When In Doubt, Fire The Manager – Alvin Dark & John Underwood, 1980 ★★★

Winning on a Prayer

Most celebrity autobiographies follow a common format: here are the great things I did, here’s how and why I did them, and here’s how people misinterpreted me, especially the press.

Alvin Dark was different. When he put pen to paper at the end of a long and distinguished career, his mission was telling you just where he messed up.

The Cobra – Frederick Forsyth, 2010 ★

A Master on Auto-Pilot

A problem with writing great novels is that people expect you to continue writing them.

But what if you run out of ideas? What if you can’t make yourself care about your characters? What if your approach to yarnspinning has gone from months of careful plotting to Gimme my money!

That’s where Frederick Forsyth has wound up in the late autumn of a distinguished career. Every few years he shakes off the cobwebs, sees what hot topic is on CNN, ruminates on how to make it a story, and then sets to work researching the subject. When it comes to research, Forsyth has been a longtime master and still delivers. It’s the rest of his career that’s gone south.

Framed – Robert F. Kennedy, 2016 ★

Right Ta-Ta, Wrong Ho-Ho

It played at the time like some diabolical cup-and-ball trick. Everyone giving it more than a passing glance thought they had the answer, only to be surprised a quarter-century later when that answer was officially revealed as something else.

To quote John Candy in JFK: “You got the right ta-ta, but the wrong ho-ho.”

The Canterbury Tales – Translation by David Wright, c. 1387 ★★★★

Game Suspended on Account of Death

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a lot of things; one it is less credited for is being the longest-suspended marquee competition in English literature.

A tavern owner announces a challenge to tell the finest story, “of best sentence and most solas,” as he puts it, whereupon seven-innings-worth of batters step up to the plate.

Generations have been able to judge the results for themselves, but Chaucer himself didn’t live long enough to declare a winner. In limbo, his characters wait.