The Bill James Baseball Abstract 1988 – Bill James, 1988 ★★★★

Knowing When to Leave

Bill James often talked about baseball careers being like watermelons. Even with the best of them, you had what he called the meat of the melon, the center part that was the ripest and easiest section to enjoy, but to get to them, you have to deal with rinds.

“Whenever you sign a player over the age of 28, you are buying into a market that is certain to decline,” he writes about the 1987 Baltimore Orioles, a team with a fair number of 30-and-over players.

Age is the great killer of talent, James would say. Apparently, the same thinking guided James himself, who made the 1988 edition of the Bill James Baseball Abstract his swansong, just a dozen years after it began. In a postscript, he claims to have lost his joy.

Nine Stories – J. D. Salinger, 1953 ★★★★½

Living in the Material World

How many times does one pick up a well-read book expecting one thing only to be surprised? It’s less common for me as I get older, but there are surprises. One of the happiest of them came recently, re-reading this notoriously downgraded staple of suburban libraries.

What you get here is a case for the short story as the supreme form of fiction. Each piece is its own jewel of storytelling economy and creative ambiguity. And as thematically linked ruminations on the human condition, they take on added luster in the form of concept album.

His Vedantic philosophy may not be for everyone, but one doesn’t need to be an acolyte to appreciate J. D. Salinger’s finest hour.

The Citizen Kane Book – Herman J. Mankiewicz & Orson Welles with Pauline Kael, 1971 ★★★★

No Pain, No Kane

Great art isn’t always about betrayal, but the two go together more than you might expect. In the case of one of the world’s most admired films, the stab in the back went deep, and if you accept the backstory given here, reaped its karmic reward with interest.

The shooting script for 1941’s Citizen Kane is combined with a groundbreaking essay on the film and its creation by Pauline Kael, longtime movie critic for The New Yorker. While no substitute for watching the film, the book makes fascinating supplemental material.

Kael’s essay, originally published in consecutive issues of her magazine, got most of the attention when the book was published in 1971. While praising the film on the whole, Kael made clear its greatness in written form was the work of Herman J. Mankiewicz rather than the film’s director and star, Orson Welles.

America In Search Of Itself – Theodore H. White, 1982 ★★½

Once More Unto the Breach with Teddy White

Before Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980, American politics had fallen into a rut. Elections had been between two clear known quantities who generally agreed on the state of the world and what the United States needed to do. Differences centered on process, not goals.

Reagan was different. While fellow Republicans saw some use for government, his view was far more negative. After decades of expanding jurisdictional reach, Reagan wanted not only to cut taxes but slash the bureaucracy that made Big Government big.

For many liberals, the arrival of Reagan in 1980 came like a slow-motion nightmare. With an incumbent president seemingly powerless under the grip of inflation and an embassy full of American hostages in Iran, Reagan’s ascendency had the makings of an existential crisis.

1984 – George Orwell, 1949 ★★★

Why I Don't Love Big Brother

Here is a book so influential you don’t need to touch it to know its grisly details. So many immediate associations come thick and fast, from the title itself to terms like Big Brother, memory hole, and Thought Police.

As a political treatise it long ago passed the test of greatness: People still talk about it. But how does 1984 hold up as a novel? Would it make sense if I told you I came away both overwhelmed and underimpressed?

The book is a sweeping indictment of collectivist authoritarianism, its target Marxist but vague enough to encompass other totalitarian philosophies. The term “Ingsoc” is rolled out often, suggesting that what we are seeing at work is not far off from present-day English socialism.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” Orwell writes. “It was their final, most essential command.”

The Twelve Caesars – Suetonius, c. 121 ★★★★★

When Bias Isn't Such a Bad Thing

Can a biased historical account be preferred over one that is more even-handed? It’s not an easy ethical question, but in terms of invigorating a reader with the spirit of a lost time, not to mention crafting a deep-dish narrative that pulls you in, the answer can be yes.

That’s even more true if the writer is Suetonius, and the work this account of the early rulers of the Roman empire.

Sharp character sketches and piquant social commentary make the First Century A. D. come alive in a way that makes you believe you are really half-back in time, reluctant to realize much of what he was writing was tabloid journalism for the stylus age. Not fiction, but likely blown well out of proportion for the sake of readability and old grudges.

So what!

Doll – Ed McBain, 1965 ★★★½

One of Our Detectives Is Missing

While the 87^th Precinct police procedural series was built on an entire squad of detectives working together as the main protagonist, this was not how it really worked in its 50-year run. Ed McBain couldn’t help but make his alter ego, Steve Carella, the star of the series. Most times, if they were lucky, the other plainclothes officers got to ride shotgun.

This time, McBain deliberately takes Carella out of the loop, missing and presumed dead. The rest of the team must figure out what he knew back in Chapter 3, and save their comrade by solving a murder.

However bendy its approach, Doll is a fine example of the classic 87^th Precinct formula, a dark and compelling crime, detailed characterizations, clear insights into the processes of a criminal investigation, and a storyline that never slackens. It doesn’t always make sense, but the pages fly by too fast to notice.