The First Salute – Barbara Tuchman, 1988 ★★½

Helping America Happen

Creating the United States was the work of more than one nation. What commercial and strategic concerns went into its birth? And what really cost the British crown their 13 colonies?

Barbara Tuchman takes a long view in appreciating the forces at play in the struggle, for example spotlighting the Netherlands’ bloody overthrow of Catholic rule in the 1500s. Subtitled “A View of the American Revolution,” the book explains how French and Dutch support, along with British ineptitude, helped realize the United States.

If you can tolerate the author hopping approach to developing a thesis and multiple detours into 20^th century politics, you may enjoy this colorful, fast-moving-once-it-gets-going account.

80 Million Eyes – Ed McBain, 1966 ★★

Lights, Cameras, Murder

If a sign of a great author is making a book readable even when there is little in way of story, then here is Exhibit A in Ed McBain’s greatness. This book is fast-paced and gripping, capturing authentic moments of life on its margins. But the plotwork falls short of form.

If you are already familiar with and enjoy the 87^th Precinct series of police procedurals, you can find things to extend your engagement with the series. But if you are a newbie wanting to give McBain a fair shot, this is not the book to start on.

80 Million Eyes is more a killer-and-filler entry.

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.