Stilwell And The American Experience In China 1911-1945 – Barbara Tuchman, 1971 ★★½

Anatomy of a Misadventure

A book about historic failure needs a deft hand to keep from being more than a drag for a reader. Especially when the topic is the Allied effort in World War II. During the march to final victory, who wants to dwell on an endless spiral of ignominy going on in China?

Stilwell And The American Experience In China is not easy to ignore. It was a history of great occasion when it came out, a Pulitzer Prize-winning examination of American policy in the Far East. This came out at a time when young men were being shipped home from Vietnam in body bags by the hundreds every month.

That the book would be seen as all-too-relevant to the politics of the 1970s was not something author Barbara Tuchman avoids. She makes her feelings clear enough in the book’s Foreword:

Jigsaw – Ed McBain, 1970 ★½

One Piece at a Time

The concept behind Jigsaw, book #24 in the 87^th Precinct series, is that standard crime just doesn’t cut it anymore, not even for criminals. Sometimes they must play their own little games, spicing things up to keep life interesting.

That was true for Ed McBain, too. Already inclined to experiment in his police procedurals, the author pushes the envelope further with an offbeat tale about long-dead hoodlums and their unrecovered loot from a bank heist. Instead of providing us with prose pictures, he gives us an actual picture, a photograph cut into puzzle pieces by one of the goons. It’s up to the detectives of the 87^th Precinct to put it all together again and find the money.

The trick is finding all the pieces.

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract – Bill James, 2001 ★★★½

 Subtraction by Addition

Any book crammed with more a century of lore can’t help but fascinate. That is especially true for me when the subject is baseball and the writer is Bill James, a scholar who brings both a deep analytical perspective and sharply heterodox views to his writing.

In 1986, James took time out from his annual takes on the best and worst of the year in the sport to publish his magnum opus, The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Running over 700 pages, it reviewed baseball’s evolution decade by decade, then ranked top players at each position. As James’s mind can go off in so many fruitful directions, it was the reference book equivalent of potato chips for diamond buffs.

Fifteen years later, James went back to do it again. The result was even more players, more pages, and more insights, specifically around the concept of Win Shares. You know what? It isn’t quite as good.