The Rabid Reader

Branch Rickey (Jimmy Breslin, Viking Adult, 2011, 147 pages)

Branch Rickey brought Jackie Robinson into major league baseball in 1947 and together they smashed forever the unwritten code excluding blacks from the nation's pastime.  For that act alone, Rickey is deservingly regarded as one of the legends of the game.  But long before he brought Robinson into baseball, Rickey had already revolutionized the game by establishing baseball's farm system.  A former big leaguer himself, Rickey also managed.  Whether on the field or in the front office, he was a force to be reckoned with.  He was bright, a savvy business man, and a tough negotiator.  He also had a heart and a keen sense of right and wrong.  Most inspiring is the fact that Rickey came from very humble beginnings and made for himself a name and fortune.  His is the classic American tale of a poor boy from Ohio whose deep seated faith and dogged work ethic took him to the pinnacle of success.

For all these reasons and more, Rickey's life is well worth studying.  And when I heard that the great Jimmy Breslin was adding to the Penguin Lives series with a slim volume on Rickey, I raced to pre-order my copy.  Sadly though, I was disappointed in Breslin's profile of the man.  True, Rickey is well remembered for bringing Robinson into major league baseball.  But to use that as the centerpiece of a biography--even a short one--gives short shrift to all the other fascinating aspects of Rickey's life.  Moreover, that ground has been so well plowed, planted and harvested elsewhere, Breslin fails to add anything of interest.  Surprisingly too, though Breslin is regarded as a great writer--he did win a Pulitzer Prize for Pete's sake--I found his work here to be rambling, lacking in focus, and generally uninspiring.

 

San Ramon Valley: Alamo, Danville, and San Ramon (CA) (Images of America) (Beverly Lane and Ralph Cozine, Arcadia Publishing, 2005, 127 pages)

The San Ramon Valley stretches for 20 beautiful miles under the shadow of Mount Diablo and includes the bustling communities of San Ramon, Alamo, and Danville, California.  Beverly Lane, curator of the Museum of the San Ramon Valley, along with photographer Ralph Cozine, compiled this wonderful collection of images depicting Danville, Alamo, San Ramon, Diablo, Blackhawk, and Tassajara Valley. Among the sights in this volume are early schools, the electric railway between Alamo and Danville, the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District, and the incorporation of Danville and San Ramon in the early 1980s.

High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time (Tim Wendel, Da Capo Press, 2010, 268 pages)

Tim Wendel tackles one of the enduring debates in baseball: which pitcher had/has the fastest fastball?  Profiled here are some of the all-time greats who could bring all-time heat: Satchel Paige, Bob Feller, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, and Randy Johnson, just to name a few.  Player profiles aside, the most intriguing topics in Wendel's book are the technology that has been used over the years to measure speed and the biomechanics of pitching.  Great book for any fan of the game.

 

The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks (Susan Casey, Henry Holt & Co., 2005, 291 pages)

Thirty miles due west of the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge lie a cluster of rocks called the Farallon Islands, 211-acres of inhospitable terrain in the middle of the Pacific ocean.  Nineteenth century sailors called them "the Devil's Teeth."  For three months every year--September to November--one of the world's largest and densest congregations of great white sharks assembles in the waters surrounding the islands.  The remoteness of the islands has kept the white shark's habitat refreshingly pristine and explains why the Farallons are a great place for scientists to study the white shark. 

Susan Casey's The Devil's Teeth is a fascinating account of her time as an "intern" with the members of the Farallon White Shark Project, about the only persons allowed on the islands, which are protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service.  Casey was already a seasoned writer at the time she managed to get on the islands.  Her book is part adventure, part natural history, and part travelogue.  Casey does a fine job offering a rare and uncommercialized, unchummed glimpse into the lives and habitat of nature's most fearsome, fascinating, and mysterious predator.   

Samuel Johnson's Insults: A Compendium of Snubs, Sneers, Slights and Effronteries from the Eighteenth Century Master (Jack Lynch, Ed., Levenger Press, 113 pages)

Samuel Johnson once said that "it is surely better a man should be abused than forgotten."

The Age of Johnson was an age of insults.  Never has abuse been served up with more zest than in the eighteenth century.  It was the age of Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, who once ridiculed an inelegant woman by saying,"She wears her clothes as if they had been thrown on by a pitchfork."  It was the age of Alexander Pope, who with his mock-epic poem The Dunciad saw in one enemy only a "brain of feathers and a heart of lead."  Across the English Channel, it was the age of Voltaire, whose passion for scolding the stupid landed him in prison for a year.  Insolence and contempt were the favored mode of public discourse.  When the earl of Sandwich complained that his former friend, the libertine John Wilkes, "would die either on the gallows, or of the pox," Wilkes replied, "That must depend on whether I embrace your lordship's principles or your mistress."

In this world, Samuel Johnson was second to none.  He was born in 1709, when Pope and Swift were perfecting their style, and even as a child he was known for his sharp tongue.  During his brief stay at Oxford University in 1728 he amazed fellow students with the witty insolence he directed at his tutor.  By the 1750s he was famous across England as the master of the put down, as everyone who met him discovered.  In her diaries, Frances Burney--novelist, playwright, and one of Johnson's most talented young friends--called him "Mr. Turbulent."  Another friend described the "roughness in his manner which subdued the saucy and terrified the meek."  This legendary "roughness" prompted Jon Winokur, the author of The Portable Curmudgeon, to include Johnson in a list of "World Class Curmudgeons."

Jack Lynch, editor of, Samuel Johnson's Insults, has compiled the very best of Johnson's put downs, insults, and barbs.  Among my favorites:

• asshead: one of slow apprehension, a blockhead.
• saucebox: an impertinent or petulant fellow.
• jobbernowl: blockhead.
• wantwit: a fool; an idiot.
• dangler: a man who hangs about women only to waste time.
• scold: a foul-mouthed woman.

A great little book.  Entertaining and well worth the time.

   

Washington: A Life (Ron Chernow, Penguin Press HC, 2010, 904 pages)

A tremendous biography.  Drawing on an "explosion of research" and fresh resources, Chernow humanizes Washington while reminding readers why Washington was the greatest of the Founding Fathers.