quite, the opposite of what he was growing.  He still has faith, but it is not his parents faith, but a faith that he has worked out.  I am looking forward to reading some more of his work.  RRRr

The Ashes of Lou Gehrig and other Baseball Essays by Sean Peter Kirst; 2003; McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina; 230 pages; 0-7864-1578-9; 10/15-10/16

Sean Kirst is a columnist for a newspaper in Syracuse, New York and writes on a variety of subjects, collected here are a collection of his columns related to baseball.  The columns range from racism faced by Jackie Robinson when he was playing with Montreal, a retired bat maker, a young boy who got to meet Mickey Mantle, peoples’ reaction to Mantles death, and various characters related to Syracuse Chiefs baseball.  It is an exciting collection of great writing related to baseball, I would like to read other stuff that Kirst has written.  RRRR